Random observations of a tourist pretending to be a local

I have noticed lots of facial piercings on the youthful folks here. You would be forgiven for thinking it's 1993.

Yesterday as I was approaching our building from the opposite direction I saw a grocery delivery person park his van a whole block away (there's no good street parking), wheel a big cart full of grocery bins over the uneven and sometimes missing paving stones to the door of our building, struggle through the door and, leaving the cart at the bottom, make the first of several trips up the five flights of stairs to our downstairs neighbours. As those particular neighbours are neither elderly nor infirm, I thought it cruel of them. I can't imagine how grocery delivery works in the old parts of town where the streets are too narrow for cars. Well, I can imagine, and I hope they get good tips.

Butane sellers roll carts stacked with tanks of gas around the streets, banging on them loudly with a piece of metal pipe to get peoples' attention. People lean out of windows to call them to stop, then run down to buy a tank.

The stairwell of our building is decrepit: the paint is peeling, the lighting is intermittent, the floor tiles are broken and chunks are missing, an entire pane of glass is missing - as well as the corresponding part of the frame - from the window on our floor, leaving the window hanging slightly ajar. Despite all this, someone comes to wash the floors and windows in the stairwell every few weeks.

Women of a certain age wear these kind of house apron things when at home. They roll up the outside blinds of their flat every morning one at a time. Then they energetically scrub windows and shake carpets, hang out the washing, have conversations from one balcony to another even if it's across a street or an alleyway, and generally exhaust me with their boundless activity. They are also no slouch at climbing hills and stairs, no matter how pinching and uncomfortable their shoes may look.

Apparently, for the locals, winter has arrived. Jeff and I are the only people in our entire block still sitting out on the terrace in the morning over breakfast - granted we wear sweaters now. (Occasionally this one guy comes out for a cigarette, stares across at us balefully while he smokes it, then disappears back inside his flat. He used to sit outside of an evening, having loud conversations on his mobile phone.)

Milk isn't a big thing here. Some grocery stores don't even keep any refrigerated milk in stock - you can only buy tetra-packed milk, which is kind of gross. We also noticed this when we were travelling in Croatia. I like discovering what things I've taken for granted based on my background that are actually far from standard. Doesn't this make you wonder about the Canada Food Guide? Probably nothing but propaganda for the dairy farmers and beef farmers, and possibly the wheat farmers too.

On a related note, I have never seen skimmed milk in any stores, yet when I request it at Starbucks they cheerfully comply. Or do they? Where can they be getting that milk? Or do they think I couldn't tell the difference? Wait, could I tell the difference?

I am too tall, too wide of waist, too large of foot, wrist and hand, for the clothing or jewelry sold here. Today I was in a store that organized rings by size and had to nearly dislocate my own finger, smiling innocently through the pain, in order to get a size XL ring off.

Approximately half the apartments in our building are empty. We wondered about that (it's kind of freaky), so Jeff asked around at work and apparently it's the same across the city. Several years ago there was a loophole where you could hide your money in property (so as not to pay taxes, presumably), but the loophole closed leaving people with apartments they couldn't sell without making that money visible again. And owners don't want to rent because if a renter decides to stay you can't ever get them out - there's no law to back you up. A few weeks ago the apartment across the hall was opened and people were taking photos of it - I peeked inside and the flooring, walls and wiring looked like it had last been occupied in 1979. I gather that there is - perhaps in part a consequence - a bit of a housing shortage here and many people are being priced out of the central areas of the city.

When there is a loud party in continental Europe and you can hear obnoxious drunk guys smashing beer bottles and yelling along to music, the music is more likely to be something like The Cure than, say, Kid Rock. (I saw a whole balcony full of boorish guys dancing along to 'Friday I'm in Love' last weekend.)

There are brightly coloured feral parakeets in the parks here. And people like to keep birds in cages on their balconies so you always hear birdsong. Though someone on our block has a tone-deaf bird that sounds more like a goose.

I love cities where you can walk and walk and walk and keep coming to new neighborhoods with different atmospheres and people. Barcelona is a great city for walking. I'm going to miss that quite a bit - I feel like I've only scratched the surface.