It’s funny being here again – so familiar and so comfortable.
I can talk. I can understand other people talking. I can drive without having any worries about making a mistake. I am surrounded by familiar things which I find pleasing – paintings and sculptures, chairs and curtains, plates and cups. (I am a Taurean so these things matter!)
My animals sleep in front of the log fire. When something went wrong with my van today I knew who to ring and he fixed it for me on the same day, because he knows me.
Here I know what to do and how to be and who to ask and where to go.
But on a long walk with Bonnie today I realised I don’t want to live here. I like living in Catalunya. I like learning new languages, I enjoy the challenge of being in new places and meeting new people. I like the warmth of my new life – I don’t mean just the weather though. The first thing people here say is ‘it must be lovely to live somewhere sunny’ and of course that is true but it isn’t the most important thing. I like how people kiss each other on greeting, how they so hate to say goodbye that it can be an hour from the first sign of departure to the moment when they disappear round the corner. Perhaps it is to do with the weather after all – when you can spent more time outside it is much more possible to be sociable and relaxed and physical.
Many people that I know in Barcelona and Granollers have not moved very far from their first home. Families are still well within Christmas visiting distance and if you ask most people where they come from they will name some place within a few kilometres. It’s no longer like that for many people in the UK and I have moved from Scotland to London to Cornwall to Catalunya – letting my heart lead me south while trying to find my roots inside myself rather than in native soil. I’d like to think that I carry my home within me but it is a work still in progress.
Ohhhhh, I so hear that. The warmth and ease and comfort, and the warmth and the goodbyes….such long goodbyes, and the challenges.
Yes, yes yes. Soooo hear it.
Hello Kate,
I really understand what you are saying. I am thinking of moving to France in the near future. And I know why I want to do this, and I relate in lots of ways to what you say. I do not know where my home is, nor why I think I will find that somewhere else. But I have lived in Spain before and in Paris, and I realise that what I want at this stage of my life is the “shock of the new” or the “joy of difference”. I need that challenge.
x Gilla
“I can talk. I can understand other people talking” now that’s the part of your post that spoke to me the most. Yes we’ve done the catalan course and yes we can manage to ask for what we want, pass the time of day and have a very simple conversation. But that’s it, and it’s not enough.
Home is where the heart is Kate…
I agree with you and Jan. Unless one is fluent, there is – for me at least – the regular out of comfort zone where the language is concerned. And the more I learn, the more I realise how little I know.
It was lovely not to have to think about that in UK, but I wouldn’t return to live for anything. I can get a little fix when I need it by going to Gib and whizzing round Morrisons!
Practica, practica, practica as they say.
Perhaps you should have been born a turtle then your home would really never be far. It is a treat to live in times when travel like this is so effortless and takes so little time. I think the climate does make for more relaxed and outgoing personalities, or maybe it’s just part of the culture inspired by the warmth. Which came first – the two cheeked kiss or the hug?
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