On Atlanta from barcelona

My friend Beki said I should write about Atlanta from the perspective of a month in Barcelona, so here goes...

First, in a gross over-simplification, Catalonia bears a certain resemblance to the American South, in both the climate and the fiercely held belief that the region deserves its own nation, which would naturally be far superior to Mother Spain. Of course, not everyone holds this view, but it is reminiscent of the whole "South's gonna rise again" kind of anti-Federal perspective. Catalonians don't seem to be rednecks about it, just very populist, and convinced they can be their own little world.

But back to Atlanta.

A key difference is in the size. Atlanta is enormous, and so spread out that you have to drive everywhere, which leaves it polluted, snarled and obese. In tiny Barca, they walk everywhere, or take buses, trains or trams, or bicycle. They seem to have healthier bodies for it, but the trade-off is in their independence and time. They rely on someone else to get them where they need to go, and it takes longer. Your bus might leave every 20min, but it takes you to the train that only runs every 30min, which means you could either be really punctual or really screwed. If you have kids, you know it is a nightmare to get anywhere on time, and that adds another wrinkle. It is hard to take kids to a lot of places when it means pushing a stroller over stone sidewalks, lifting the kid onto a bus, etc.  The sweat factor is ridiculous.  No wonder people smell like hell and then think they need perfumes (though it is worse in France by far.)

Inevitably, you can spend 3hrs/day on transit, but more often, it seems people live their lives in their little neighborhoods, shop smaller and more often, and depend on each other in ways that an Atlantan like me would rather not.

Barcelona is a city of apartments, with everyone living in their little shoeboxes decorated in Early Ikea. Nice places have terraces, where people are creative with plants and gardens. But that's the limit of their own, private green space. In Atlanta, while there are lots of apartments, there are also tons of houses, and the greenness of the place almost assaults you. Trees, plants, grass, everything is everywhere and it is trying to murder me every spring. But more than that, the greenness separates us a bit from our neighbors gives us our own space. It is that separation, space between things, more than anything, that hits me as a major difference in Atlanta.

Some might think the separation is a bad thing or not. There's no point questioning it. After apartment living for a month, I'm longing to be in a house with a big, comfortable bed, central air conditioning, and my own car.