Skip to main content

Finding Joy




The inside of the Sagrada Familia, reminiscent of a forest with sunlight peeking through


Part of the Sagrada Familia
I went to Barcelona this week on a holiday from what has already felt like a holiday ever since I finished my thesis. Since I had two months in Finland before I go back to the US, I thought that some traveling was in order to take advantage of being in Europe where you can hop from country to country without (sometimes) even having to show any form of identification. And so I decided to finally go to a place in Europe that I have wanted to visit for years: Barcelona. The week leading to the trip was a flurry of activity. I was looking up transportation, walking tours, the many sights in the city, possible day trips to take. At one point I had at least seven tabs open to pages related to Barcelona. All of the research made me excited for my three days to explore a little bit of Spain.

The first day was a flurry of activity. Having arrived late the previous night, I wanted to devote this day to getting a feel for the city in the day light. I ate an early breakfast at one of the cafes that were on virtually every street corner. By the time my scheduled visit to the Sagrada Familia had come about at 9 in the morning, I had already walked over 5000 steps as I wandered around the area close to it. Throughout the day, I wandered farther and farther from where I was staying to the other side of the city and then walked all the way back. I came to my temporary home feeling exhilarated by everything I had seen and managed to do on my own (I am not a fan of traveling alone and get nervous every time I go to a new place).

Streets in the historical part of Tarragona
The second day was my day trip. Trying to figure out how to find my train when I didn’t know Spanish (and continuously said yes and no in Finnish, much to my boyfriend’s amusement), and when the monitors telling where each incoming train was going weren’t working was a challenge that I fortunately got through without too much anxiety. Tarragona was a small and very European. There was a distinct old part of the town and new, with the old having narrow streets that led into small plazas filled with bars and restaurants meant for people more than cars, and the newer part with wide streets and plenty of car and pedestrian traffic alike. The draw of Tarragona was the Roman ruins scattered throughout the city dating from the 2nd century BC.
The Amfiteatre ruins from when Tarragona was a Roman city

But at the end of my day in Tarragona while I waited for my train, I realized that what I really wanted was to go back to Finland. I missed the forests everywhere and the quietness of the people and landscape. I missed the security of being with my boyfriend. It was at home where I felt peace within myself. While I could find happiness in Spain, I needed to return to Finland to find joy.

View of the water from Tarragona
Many of us travel to chase after happiness and adventure. It moves us out of the comfort zone of the familiarity of home and teaches us humility when we are put in positions where we are no longer the ones in control. I certainly felt both of these in Spain not knowing how to even order a coffee and in trying to figure out the metro to and from the airport. But in Spain I also realized that the excitement traveling provided did bring me contentment and joy. Those were to be found at home where there was perhaps less novelty but greater calm.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Policy, Privilege and Pudding

Temptation incarnate I have now told myself that I really need to cut down on my sugar habit at least five times since coming to Berkeley. To be clear, this only counts the times I have said this with the serious will power to try changing my eating habits. There are numerous other times when I have thought I ought to change my eating whilst eating a cookie or buying the fourth ice cream in the past five days. My poor fellow has had to deal with listening to me say on every one of these occasions that this time will be different or listen to me dwell excessively on how the day went in terms of eating sugar for the entire time. He’s been a good sport about it and doesn’t judge me for my inability to stay away. I am about to start on my sixth endeavor. This time, I have set a time frame and I am planning on sticking to it. Even though it makes the hours seem so much longer as I continuously talk myself out of eating the chocolate pudding temptingly sitting in the fridge....
Post a Comment
Read more

Becoming Finnish

I have spent the past six months passionately insisting that I will never join in on the uniquely Finnish experience of ice sauna-ing. Ice sauna-ing is a made up word for one of Finnish people’s favorite past times: going to a sauna and then jumping into a freezing lake. My friend is extremely persuasive and after six months of describing her own sauna-ing adventures managed to get me to agree to join her and her husband at a public sauna near a river. The sauna itself is a small wooden building attached to locker rooms and a common area where you can sit and eat after you are done. The first thing that catches your attention is the bridge going out above the water. Around the bridge the water is freely moving but farther out you can see it is frozen over and covered in snow. At the end of the bridge there are six sets of stairs leading into the water. What arrests the eye though is the people walking out onto the bridge wearing swimsuits and confidently walking straig...
Post a Comment
Read more

Small Acts of Love

A game of hockey going on on the river My boyfriend plays on a hockey team from September to May. It isn’t an official team—they don’t play games throughout the season and aren’t in any leagues—but they meet diligently every week for practice (he actually plays with two teams but it still isn’t clear to me what the difference is between them except that one team is better than the other). This requires some dedication because practices for both teams are either very late in the evening or very early in the morning. At the end of their season, before they take a break for the summer, the players come together and have a full-length game. I wanted to go last year and this year but wasn’t able to make it either time. Instead I asked him to send me a picture of himself in all of his gear. Last year he sent me a selfie of himself before the game, but without his gear on so I hoped this year he would manage to get a picture with both. He did not. I was willing to drop it, figur...
4 comments
Read more