Thanksgiving in Barcelona

"How come there are no ovens in Barceloneta??" This was my hourly cry as I spent the last Thursday in November preparing for and cooking an American style Thanksgiving dinner in Barcelona last autumn.

When my brother and I decided to go travelling around Europe, we knew we wanted to spend a considerable amount of time in Barcelona. And we did. We rented an apartment in the beach community of Barceloneta and settled in relatively easily. That is, until we needed an oven.

Barceloneta is a great community to live in - it feels like a village within a city, not to mention you get to live on the beach, with the Mediterranean as your neighbour. We made quite a few friends in the area and really felt we had been accepted by the locals. We knew the men who lived on the beach and designed the sand sculptures. We were recognised and greeted by all of the local store owners. And most importantly, we were very well looked after by the two barmen, Joe and Victor, in our local watering hole, Ryan's Irish pub.

By the harbour in Barceloneta

Throughout the two months we were in town, we hardly ever needed an oven for anything. Sure, we couldn't make frozen pizza but that's hardly the worst thing in the world. However, it's impossible (honestly, it is) to make Thanksgiving happen without an oven and no one in Barceloneta seemed to have one. Not the bars, not our neighbours. All we could find was a microwave/oven conversion which was never going to be sufficient for a whole bird!

I was planning to serve up the traditional casseroles, side dishes and a turkey to a group of friends in our local bar. But there were several problems. 

I am a vegetarian so the meat wasn't all that important to me. But clearly anyone who has ever heard of Thanksgiving has heard of the turkey. Well, finding a turkey is not as easy as it might seem. Spanish and Catalunyans don't really eat very much turkey. And when they do, they don't eat it whole. We settled for a chicken instead.

Luckily, my friend Jodie had decided to come visit us for the weekend, and though she isn't American, she loves all kinds of meat so she saved the day by showing me how to prepare a roast chicken. Now all we needed to do was cook the blasted thing.

Jodie - the 'chicken chef'

Our hero of the hour was James, a local musician and bizarre bling t-shirt salesman that also frequented the local pub. Amazingly, James was the only Barceloneta resident with an oven... and he was willing to let us use it! 

So Jodie and I spent the day peeling potatoes, chopping broccoli, making cheese sauce for the macaroni and preparing a large chicken before setting off across town with our platters. We delivered the goods to James' kitchen and set the timers.

Thanksgiving preparations

And at 8:30pm on the fourth Thursday in November, we delivered an entire Thanksgiving meal to the punters in Ryan's pub on the beach. There were ten of us eating in total, only two of whom were American, and the feast went down very well indeed!

Lining up to get served

Enjoying Thanksgiving dinner in Barcelona!

Just goes to show that no matter where you are, and no matter how tricky it is to find an oven, with a little perseverance, a meat-eating friend and a very friendly t-shirt salesman, you can make Thanksgiving happen anywhere!

Coming home again

I think the hardest part about travelling, by far, is the moment you come back to 'reality'. While on my own travels, I discussed this at length with a new friend: Camilla and I met in a hostel/hotel in Milan. We were staying in the same room, just the two of us (my brother was staying in Venice an extra night) and decided to go for a quiet drink.
We talked about a lot of things, but the discussion stayed with me because of something Camilla said. She had been travelling for over a year and many of her friends back home in Norway were asking her when she was planning on going back to 'real life'. Real life. Strange concept. Once you've decided to pack in your day job, start heading around the world and see where life takes you, the idea of any other life seems restrictive to say the least. Camilla and I agreed that other people's concept of 'real life' is very different from our own.

Now I am back in Florida, a place that I left over ten years ago and it doesn't feel like 'real life' one bit. I'm so happy to be spending time with my mother, to be back with my family, but the idea of looking for a job and settling down is completely terrifying. How do people manage this part? I suppose my case is slightly different as I was living in London and working in a busy office, whereas now I am living with my parents again in a very small American town. But the idea of settling down is the same whether I am in London or Florida. It's just awfully difficult to make a decision about what I want to do and where I want to be.

The plan for the moment is to venture north, stay with family in Illinois for a while before taking a road trip out west. Hopefully in the next few months, I'll get more of the travelling need out of my system and clarify my own ideas about what I'd like to be doing. But 'real life' is still a concept I can't quite grasp. If anyone has the answer, I'd love to hear all about it!