Midwesterner Abroad

God my head hurts. When my head hurts I hate Barcelona, because no matter how beautiful and interesting it can be, it's loud, full or birds chirping, neighbors that yell, the sound of reggaeton (why Europe can't accept quality hip-hop...) and breaking glass from the bar downstairs (because almost anywhere you are there is a bar downstairs) and it's full of strong smells. As I have often and not particularly politely confided in Jesus (my boyfriend, not our lord an savior), Spain smells like pee and mildew to me. I think it's all that ancient pavement that has been peed over so many times by dogs and drunk men. And alcohol based pee is the worst, the stinkiest, and that's what Spain, or at least my neighborhood in Barcelona smells like to me. Some days are better than others for the breeze or because someone nearby is cooking with a lot of garlic or spices and the smell of the cooking food almost obliterates the nasty smell of pee-soaked pavement and clothes hung to dry that often smell of mildew, and too often smell of body odor as the Spanish seem to be generally less obsessed with showering and underarm deodorant than we are. Aren't I an awful pill to swallow? So much for all my intercultural experience and the tolerance it's supposed to bring. Sometimes I almost feel Spanish. Which is funny, because I live in Catalonia, and as the graffiti says, in English even, Catalonia is not Spain. Anyway, I sometimes feel very at home and even annoyed by tourists. But my nose is always protesting and reminding me of how much I miss clothes dryers and normalized use of anti-perspirant.