The sun is setting on the first day of the new year. My bus is heading back toward the mountains of northern Spain. And for the first time in six months, I’m traveling alone.

2004 dawned cloudy and melancholy in Barcelona and Matt and I said good-bye just before one when his bus headed south. It was exactly six months… almost to the hour… since we’d met up in Cape Town, South Africa. It had been an amazing journey together, one of the best things I’ve done in my life, and it was over.

"I’d gotten used to always being with someone."
Traveling on my own again will take some getting used to. I’d grown accustomed to always being with someone. Always having someone to talk to, eat with, drink with, watch my back at ATM’s, and tell the funny things that pop into my head. But there are good things about traveling solo, too, which I’m sure to rediscover as I continue.

Barcelona has no Times Square. There’s no dropping ball, no fury of midnight Champagne toasts. They party all night, as befits a city wanting desperately to be Europe’s hippest, but celebrating the first moment of the new year doesn’t seem to be a very Spanish thing. Matt and I found the closest thing, though.

"There were a few thousand people in the square, but hardly any locals."
At Plaza Cataylunia there’s a building with a big clock that chimes the hour. This is where all the tourists go looking for a Times Square experience… and all the North African immigrants wanting to sell things to the tourists. It was very strange. There were a few thousand people in the square, but hardly any locals. We took a bottle of Cava, Spanish sparkling wine, and staked out our spot in the Plaza. There was no Spanish-speaking Dick Clark.

I’ll turn thirty this year. I’m not really distressed by it, but it’s very strange to say or write down. It’s like I’m talking about someone else. Wasn’t I twenty-three like last week? It helps that most of my friends have already started their fourth decade, so I know you don’t blink out of existence or crumble to dust. But it’s still a weird thing to see coming. I’m as close in age to an eighteen year old as I am to someone who’s forty-two. Bizarre. Am I about to start looking like Timothy Busfield in “Thirtysomething?”

"I’ve been feeling thirty years old lately."
The bus is heading for Bilbao. I need some rest and will spend at least a few days there. I still haven’t recovered from Africa and need a week or two of doing nothing to see if I can keep this up for another few months. I’ve been feeling thirty years old lately. We were in Bilbao a few weeks ago and it was a pleasant city and wasn’t very crowded. Perfect for taking it easy. No tourists, but a beautiful place with all the amenities of a city.

And just a quick word about this bus and Spanish buses in general. After Africa, they’re stunning. They look like space ships. All are new or nearly new, cleaned on a regular basis, and driven by a uniformed professional who’s at least old enough to get a driver’s license in the United States. The only problem is the leg room, which baffles me. The Spanish are fairly tall people, but there’s so little leg room on these buses. The one tonight has about as much as coach class on an airplane… and this is a roomy one. The bus we took into Barcelona was so tight I had to put my legs into the isle. Otherwise my knees were jammed hard into the back of the next seat. I don’t understand this, but the cleanliness, pleasant smell and safe operation more than make up for the discomfort.

New year’s always makes me think of a lyric by a band called “The Refreshments.”

And I wonder where I’ll be in a year. I’ll probably be sitting right here. And if you know the answer, don’t tell me anyone. Cause I don’t wanna know.