Encounters in Barcelona no. 1: The Danish Coke addict

Whilst living and working in Barcelona, one of my favourite weekend pastimes was to walk down to the beach after my Sunday morning run, find a seat at one of the beach bars, have a beer and watch the world go by. Barcelona is host to such a great variety of people, and the Barceloneta has to be one of the city’s best spots to observe this first-hand. Generally, this was something I considered a solitary pleasure. That is, one to be enjoyed alone. This part doesn’t always go to plan.

(The Barceloneta in all its blue-skied glory)

One of the challenges of being alone in public – or perhaps it is just me – is that I do tend to attract all manners of weird, wonderful, and sometimes straight-up scary individuals. This is how I met the Danish cocaine addict.

I was quietly enjoying my caña in the late spring breeze when an older gentleman who had been buying water at the bar, in swim-shorts and sunglasses, came up to me and started talking. And talking. Initially, I politely turned down his offer to buy me another beer, but after he insisted, I realised the deal he wanted to strike. He was happy to buy me a beer in exchange for me to listen to his life story. I had nowhere to be, and it seemed like a fair trade, so I accepted. It turns out he was highly successful, owning a business which had something to do with taps, and was alone on holiday in Barcelona. His youngest daughter was older than me, and all three children were high achievers in their respective fields, despite their father’s frequent absences. He lived in a large house in a town just outside of Copenhagen. So far, so white-picket-fence.

Then he continued on to tell me that he hadn’t slept for two nights, had consumed multiple bottles of expensive vodka and lines of cocaine, and had – unsurprisingly – maxed out two of his credit cards along the way. He was now on his third and final credit card, and was already planning another sleepless, narcotic-fuelled night he wouldn’t remember, before catching a plane back the next day. By this time in the story, he had switched from water to Coca-Cola – I wondered just how much that was going to mitigate his nocturnal indulgences. And quite how I had gone from a quiet Sunday beer on the beach to listening to a mature Danish man’s tales of excess and hedonism.        

(Me at one of the beach bars ... taken by my mother, not the Danish gentleman)

About forty minutes later, the gentleman finally seemed to reach a lull in his autobiography and I realised that the sun had been rendering my arm and chest a very fetching shade of puce. I took this as a good opportunity to finish my caña before he started another story, kindly make my excuses and flee to the cool security of my flat. There, I could at least pour a Gin and Tonic, quietly process the last hour of my life, and weigh up whether next time it would be better to bring a book or let the beach wash up another bizarre, potentially entertaining encounter to my feet.

I had only gone out for one drink.

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