WKa_01 First Test Drift From home to the office
Barcelona, Monday 01 of June 2026
realized with WKd_01.01 device
The first week of real heat has just ended — the first hot enough to sleep with windows open. Summer feels early again; jackets gave way to shorts in days. Today promises more sun, though the morning breeze is still cool and the buildings shade the first stretch.
#1_I wait for the wkd_01.01 to lock onto the satellites and tell me, via the LED, the sensors are ready. I begin this first experimental drift, and almost no one seems to notice the device strapped to my arm. Near plaça del Mercat, the scene is the usual one: commuters off the train at Clot heading toward Poble Nou. I greet the fruit seller setting out her produce — the small, daily recognition this neighbourhood still holds onto. Past the low houses of the c/ del Clot, the city shifts scale at Meridiana and c/Independència: views open, light sharpens.
#2_Crossing the park I glance at the Torre Agbar, the Museu del Disseny’s huge Tour de France poster, and the Sagrada Família, its cross now finished and blazing, ready for the inauguration on the 10th of June. At Glòries you feel the scale of the metropolis directly — sport, e-bikes and scooters darting dangerously through, the odd tourist. Oasis and weekday frenzy, both at once.
#3_Past the first busy junction, I cross a dull sliver of Eixample wedged between Gran Via and the Auditori — the back room of both. It doesn’t last. At c/Marina, which today felt longer to cross than usual, one last glance at the Sagrada Família and the Torre Mapfre — nobody thinks of the Hotel Arts when looking at Barcelona’s two tallest towers.
#4_Along c/de Ribes the pedestrian space widens again. We’re in the centre now — workers, kids walked to school, low-cost tourists with backpacks for the Estació del Nord buses, the occasional homeless person. I pass through here daily and almost never recognise a face. Density and entropy, far higher than the first half of the walk. Maybe it’s the heat — I slow down and answer some WhatsApp messages, a reminder the working week is about to start. A small pause before the last stretch, from Arc de Triomf to the studio.
#5_Near the arch the view opens again: tourists, bikes, e-bikes, scooters, more tourists, couriers, buses, mopeds… it fades along c/Trafalgar, back in shade, past the bars for tourists and expats that define the Born. The device hasn’t drawn attention anywhere — except at Trafalgar and Méndez Núñez, where the urban police, stopped at the lights, noticed it with curiosity.
The last metres aren’t quite usual: another bar for foreigners has opened — the kind that looks effortlessly cool but is soulless and inexplicably expensive. Fede’s bar has closed; word is there’ll be a shawarma place. The one saving grace is Liliana, the unfriendly doorkeeper, mopping the pavement as always. No smile. I go in, switch off the wkd_01.01
