DREADLOCKS AND LEDERHOSEN

From the archives

Published in Monster Children, 2019.

When I recently told pals I’d be visiting Andorra, several expressed concern that this was not an actual nation. The planet from Avatar? With the Ewoks? Samantha’s overbearing mother on Bewitched? And or A? Two conjunctions and an indefinite article? I reassured them: Andorra is a real country, with people and trees and cars and everything. Smooshed between the behemoths of Spain and France, nestled deep in The Pyrenees, Andorra is something of a question mark. Being the 16^th smallest country hasn’t helped matters. Less than half the size of Los Angeles, Andorra is too tiny for its own airport, money, leader, or common awareness of its own existence.

On a recent trip to Barcelona, my wife and I took a quick excursion to the tiny mountain nation. Although this is normally a three-hour drive, we got lost, found ourselves in France, and entered the tiny landlocked nation from the east. Andorra is not an EU state, so I’d braced myself for a hard border. But it took the rental car’s GPS to welcome us to this strange, secret garden of a land.

Andorra la Vella, the nation’s capital and only city, has a bad rep as a bore. Operating outside the EU (although the Euro is official currency), Andorra offers a nation of duty-free stores that falls somewhere between huge versions of airport shops and correctly-proportioned versions of American outlet malls. Downtown Andorra la Vella seems designed to feel vaguely “European.” But is it Wes Anderson’s Europe, or James Bond’s? Standing on the main drag, Meritxell Avenue, it is completely possible to surround oneself with enough multi-story shopping blocks to obliterate the mountainous, photography-defying grandeur surrounding the city on all sides.