Travelogue :  "L'auberge espagnole" and California, Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, NYC

Travelogue-Specials:

So, there we are, our plane landed in Barcelona and our first way led to our language school, where we should pick up our keys for the appartment, with 60kg luggage not the easiest thing... The first shock was, when the guy at the reception told us, that our room is just reserved from the next day! I was already doubting myself, when the guy noticed, that he just mixed the dates...*puh*

After a metro-ride and a little walk we arrived to our appartment: 4 bedrooms, one kitchen, 2 bathrooms, one little balcony for the washing-machine, one big balcony to the street with some little tables and chairs and a biiig living-room. It is not a luxury-appartment, but anyway we did not await that; it is clean, pretty big and which is a big plus: it is located great, a little walk to the Gothic quarter, metro-station/2 supermarkets nearby and also to the beach and the clubs just a few hundred metres away

The first days we spent to explore our area. We walked around in the Parc of Ciutadella, which just next to our house, we explored the Gothic quarter, went to the Picasso museum (which is free on Sundays, just with the disadvantage that in the afternoon there is a queue of 200 metres...but later it is much shorter), took a look on the Sagrada Familia and had a walk next to the harbour front.

As the wheather was great up to now (sunny, but always a bit windy) we did some "beach-seeing", too There are different beaches to choose from, but the closest for us is "Barceloneta", 5-10 minute walk from our house, the sand is nice and also the water. We also drank the first Sangria there...

But as Barcelona wouldn't be Barcelona, if you could just enjoy yourself during the day, we started to explore the night-life! Friday and also Saturday evening we started to drink with our roommates Mattias (from Denmark) and Mathilde (from France) and with Natalia (from Brazil) on our balcony, each evening we had some specialities: Mattias offered some Swedish shots (pretty bitter, it takes getting used to it, but probably it helps in the Swedish winter ), Natalia brought some "cachaça" from Brazil (20 years old and very delicious) and we had a bottle of Hungarian "házi pálinka" ("mézes")...due to the fact, that the bottle was empty after one evening, I assume that everybody enoyed it! You can easily imagine, that after all those shots (plus the other drinks we had), that we had a great time, talking about all the important topics in the world: e.g. football, football and football! Among other things I told Natalia, why (because of mathematical reasons) Germany will win the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, suprisingly she had a different opinion...

After pre-partying on our balcony we made our way to the city, we did not always take the direct way, but we always had a great time, once drinking very creative shots, once dancing in a great club in a cellar. Well, we are waiting for more nights out!! This was already a great beginning! And I learnt, that "tequila" sounds similar to "beer from a tap" in Spanish, I have to ask in my class, what I said wrong...anyhow, instead of 2 tequilas I got 2 beers...

Monday morning: language training started! First, I thought, I might skip the beginner-class and that I can start maybe in a course on a higher level, but as I saw the test, I had to be honest to myself and so I am gonna start at the very beginning... Panka started a level higher and fortunately she got the morning class (from 9 till 13), because first I got into a class in the afternoon (from 15 till 19), which is really a bad time... But as I talked to the director he changed me to the morning class, too! So we were really lucky!

I got into a great class, everybody is nice and motivated, we have a lot of fun and also our teachers are great. For Panka it is pretty tough, but she is doing great! We have also been to the cinema already to practice our Spanish a little bit. We watched the movie ("Interception") in English, but we looked also for the Spanish subtitels.

On Tuesday we went out to party again, this time with our French roommate, a French friend of her and our Turkish roommate. Again the party started on our balcony and again our "pálinka" was very popular... This time, for the first, our neighbors complained a little bit about the noise, fair enough at half past twelve... Finally we went to a very trendy club on the beach: "Opium". We had a fun time out!

In the meantime we go to school every day and enjoy to have it in the morning. Afterwards we used to go to the school, either we go sightseeing (e.g. Parc Güell) or shopping or we combine both of it On Wednesday we went with a Dutch couple to town and a great time together! It is just perfect, if you do not have to hurry from one sight to another, so we had lunch for 2 hours ("ménu del día" for 9 EUR) and had also a coffee or rather Sangria brake in the afternoon...

Finally we can say, that we had a fantastic first week, got to know great people from all over the world, we are learning more and more Spanish and so we are looking forward for the next three in this beautiful city! Hasta luego!