Getting Settled In.

The next day I called Luci to tell her that I decided to stay in Barcelona and rented the apartment for two more nights. She couldn't meet me till that night and was worried "oh my, you're not just walking around Barcelona homeless are you?" Um, actually I am, but my bags are at the hotel and I tend to just wander around a lot anyway, so don't worry too much about it. I went to get a cell phone at Vodafone. "What's your address?, Um, I don't have one. "Well what hotel are you staying at?", Um, I'm not. "You don't have a home? You must come stay with me, my mother won't mind!" I assured the sweet little 22 year old that I did have my means and I would be just fine, but he was very worried.

I spent the next day trying to find somebody to talk to about renting another apartment, Luci's is nice, but I was looking for something with just a bit more amenities and wanted to make sure I was getting a good deal. I figured the best way to do this was to actually go to the offices listed. With my trusty laptop in hand I would use Google Maps, find the address and not the office. I tried 4 offices that Google had suggested and none of them have store fronts. So I gave up.

The next day I tried a different tactic and tried contacting people by e-mail and phone from the names off the internet. Had no luck there either and realized that I really liked Luci's apartment so arranged with her to stay till the end of April.

Now, I just have to stock the house. Grocery shopping, not as easy as it sounds. The supermercats aren't really all that super. They're more like really big 7/11's. To get a real selection of what you're looking for you must go to the individual markets like the butcher, the cheese shop, the produce market and even (and this surprised me), the frozen market. Seriously, there are little stores devoted to selling nothing but frozen food, they're kind of cool.

Then the other issue you have is transportation. You can only buy at one time what you can carry four blocks and up four flights of stairs. So you go home as soon as the weight limit has been met, drop it off and go back out. Which on a daily basis is not a big deal, people go grocery shopping every day (which I did in the states too, because I never knew what I was going to want to eat that night), but stocking up on basics took an entire day.

And of course, there's still the language problem to contend with. And that gets really interesting when you go to prepare a prepackaged meal (and yes, on occassion life is just easier to eat prepackaged food even when you're in Europe, do not judge me - I'm here a year, not two weeks)

Thankfully my landlord Luci, meets me for coffee often (she's freelance) and helps explain a lot to me, as does Marc.

Oh, and want to hear a quinky dink? Luci was Marc's first landlord when he moved to Barcelona, he rented a room from her! The only two people I know in Barcelona and they know each other. It's a lot like Tucson that way.