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| Jordi and friends on my arrival on Tuesday |
On Tuesday morning, March 11, I finally arrived to Barcelona, coming here on a one-way ticket. The flight, the bags, going through customs (there wasn't any) all went fine. My friend William was there to pick me up and take me to the place where I was (and still am) renting a room. After dropping my bags off and pulling out some essentials, I went to the Spanish bank where I have my account, got my bank card, and was able to access the cash that I had transferred. Later I met up with my friend Jordi and some of his friends, some of whom I met in September, to say goodbye to one of them who was leaving for a month to visit his family. It was a very fun evening and my Spanish was being pushed to the max. It was a great start to my new life here.
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| Office where I need to register with the city |
The rest of the week has been more challenging. One of the things that I need to do is to register with the city. But given that I am in temporary quarters, I needed to work with one of my friends here to help fill out the paperwork and to vouch for me. On Thursday I went with everything in hand. When my number was called I handed the woman my documents. She quickly looked things up in the database. Then in rapid Spanish she explained that there was a problem. My form, which I filled out and my friend signed, had the address number as "117". But the database shows the address as "117-119". So, she then printed out a new form to modify the original form, which my friend will need to fill out and sign. Now that's bureaucracy! It really wasn't that simple to understand her, and it took a few times to comprehend the crux of the issue. She said that my difficulty in comprehending this problem is not surprising. She said that most Spaniards don't understand these types of issues! I met with my friend soon afterwards. Although he speaks perfect Catalan, he couldn't understand the form. He called the whole process "una estupidez" (stupidity) and said that he will accompany me on Tuesday, his first day off of work, to be sure that all questions are answered, the form is filled out correctly to their satisfaction and to also give him a piece of his mind. Hopefully all will be resolved tomorrow morning.
House hunting is going slowly. I'm learning that the process to buy a house here is different than in the U.S.
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| A small but nicely designed possibility |
(which is not surprising). One of those differences is in the U.S. we usually work with one real estate agent. That agent has access to almost all the properties that are available in the area that you are interested in. The agent sets up times to see these places and he or she takes you around. However, in Barcelona, there is no central database where everyone shares that information. Many houses are exclusive to just one agency. A person seeking to buy doesn't work with just one agent, but rather may go to many different agencies to find the property they are interested in. What has complicated things for me is that I made arrangements through a U.S.real estate agency who contacted a Spanish real estate agency to work with me. I met the real estate agent, Maria, last September. She's very nice, speaks excellent English, and she is someone I believe I can trust. However, it's a lot of work on her part to set up appointments, negotiate with other agencies to see if they would collaborate with her, and on top of that, she lives outside of Barcelona, so it's an effort for her to meet me in the city. All in all, I have a lot of free time on my hands. I want to continue to stick with her this week and see what she comes up with (I'm looking too and sending her links of places that seem interesting). But it may be that I have to change the game plan and be a "free agent". If I do that I'll explain that to her before I change tactics.
Another interesting thing about real estate agents and agencies is that they don't do a lot of work on the
weekends. So, this Sunday I met up with a gay group of hikers here and we walked about 13 miles going from one town to another. We got lost along the way (we hit a few dead-ends and had to back-track), but we eventually reached our destination at St. Sadurni, a large town that is known for its Cava (Catalan sparkling wine). We got on the train at 8:10 am to reach our starting point in Capalledes at 9:30 am and finally reached St. Sadurni at 5 pm. We jumped on the train and returned to Barcelona at about 7 pm. It was a long day, but a lot of fun, got to speak a lot of Spanish, saw some wonderful vistas and countryside, and my feet felt very sore toward the end!
