Day 2, Officially In the City
Day 2, Officially in the city
I wake up achy, uncomfortable and hungry after sleeping for about 3 hours. How am I STILL on this plane? It’s about 4 am in Lincoln, but Barcelona time was about 10 am on June 2. I’m not looking forward to the time adjustment my body has to make today. The flight attendants bring around coffee and breakfast. Thank goodness it wasn’t anything weird like last night’s dinner. Last night I ate chicken and vegetables but the veggies were basically limp carrots and mushrooms and “mashed potatoes” but in Dippin’ Dots form. For breakfast they brought yogurt and granola, a muffin top and dried fruit. My coffee was horrible but it was enough caffeine to get me through the last hour of the flight.
When we land, we exit the plane right onto the flight line, not inside the airport like I’m accustomed to! A bus drives up and we pack inside like a bunch of tired sardines. Walking up to customs always makes me nervous. I don’t know why I get nervous, I’m not doing anything wrong! I walk up with my passport in hand and a big grin on my face. I mean, how could I not be smiling, I’m in Barcelona for goodness sakes and this Customs agent is about to make it official! Nicolás the Customs agent was not interested in my excitement at all. I’m not even sure he looked at me to make sure I was the girl in the passport. Nicolás scans the passport, stamps that sought after España stamp in it and tosses it at me while saying “bye bye.” But the lack of interaction Nicolás gave me didn’t dampen my spirits. I was over the moon, I had officially entered Barcelona, España!
During my layover in Charlotte, a fellow UNL student heading to Barcelona for this same trip tracked me down. We were on the next flight together, in fact just a row apart. It was a bit comforting to have someone familiar to travel with. When we landed, he and I met up with our class leader, who works with Institute for American Universities (IAU) where we’ll be attending classes. She was waiting at the airport and she took us down to us hail a cab. One small problem, I have two suitcases, everyone else just has one giant suitcase. Does this surprise you? This makes finding a cab that can fit all the suitcases and 4 people immensely harder. Once we finally find a cab willing to take the clueless American college students, I ride middle seat in the back with my smaller suitcase on my lap. We finally exit the interstate and head into the part of Barcelona where I will live for 6 weeks. We drive down these skinny alleys, going what feels like 50 mph and slamming on the brakes for any pedestrian that crosses.
The professor leading our Education Abroad experience, Laurie, takes me up to my “flat” in an elevator than fits just two adults. I pull out my keys and unlock the strangest door. The door knob is in the center and the lock is the most complicated lock ever. Three turns to the left and you’ve deadbolted it and you’re basically locked out forever. But one 30° turn to the right and you’re right on the money. My flat is straight out of an IKEA ad. Simple furniture, but just perfect enough for four girls for a few weeks! Laurie tells me that her and her husband would like to treat all of the UNL students to dinner that night, but I have plenty of time to unpack and get myself settled in. It’s about 2 pm Barcelona time, 7 am Lincoln time.
I briefly met one of my roommates, she’ll be here for 3 weeks and then is off to compete in water skiing in Madrid and England for her university in Florida. Does UNL have water skiing as an official sport?! It should! I’m picturing practices at Branched Oak, whizzing past Party Cove. Okay, on second thought, maybe I see why we don’t compete in water skiing… But I digress. I get to take a shower and I feel human again! I risk electrocution by using my blow dryer and learned a thing or two about voltage, amps and watts; even with converters. Super thankful for my parents here, my dad was an aircraft electrician in the Air Force, so I FaceTimed ol’ Sparky and learned why my blow dryer sounded like a screaming child and was running as hot as the sun after just 30 seconds. Pro tip: when going abroad check your electronics. Do they say 110 compatible, or do they say 110-240 compatible? Because even if you use a converter, it might not be enough for your 110 only electronics.
Fast forward to about 7 pm, almost time for dinner! I haven’t eaten since that meager airplane breakfast and haven’t slept since about – well does it really matter enough for me to figure out Barcelona vs Lincoln time to explain how long I’d been awake? It’s been a long time at this point. But it doesn’t matter, still super pumped about the whole experience. The apartment building we are in is huge and we’re all very close to one another, so there’s lots of sounds, and it’s taking me awhile to figure out that the folks down the hall are in fact not actually in my apartment. So when I hear someone struggling to open our front door I realize it’s Lilly, my next roommate and the one I’m sharing a room with and she can’t seem to figure out how to open the door. I see that there is a lock from the inside, so of course I decide to help. Little did I know, I would end up locking her out of the apartment and myself inside the apartment! 20 minutes later and 3 separate people trying the lock, I am finally set free! Around that same time, Laurie sent the restaurant address to all of us and just said, “good luck finding it, see you there!” The UNL students all meet down in the lobby and map the restaurant. Google maps says 8 minute walk, no big deal. We walk that in between just one class on campus, we got this.
Dinner was great, it was great to connect with the other students on the trip and to eat something other than airport food for the first time in 36 hours! I ate salad, two kinds of pasta, pizza bread, and three different kinds of pizza! We decided to go to a club that evening, because why not?! It’s our first night in Barcelona and it’s a Saturday! We don’t have class the next day and in fact our city walking tour the next day got cancelled since there was 100% chance of rain. It was a great night out, but each of us had not gotten a full nights sleep in 48 hours so when we finally got back to our flats at 5:30 am, we were exhausted! I got some much needed sleep and Sunday was a slower day due to the rain and our tour being cancelled. It was nice to have the downtime and just hang out with one another with no pressure of needing to go somewhere.
Class was supposed to start today, Monday June 4, but because our Sunday tour got rained out, we did our orientation and tour in the morning and then have some fun plans for later in the day!
Barcelona calls~
Tristen
