This past weekend I traveled to Barcelona, Spain to meet my boyfriend for his spring break. It truly was a breathtaking experience, the city was so beautiful, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Spanish culture has always been intriguing to me, and I took Spanish for many years so it was exciting to be there for the first time living it and using the language. The city was huge, and fairly Americanized in terms of some of the shops and restaurants. The city was like a gird for the most part and majority of the streets looked the same to me, we even got out of our cab once thinking we were back at the hotel and we were nowhere close. The city was similar to Tel Aviv in the fact that it was such a metropolitan city, yet also has the beach aspect.
Being there at first I felt very out of place. My Spanish used to be much better than my Hebrew, but now that I have completed Ulpan, my Hebrew is much better than my Spanish. It was frustrating for me considering I could understand every couple of words and get the gist of what people were saying to me but especially for the first few days I had a very hard time responding. I thought the food in Barcelona was outstanding, nothing like I have ever experienced. The lifestyle there however is very interesting and really threw me off. Especially for my friends studying abroad there, they go out until 5 in the morning, they sleep for half the day, nap at night and then go out some more. Aside from just the study abroad students though, things happen much later in Spain and meals are very dragged out. There even is a nap time every afternoon, restaurants, stores everything closes. Given this dinner is much later and people go to bed much later. This change in scheduling really threw me off. I am not someone with a lot patience, nor am I great at staying up very late so the dragged out meals and going to bed in the middle of the night was simply not for me.
Overall however I had an amazing experience. The sights were so beautiful, the Sagrada Familia church in particular was very eye opening. And we visited the Camp Neu soccer stadium as well which I found to be amazing, and really relatable for me given I played soccer in high school.
