St. Juan's Eve

Today was my first full day in Barcelona and what a day it was! I took a sleeping pill at a decent hour and therefore woke up at a decent hour. I was out the door by 10am and on my way to the locksmith to copy the key to send back to Alex. 2 destinations, 14 euros, but only 10 minutes later, I headed over to the Mailboxes etc to send it to her. 60 euros and another 10 minutes later,  the operation was a success. While sending her the keys was wildly and ridiculously expensive, I guess its nothing considering that I don’t have to get a hotel because she’s letting me stay here. I was stressing massively about it so I’m glad to have it out of the way.

The next errand was the signing of the contract. I didn’t actually remember the floor and apartment number so I sat outside and observed my new neighborhood. It doesn’t look as pretty as it should as the front of my building is covered in scaffolds that were supposed to be done by the beginning of summer, but I don’t know when they consider that to be around here! Aidan, our agent, then arrived and we went upstairs to mean Jose Maria (these Spaniards with their mother’s names as middle names…). He was, as Aidan kept describing, and “elderly gentleman” and we were forced to meet for 45 minutes because he could accept the concept that the contract he had printed up last week and the contract Aidan was holding in his hand were in fact the SAME contract, but Aidan’s happened to have the names of all four of the roommates on it. He then proceeded to go through EVERY utility bill and explain to me how he was going to prorate it through the end of June because all of the accounts would be going in my name. He went through EACH one, explaining that he was dividing by 30 the usage and multiplying it by the 9 days in July we would be responsible for it. I get it, do you have to explain it 5 times? Good times…

From there I was off to the “interview” with the Capgemini director. It wasn’t really an interview, since I’m not looking to actually take any positions. The guy told me what Capgemini was doing in the energy space in Spain, which was mainly maintenance of their IT systems for Intenca (?) I’m not sure the name, and trying to get something from Iberdrola, but unsuccessfully. So, currently, nothing for me to get involved with exactly. He was interested in my experience at SDG&E and I tried to inflate it to the best of my ability, but I can’t seem to get over the “I’m a kid in a world of techie adults” mentality.  He asked me lots of questions and seemed very interested. He also told me that they’d had to lay off 80% of their employees, and were now only able to rehire them in Latin America as they were expanding Capgemini Spain to Argentina, Chile and Peru. Could be interesting for a summer!

I went home for a nap before heading out to meet Natalia, a now 2^nd year student at IESE, and her friends by Placa Universitat. It was totally different from what I expected – about 12-15 kids sitting around the living room while the boys cooked fajitas and everyone was watching both soccer games on a TV and a computer screen. It was cool, but all the kids were obviously super tight and I felt very much like an outsider. I was still grateful, though to be included, and I did get to have some good and interesting conversations with some of the guys and girls throughout the night on a one on one basis. After dinner and the games, at midnight or so, we left the apartment and headed towards the beach for the St Juan celebrations. There were hundreds of people out everywhere and little kids were setting off really loud (and dangerous) firecrackers every 2 minutes. It was so bad that when you go to the beach you couldn’t even SEE from all the smoke. The beach was PACKED with people, which I tried, unsuccessfully, to capture in the picture. There were Pakistani dudes walking around with 6 packs of beer selling them for a euro each – apparently, you can’t buy liquor in a super market after 11pm! In Barcelona! This shocks me. The night was generally a memorable experience, observing the drunk and happy people celebrating, drinking, dancing, partying. I wasn’t one of them, but it was a great “First official night” in Barcelona.

I went home around 3 because I knew I needed to at least try and sleep and because the group of 20 or so had dwindled down to 5 and the only remaining girl had two nights left in town before she left for the internship and she CLEARLY wanted to finally hook up with one of the guys that was there. The sexual tension between them felt like it was a year in the making. The taxi charged an extra 7 euro, reminiscent of the cabs charging $50+ on NYE in NYC when I was there with the girls in 2008. It cost me 15 euros to get home! But there was really no other way. All in all, the day and night were a HUGE success!