Barcelona on

I should probably explain that at the same time that I was experiencing all this travel exhaustion and being burnt out by tourism, I was also pursuing a lead on an apartment in Sevilla, Spain. A few weeks ago I (or rather my mother, on my behalf) put an ad on craigslist saying that I was looking for a short-term lease in Morocco or southern Spain. This was always one of the important if half-baked pieces of my plan for this trip. I suspected that I would be tired of living out of a suitcase, hostals and other people's homes by the time November rolled around. I also suspected that I would want to retreat to a land of warmer weather. I also thought it would be a really cool experience to try actually living in a foreign country, as opposed to just passing through. That way I would get a really different perspective, and I could say I'd lived abroad. ;)

I wasn't sure when I headed out of Bosnia if anything like this would actually pan out. But as I was frantically trying to decide what to do with myself on a day to day basis, I was also reading a few responses to the craigslist post, some of them basically offering exactly what I wanted. The one that really caught my attention was through a company called HolaSevilla. They run a language program here, but they also set up accomodations and you can take one without the other if you like. The housing is for short stays, 2-12 weeks, exactly what I was looking for. The price was reasonable. So I went for it. I made the deposit my first night in Barcelona, as I was already making my way there.

I arranged to stay in a shared apartment in Sevilla for three weeks, from Nov. 8-29. More on that later. First, Barcelona.

It was pretty sweet. It was the first place I'd been in a while where it no longer felt like winter was approaching, which wins a lot of points in my book. The sun was shining, and there were palm trees everywhere, and lots of people outside. My first stop was absolutely a hostal with a shower, after all that train riding and wearing of the same outfit. After that I went a-wandering, and nervously entered a tapas restaurant. Nervous because I don't really understand tapas, and I didn't want to do it wrong. I wasn't sure how many items I should order, how big or filling they would be, etc. But it worked out. And it was yummy! Then I went and spent a few hours at the Picasso museum. Even with my relative apathy toward museums, and aversion to spending money, this was something I knew I wanted to do. I've always been into Picasso (and other off-beat artists and creators), and especially after finishing Gertrude Stein's book about chilling with him and the rest of the Lost Generation in Paris, I was pretty pumped about it. It was solid.

I also went to the Miro museum while I was in the city. I felt kind of the same way about Miro as I did about Picasso. He's kind of a crazy genius, doing something at the same time unsettling and hilarious, and that appeals to me. I just became aware of his existence last year, and it was nice to check out some more of his weird and wacky Spanish stuff. I think there's something about Spain that allows it's artists to use bolder colors. And you know me. I like colors.

Spain is, unfortunately, a big offender in the realm of mandatory Eurail reservation fees. But I managed to minimize them as much as possible by taking 13 hours to get from Barcelona to Sevilla instead of like 4-6. I took yet another night train on Saturday 11/7, but with the happy knowledge that it would be my last train of any kind for a while. Sunday, I found my way to my apartment in Sevilla and completely unpacked my backpack for the first time in 2 months.