Tapas and Chaos

 So normal life is finally starting. Last Tuesday I started at my job as Data Engineer at Omya. I have been dreading writing this blog because everything until now has been sunshine and roses and this definitly was not, but it is also not bad. Most importantly, it has not negative effective on my mood at all. I guess I wanted to provide that little bit of context because I am scared that when I write about my job it might seem that I am sad and having a horrible time, which is really not the case. The section became quite long, feel free to skip the paragraph below to the next one where I tell about what I did outside of work. The situation at work was surprising to say the least. On Wednesday I had a general onboarding day. I started the same day as another guy and we were given some presentation and a tour around the very cool office. Part of that onboarding, I was supposed to have lunch with my team. My boss, apparently the only person from my team present that day, was caught u...

Firstly! I think I am going to stick to a weekly update schedule since, I feel like that gives me more things to talk about and secondly, well I just like it better this way. So I left you when I had just finished my time in Camenito del Rey, Malaga en Torremolino. Before I went to bed that night I had a little borrel with the people from the hostel. Where I gave a little history lesson on Suriname because that is what the people wanted. I woke up early and gathered all my stuff to take my 9:17 train to Sevilla. As I have this fear of miscalculating how much times things will actually take I left quite early (70 minutes before) and also arrived at the station quite early (50 minutes). Nothing was open at the station, so I just amused myself until 30 minutes before my train was supposed to leave I felt my hostel keys still in my pocket. So there I was contemplating wether to try and go to the hostel and back to the train but that would take 40 minutes I did not have. But I felt like it ...

So I would love to say I was to busy to write anything in the past couple of days, but honestly I was just putting it forward for some reason :-). I guess this method of updating is still not super natural to me. My second week in Barcelona was definitely less eventful. I went to scope out good places for my hobbies. I went out dancing Bachata and went climbing with a friend and a lot of hanging out with my roommates (Bananagrams in Spanish was a definite highlight). Also a lot of administrative stuff like getting a bank account and registration in the city had to be done! Which all went quite easy, especially compared to the stories I heard! After fixing all of the administrative that was necessary to start working, I went and booked myself a little trip in the south of Spain! Wednesday I would set of to Malaga but before this, I dyed my hair blonde. New city, new look I guess B-). So yeah I took the train for 6.5 hours and no this is not a slow train Spain is just that freaking big. ...

 So I have my first five days and they have been absolutely awesome. It honestly feels like a dream. I don't know what I did to deserve all this good karma but I am accepting with open arms. I didn't post on Wednesday because honestly not a lot happened I unpacked a bit and got my room ready, did some administrative and went bouldering but had very little conversation, had dinner with my roommates again, so I felt like it was not really blog worthy. Thursday and Friday tho... Thursday started with a really great bouldering session again where I met some people who also recently moved to Barcelona. Later I went to my future work and everyone was super nice and the building looks great and has a good atmosphere. I also had my weekly spanish lesson which went very well and it was nice to express all the new things to my friend and teacher. After that I went to a sound bath with my roommates and met a bunch of their friends and we went for drinks and tapas after. We had a lot of fu...

 My first full day in my new home was very chill. Me and my friend woke up and went to a Catalan restaurant where neither of us could make sense of the menu and almost everything had meat. Both of us ended up finding something nice to eat. As this was the only full day my friend would spend in Barcelona, I let him decide the itinerary. His reply was that he had already seen the sight and wanted to see how the people ´really´ live. This was obviously a very easy request for someone who has lived there for 12 hours. We ended up strolling to most of the neighbourhoods in Barcelona, walking upwards of 20 km and dropping in and out of shops, tapas bars, markets, beaches, parks whilst having good conversation.   We ended up at home where both my roommates just got home and decided to make dinner together. We had a great time and directly felt that the three of us are going to be a good match. My music taste was put to the test, as I had to put my Spotify Liked Songs on shuffle....

 Second entry! Conclusion: I arrived in Barcelona with all my luggage (to my knowledge)!  After a lovely breakfast prepared by my friend. We started the trip at 9:30 travelling by metro to the Brussels train station where we took the train to Lille. Here our luggage didn’t fit in the luggage rack so we sat by the door to hold our stuff luckily the train ride only lasted half an hour.  Here we had to transfer to another train station by foot at which point I was questioning my decision to take all this (heavy) luggage, carrying this luggage in and out of the trains, up and down the stairs was definitely my least favourite part of my trip. we had some time in Lille so chilled in the sun and then got on the train to Paris. We had to take the metro to another station in Paris and there were multiple lines of about 30 people (barely moving) waiting to buy a ticket for the metro. As we had calculated for possible hiccups we had quite some time for each of the transfers. So I sa...

 Due to popular request (three people), I will attempt to keep track of my move to Barcelona. This is hella awkward so bear with me. Hopefully, the quality will increase over time. Also don't know what things I will actually be sharing, how often I will update the blog or if this format will even work for me (or for you guys) but we will see. As my trip has lasted less than one hour up until now I will keep it short and sweet. I stepped on the train (please climate don't make me regret this) at Schiphol and was more than an hour early to minimise the possibility of problems, which obviously arose (Chaos alert) when I decided to leave my wallet in my friend's car that brought me to Schiphol. I had enough time to retrieve it, so all was well. Anyhow, getting on the train went quite smooth and putting the luggage (5 pieces) away as well (shout out to my little brother). Let's hope for the same energy tomorrow with 16 hours of travel and two transfers. A friend will travel ...