Welcome to Barcelona!

So, it seems I am the first one to post something on our new blog :) It is kind of exciting.

Hi! My name is Bianka and I will try to tell you the stories of my life in Barcelona.

But let's start at the beginning. Everything begins with a decision. At some point, each one of us decided that we want to do an internship abroad. But how did we all come to be here? I am guessing some of us were looking for an internship in Barcelona, some of us were looking for an internship in marketing and the place was not important. The string of decisions is not that importnat now though, since we are all already here. And we are a team - 1 Global team. I think it is still too early to call us a family but I think we will slowly get there. For now, we are sharing the same office space for most of our day, we share the same questions about our work and we - more or less - have the same questions about our lives in Barcelona.

The first week I was here, I though that you can tell I don't belong here with just one look. But as the time flies, I realized that Barcelona is full of different people, always full of tourists, students and sometimes it is really hard to tell who the real Barcelonians are. True, they might no look as lost as me when I am going grocery shopping; I have been here for 3 weeks now and I still look like a deer caught in the headlights since I have no idea where is the item I am looking for (but the truth is it that maybe I should just stick to one supermarket instead of each time trying a new one that I have found by walking around my neighbourhood). I am still looking at some items in the shop with disbelilef (like the big pig legs - I am just guessing here that they are from pig, I have never come closer than 2 meters to it) and at some with a bit of curiosity (I am talking about you, shelf with sweets; you know that I am going to try every item on you before I leave). I remember my first time walking into a supermarket here. First thing that surprised me was the fact that the eggs were not in the ¨cold¨area. They were just on the shelf somewhere. Most of the milk was stored the same way too. And the fact, that eggs were right next to the wine section was shocking to me, too. But I guess it makes sense here in Spain. Maybe Spanish would be shocked with our supermarkets, too.

So yeah, hm, shopping is still a bit of a challenge for me.

But one thing I got used to really quickly is metro. I love it! It stinks and it is overcrowded but I still love it. Just so you know, I come from Slovakia - we do not have metro in any city there. (But no, this was not my first time in metro).And why do I love it? It is quick, easy to use and you can get almost everywhere in the city centre with it. Although it is true that I like to walk, sometimes it is really comfortable to just hope on and be home in less that 10 minutes (even if it would take me more than 35 minutes by walking). And ok, I must confess that there is one thing that was scary for me when it comes to metro (except for occasional thieves who I, luckily, haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet). I am always scared when it comes to paying bigger sums of money and since I had to buy the ticket for 3 months, it was quite scary. But luckily, one of my new colleagues was willing to help me (Thanks again Brian!). So there, with my ticket, I can now go anywhere. I am planning to go to the last stop of each metro line and see what it looks like. I will maybe post some pictures later on.

I think this is quite enough for my first post, but I will keep you updated about my effort to become Barcelonian. I have less than 3 months left, but I will try!!

\^_^/

Bianka