Survived Another Day

Our first month is coming to a close quicker than I could have imagined. We are still looking for jobs and need to find an apartment before we get kicked out in two weeks. This brings me to today's adventure.

As a preface: We have been emailing all over town trying to find places to live. On Saturday we spent an hour on the metro getting to one place that we did not even vist. It became apparent fairly quickly that we were way too far away from anything, and that we were in a wildly underdeveloped area. The landscape was a mesh of barren fields of dirt and trash & apartment buildings under construction. There were no restaurants, no supermarkets nor any other indication that commerce was alive in this area. Combine that with the fact that the lessor was a total louse. He completely misrepresented the area and could not give directions to save his life.

I walked away from that experience thinking I had learned something about apartment hunting in BCN - I was wrong.

Today neither Kyle or I had to teach so we went to check out two other places. The neighborhood seemed nice enough, at least until you walk 6 inches off the main strip. Once we ventured off the main street we wondered down an ally that just as easily could have been plucked out of Mogadishu, Beirut or Yerevan. There we sketchy dudes holding clipboards and clearly keeping stock of their peep of hoes working up and down the dark ally. All of the buildings were no longer using Spanish or Catalan in their store-fronts, but rather Arabic. Everyone we saw was of middle easterner or African descent. Also, the allies we were walking down were about 20 feet wide. It was dark and damp and there was a potpourri of BO, feces, death, weed and crime in the air. Although it was 3:00PM somehow they managed to create the feeling of dusk. However, had it been dusk I doubt we would have walked out of there. You could feel the contempt and confusion lingering. It was fairly apparent that people like us (Americans / non-terrorists / non-criminals) do not go to their neighborhood.

I wanted to take a picture but I value my life enough to keep this memory in mind only. Plus I'm pretty sure the protocol in those burrows is to cut your arm off to get your camera. Anyway I do not have any original art for this post. If you have seen Lord of War, think about the scene when he is in Africa and does brown brown for the first time and is wandering around the streets. It was like that but with large buildings all around rather than huts.