Summer lovin

June 16th, 2007 by hill
hill

Hey again,

So I’m feeling a little guilty about lack of posts (thanks Lou!) so I thought I’d write ya an update on life in Barca.

The new job is going really well for me. Having to work on Saturday’s is a shame, but then again, its a small price to pay, now that I’ve traded in the 4 hours of travel a day, and the 8 hour days. Now I get to sleep in, make a hearty breakfast, grab a coffee with alex then casually roll into the office at 2pm. Or go to the beach in the morning, which is a very nice way to start the day!

My boss is really relaxed and totally disorganised, which makes for an easy working environment, and I guess we balance each other out really well. There are times I wish he’d be more organised so that we didnt have overbookings in the apartments and angry clients who deal with me as their first point of contact, but these don’t happen too often for it to be a major problem.

The other thing I’ve taken on is a design internship with a local cultural magazine: miniguide: www.bcn-inside.com It’s unpaid, but I figure its a good way to clock up some more editorial experience and a good way to get free invites to parties and other perks I’m missing from Sunday Magazine.

 It’s been a bit of a slow start so far. It’s hard to manage new people productively when you still have your deadlines, but I think once I get to know the process a little and can start making myself useful, I will make some good contacts, learn a thing or two, get some design (and possibly some more writing) published, and get to practice my Spanish a bit with the Venezuelan Art Director :)

Speaking of writing, I’ve also been lucky to pick up some freelance copywriting from my old job at Mid Ocean Brands. Its good pocket money, and despite it meaning I can’t go to the beach on the mornings I put aside to do the work, I figure the extra euros will come in handy for the next European side trip we plan. Whenever that may be….

The other cool thing to report on is Bicing. The new mode of public transport thats exploded onto the streets of Barca, in a big way. Basically, the government has set up a bike rental system next to all the metro stops and other busy points of town.

You sign up with your contact details and credit card info and pay a yearly membership fee. Normally this is 24 euros but they are doing a special introductory promotion for 6 euros. Once you pay the fee and activate your card, you swipe it at the bike stand and take a bike. The first half hour is free, and every extra half hour costs 30 cents. Its a very cheap, and pleasant way to make your away around the city, especially for those of us who live in a building with six flights of stairs and don’t want to lug a bike all the way up and down very day. The ride to and from work is about 15 mins. Plus you don’t have to deal with flat tyres and other maintainance issues. Very cool.

 

So thats about it from me. Hope everyone is well and safe from the storms SMH is reporting on. Safety aside, hope youre enjoying the cold Sydney weather too. Its been 30 degrees here for the last two weeks straight!!

Love n stuff,

Hill.

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OK OK…..

June 4th, 2007 by hill
hill

So I know its been 2 months since the last post. And not because nothing has been going on…

In May we enjoyed a visit from Bev and Neil, and were later joined by Louisa and Gomez from London for the long weekend. We had a great time, but Im not going in to details as Bev has agreed to post a guest post on our blog soon. …stay tuned! What I will say was that it was great to have some visitors and we had an absolute ball. It was very hard to say goodbye at the end of it and it took a couple of days of feeling depressed and far away from the rest of the world in recovery.

Since then I have been in and out of negotiations with my work trying to get them to let me work part time, from home on the copywriting part of my job. Basically the four hours daily commute in and out of Barcelona was getting to be too much.

I had to ask myself why I had come all the way to Spain to be working the daily grind and travelling for half again the time I spent in the office. I had a lot of waiting around for reviews and management meetings spanning about 5 weeks (gotta love corporate working environments) and basically the answer was no.

Luckily for me, another job offer came along in the meantime, which I readily accepted, and will be starting tomorrow! I will be working for a company called Barcelona Homes, which rent holiday apartments to visitors in the beach district of Barceloneta for short terms. The guy that runs this business also manages about 25 other websites relating to travel and holidays in various cities around europe. I will be writing website content as well as articles about travel and each destination to post on travel forums and blogs as a way of getting more links to the pages and hopefully getting more traffic coming through to each site. In between that I will also be letting people in to their rented apartments and doing some other office admin as required.

The working conditions are great- its located 20 mins walk from our apartment, which is about 2 blocks from the beach. I will be working in the afternoons from 2-8pm which means I can go back to Spanish classes in the mornings, or sleep in, etc and I will be getting paid about the same money, but will be working 10 hours less per week! The only downside is that I have to work on Saturdays so I am there to let people in and out of the apartments, but this is only for 3 months and it only in the afternoon so it wont affect me being able to go out on Friday night or sleep in or do something in the morning on Saturdays.

As you can probably tell, Im very happy about the job and look forward to starting tomorrow. It will be so nice to stroll along the beach to work or go for swim in my lunch break. Summer is well and truly here now as we’ve been enjoying temperatures of high 20s for the last couple of weeks.

Alex is still working hard as usual but is happy and is looking forward to his birthday at the end of this month. He and I have taken up a new hobby- thanks to Lou and G’s present while they were in town. We have been taking part in weekend Scrabble tournaments in local cafes. Sometimes for several hours at a time. Of course I’m winning overall, although on my off days Alex has managed to slip past me once or twice. We’ve recently introduced a new rule that all the words you put down are only allowed if you can give their equivalent in Spanish or be able to explain the word in Spanish to your opponent.

What else is new…well we just got back from a weekend trip to Sitges- a beachside holiday town south of Barcelona where our ex-flatemates Edu and Carlos are now living. We went over for our traditional family dinner of Arroz con Pollo ( a delicious Peruvian dish of chicken and rice with seasoning and lime dressed salad and onions on the side). After that we had a few drinks and went out to check out some of the clubs in town, better known as meat markets. Yesterday we slept in and went to the beach, where I enjoyed another victory over Alex with the travel scrabble set, and then dinner and movie back at the house. What capped it off was a call from my new boss to let me know that I don’t have to start until tomorrow as today is a bank holiday in Spain!

So, you should be hearing from Bev shortly, and after that I promise to write again and tell you how its working out with my new job, etc. Mean while, Happy birthday to Adrian for the 1st June and Helen for the 2nd and Linda for the 5th and Dad for the 7th. Many happy returns!

Bye for now…
xxx
Hill.

Posted in hill | 8 Comments »

Happy Santa Semana!

April 11th, 2007 by hill
hill

Hi all, Hope easter was great!

In Spain they don’t have Easter. They have Santa Semana. Basically everyone goes on a weeks holiday. Eggs and chocolate are a bit scarce. Weird. Haven’t found out yet what the deal is but will let you know when (if) I do!

We just got back from a lovely break in Montreux with Lou and Gomez…four days of eating chocolate and cheese, drinking wine, strolling by the lake and playing scrabble. Just magic. Photos in the gallery for you to look at. Hopefully will have a chance to post a longer one this weekend but its late and I have a 2 hour trek to work at 6am tomorrow.

Love to all…

Posted in hill | 12 Comments »

Home sweet home…

April 2nd, 2007 by hill
hill

Dear all,

Just a brief one to let you all know we’ve finally relocated to the centre of Barcelona. See the end of this message for our new address.

For those that have been to Barcelona we’re on a street opposite Plaza Reial, about 2 mins off Las Ramblas. We’re a short walk to fresh food markets, cafes, shops and the entirety of decent clubs and bars. For the first time, we went out on the weekend and it took only 5 mins to get home to bed! We were also delighted to discover a massive chinese gorcery store a few blocks away which has a plethora of curry pastes and most importantly: SWEET CHILLI SAUCE! Thank you god!

Tomorrow is the first morning I have to test the 2 hour journey to and from work. I’ll be leaving the house at 6:55am, when it still dark. Hopefully there wont be too many drunk English tourists to dodge on the Ramblas!

We’ll be looking for a flatmate as soon as were back from Switzerland, where we’ll be spending a 4 day break over Easter with Lou and Gomez. We leave this coming Thursday afternoon at about 5pm… Can’t wait to have a bit of a mini vacation, and get ready for the Holt’s visit at the end of the month. April will be a busy month, but a fun one too. Hopefully we’ll find a few minutes in between things to keep you updated with our goings-on.

Love to all…

New Address:

46 del carrer Nou de la Rambla, 4-1
Barcelona 08001

xxx

Posted in hill | 11 Comments »

New home

March 17th, 2007 by hill
hill

Hola Chicos,

Its been a while since we posted but its only because we have been super ocupado buscando para un nuevo piso. (that’s looking for a new flat). Sad but true, our happy family estan separamos en dos semanas.

Carlos and Edu are moving south of Barcelona, about the same distance as we are north at the moment as its closer to where they both work. With the distance I travel to work, further north, it just wouldn’t be possible to go with them. So we’ve spent largely the last month scouring the city for a new flat.

We decided early on that we’d move closer into the city, as there’s no longer any reason to stay in Premia de mar (except for the beach :( ) but basically without our comaneros de piso, we’d be even more isolated from the rest of the friends we have, who all live in Barcelona. So we’ve doubled our budget and been pounding the pavement.

There are thousands of empty flats in Barcelona but they’re also in huge demand so the market is really geared towards the owners. If you rent a flat through an agent, you’re looking at at least a months rent in agent fees. The owner pays nothing.That’s money you pay for them posting and ad and showing the place to you that you don’t get back. 1,000 euros aint cheap either.

Luckily for us, we found what I’ve started referring to as a super-piso right in the centre of town, which we’ve rented direct from the owner. The owner is from Barcelona but currently working in Holland and speaks immaculate English, which was a big reassurance to both of us. She was very keen to rent he place very quickly to decent, respectable people capable of paying the rent as she was due to fly back for work in 2 days from when the ad went up. So Alex and I were lucky enough to find it hours before the viewing, and by chance, we were the most respectable out of the cast of thousands that turned up to see it. So, at the end of the month we move!

Its a 2 bedroom flat with a massive living space, enormous kitchen but best of all, a courtyard out the side of the apartment where the balcony is, which runs along the entire living space and along the bigger bedroom also, so there’s natural light all day, which isn’t easy to find in a city laregly dominated by big blocks of flats.

One floor above us is a 100square meter terrace. Its communal, but most people say unless you live up high in the building most people don’t bother going up. So in the summer, we’ll be sipping our Sangria in the sun, about 3 minutes away from the heart of the old town.

I’m not looking forward to the 2 hour journey to work in the mornings (currently its 1.5 hours), but I think generally speaking we’ll be able to enjoy our social lives a lot more by not having to factor in an hour bus ride home at 3am like we do now. We may even be able to go out a bit during the week. We also live close to a massive fresh food market and we have a choice of two very close metro stops, not to mention were in short walking distance to all the art galleries, parks, monuments and other places of interest. So all those contemplating a visit, now you have no more excuses not to come!

Were looking for a flatmate to fill the second room and share the rent, which shouldn’t be too difficult as places in the area are in high demand.

What else is new? Works plodding along fine, busy as usual and starting to get involved in some fun projects that Im more responsible…the summer catalogue I’ve been working on for ages writing articles is due to be printed in about a weeks time.

We’ve also booked flights to Switzerland for a holiday over the Easter long weekend in April. We’ll be meeting our friends Lou and Gomez there and spending four days eating the best easter chocolate in the world. Can’t wait.

So what’s new down your way?

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