I'm going to Barcelona today. I thought I would be nervous about the whole thing, but instead, I have been too busy to really worry about it.
I have traveled for work countless times. That is the nature of my job. It always used to be relatively easy. Someone else books the plane tickets and arranges a hotel and/or apartment. All I usually have to do is show up and do the work. This time, I had a choice of places to stay while I'm there. Since I know absolutely nothing about the city, I looked into neighborhoods and transportation. Living in Hong Kong has spoiled me for public transportation. I have reached the point where I actually expect to take trains that run on time to get me to work in half an hour or less. Fortunately, Barcelona's transit system looks pretty good. Of course, I will not truly know until I use it.
I will be there for about eight weeks. That is not nearly enough time to learn the language, so I did a little studying ahead. I knew almost no Spanish a month ago. Now, I know slightly more. The funny thing is, the language of Barcelona is Catalan, which is supposed to be more like Italian or French than Spanish. That would be fine with me. My French is decent, as long as people speak incredibly slow, and I know a few menu and transportation phrases in Italian. There is nothing impressive here, but it is far better than my Spanish.
Ideally, I will be working too much for any of this to matter, but I will have to go out and buy groceries sooner or later. It would be nice if I could get by on my own without relying on the kindness of strangers and colleagues. Some of my favorite memories of new cities are walking around and exploring at random. You don't usually need to speak any language to do that, but sometimes it helps.
