Loving Barcelona !!

Hola Hola!!


So this is my blog about me living in Barcelona for the next 5 months. I'm studying tourism in Helmi liiketalousopisto and I came here to do my internship here. First I thought I'm going to start to write this blog in Finnish but then I thought I want to improve my English writing skills and decided to change the language :) 


I have been in BCN about three weeks now and just been loving every minute of it. I'm working here in this Incoming-agency called Scancoming Barcelona. I started there two weeks ago. Scancoming is a unique trade partner for groups and individuals travelling for leisure, business or special interest. Their main strengths are in local knowledge and extensive experience, coupled with efficient personal service. There's 7 Scancoming office's in Europe and two of them are in Spain, in Barcelona and Malaga. 


So Barcelona's office is the one I work in. In our office, there's 4 people working with me, two of them are from Finland and two are from Sweden. The main languages that we use in our office are Swedish, Finnish, English and Spanish. I have been loving my job by far. I have been doing all kinds of office duties, f.e. preparing hotel descriptions and restaurant menus, reservations and offers for hotels and clients, transportation, activities.. I contact by e-mail and phone with our customers (travel agents and suppliers) and use our TourPlan. The actual work is very different that I have been doing before. I have been working 4 and ½ years in a store, where I'm used to stand all the time and talk face-to-face with our customers. So it's quite difference now to sit on your computer all day long and not see your actual customers. 
But like I said, I'm loving it and it's so great to see that I'm improving every day:)

I'm living here with my Finnish friend Reetta. She came to Torrevieja Spain before me to spend her New Year here so we met in Barcelona. I had a little bit of bad luck with my flight when I came here. It was very bad snow storm in Helsinki, so my flight was delayed for many hours..But anyways, I got here! We stayed first two nights in hostel next to La Rambla, cos' we didn't had apartment yet. Well, we actually had one in Badalona but we wanted to move into city center. We went to see couple of places and finally found our own one and it's just perfection. Our place is so big and it's 5 minutes walk from La Rambla, next to Paral-lel and in everyway it just feels like home. We have 3 rooms here and just yesterday got our new roomie, this French guy Hugo. We have already met wonderful people here and I'm just loving the fact, that everybody is so friendly, happy and funny! 

We have already being doing a lot's of things here. Actually, my first day in work was that I got a chance to take this BCNTouristBus and went around BCN with it, haha:) It was fun, even though it would have been nicer to do it with someone else. I went to f.e. Park Guell, Camp Nou, Eixample.. We also went to Sagrada Familia with Reetta in our first week. It's so beautiful and I'm wondering if it will ever be ready (even they say it will).. We also live very close to the beach, so we have been in Barceloneta and Port Vell pretty many times and it's so so beautiful there.. All I can say, I knew this city is gonna be great but it's even better I ever wished. Every day I'm just so happy that I'm here. It's also great that we can walk to our work places every day. Scancoming is next to Placa Catalunya, where you can find great cafeterias and shops etc. I also love shopping and I think I have already being shopping too much..haha. I have to say to my friends and family, who comes to visit me that takes empty suitcases and brings my stuff back to Finland. Haha, good luck with them.. 

I'm very excited that we're going to Spanish lessons in February. I have only went to this one Spanish course and it was in last spring and it was so short.. I tried to learn some basic things before I came here and it has helped so much that Reetta speaks Spanish. Otherwise, we wouldn't even got our apartment, cos' this woman who rented this to us didn't speak English at all. It's the same thing in very many places, f.e. post offices, banks.. So I really want to learn. But of course I'm learning more an' more every day by listening and trying to speak little things. I'll think I get there:) 


Ok, but I think this is everything now!
I try to write this blog as often I can.. Adios :)


Saludos, Nora