Study Abroad at EM Strasbourg Business School : Barca! Barca! Barca!

During my winter break, I went to Barcelona, Spain. I visited several Erasmus students who had gone home after our first semester. We started by taking a train to Basel, Switzerland, where we got the plane to Barcelona. Our plan was to stay from Wednesday to Sunday. I went with three other students from the United States. I was interested to see how my three years of high school Spanish would help in this situation. But for those of you who don’t know, Barcelona citizens usually speak a language called Catalan. Catalan is a mixture of French and Spanish. Some words are easily recognizable, while others are not. We arrived in Barcelona on Wednesday afternoon and we were greeted by our friend Elsa, who had studied at EM last semester. She helped us get to our hostel. We were pretty tired from the trip, so we got something to eat then took one of our first siestas (where you un-shamefully rest in the middle of the day)! The next day we went on an Infamous Hop On/Hop Off bus tour. This is where you ride on a double decker bus through all the city’s highlights and you can decide if you want to explore a certain landmark more by simply hopping off of the bus. Then you hop on another one later to continue the journey. Since Barcelona is so huge, we thought this would be our best way to see everything we wanted. Stops where we “hopped off” included the Sagrada Familia; a famous church that is still being built today, Guell Park; a beautiful park constructed by the famous architect Gaudi, and Camp Nou; the stadium of the Football Club Barcelona. We stayed on the bus all day and had a lot of fun. The next day we got to do what we all were craving, the beach. It was around 60 degrees Fahrenheit (or 15.5 degrees Celsius). It was not the warmest of days, but still way better than the weather we had in Strasbourg. We got ready and spent almost all day at the beach. It was a funny sight, because the locals were there in scarves and sweaters while we wore t-shirts and flip flops. Saturday we got a tour from Elsa around the Parliament, along with the Arc de Triompf. It was good to hang out with her again since I hadn't seen her since Christmastime. Our final day ended with us going to Tibidabo. It is an amusement park and a church on the top of one of the highest hills. The view was fantastic on the way up and even though our pictures did not turn out as well as we hoped, it was still so cool to see. After that, some of my friends went out for one last night out, but I decided to stay in and pack for our early flight the next day. I loved visiting Erasmus students and getting a tour from someone who actually lives there. I hope that one day, if they are ever in the United States, I can do the same for them!