David Grajal

When I say I was born in Spain lots of foreigners reply something like  “Hey dude! I’ve been in Barcelona last year. I really love Spain! “. Only occasionally I’ve met foreigners that visited mainland Spain, where the old Spain lifestyle is. Speaking with foreigners is a revelation. I’ve never felt the urge to visited Barcelona until I met passionate foreigners that loved the city. In fact until last month I had never been in Barcelona. We appreciate what is far away while we ignore the wonderful things we have right in the corner.

I flew to Barcelona because the World Mobile Congress and I stayed there for 4 days, time enough to get the work done, have fun with locals, explore the city and visit the Gothic quarter and the Gaudi monuments.

The entire city has a very special personality. This is not the introverted Spain I’m used to, but a international oriented city that sells itself as an European cultural and business center. Barcelona people mastered the touristic industry long time ago. It’s true that the city is beautiful, but similar touristic attractions are also in Castilla, forgotten, covered by thick layers of dust and on the verge of collapsing. Nevertheless Gaudi buildings are impressive. I really loved Casa Batlló and Park Güell. Hovewer I think Sagrada familia is overrated because it’s really small!

I met people trough Couchsurfing. We organized the first Couchsurfing meeting ever in the World Mobile Congress, probably one the few CS meetings where the people dress suits. I also went out for a picnic and partying on a packed club. Barcelona is a city that never sleeps, but not because the people is working late at night like in Seoul!

It was also my re-encounter with sunlight. One German winter is time enough to forget how bright the sun shrines in Spain. Barcelona is an amazing city, a cultural cross between Spain and New York full of interesting people proud to be living in one of the coolest urban environments in the world.

I visited Spain for a couple of days after living abroad for almost half a year, and obviously I was eager to see again my family and friends. It was also good to taste again my grandmother Spanish food. After eating huge amounts of rice in Asia and a combination of beer, pretzels and sausages in Germany, It was so good to eat the kind of food my body is better adjusted to. Jamón and Paella.  Is it there food more Spanish?

Paella!

What was interesting was my reaction to be exposed again to the language. I was completely used to live in countries where I didn’t understand the language. In this time I discovered I really like to be able to completely disconnect from what surrounds me when I’m in public spaces.

In contrast, in Spain my brain was constantly working, catching conversations I should not pay attention to. I got tired of understand everything. I was in the streets sneaking into other people conversations. I shared complete conversations on buses and trains. I got completely frustrated. I could’t switch off my brain and It was exhausting.

Another interesting thing was realizing that doesn’t matter what you do, the world change but only if you want to accept the changes. I changed a lot in this last year. I’ve been traveling and I had the opportunity to become influenced. I become a lot more open minded sharing pieces of my life with interesting, silly and funny people from all around the world. I’ve living immerse in a completely different culture and I’ve questioned lots of things that I usually gave for granted. All in all I realize we are small persons in a big world and each one of us have different dreams. Each one pursue they dreams in a different way and all of them are valid because there is always a reason behind. Looking back to how I was one year ago, I can easily see that I changed a lot. However all my friends continue being the same way. Of course this is not bad but I didn’t realize how much I really have change until I returned to my hometown.

In conclusion, I really like to be living in a place where I don’t really belong. Yes, you lose contact with your family and friends but It make you more conscious. It’s easier to question why the things are like they are. You become more critical about what it is around you. And I feel more positive and comfortable with myself.

Last Sunday I went to Itaewon to see the final match of the Euro2008 between Spain and Germany. Both teams played well in the championship but at the end Spain played better and won the final match. This is our first title since 1964 when we hosted and we won the Eurocup.

I read the newspapers in the last days before the match and I saw that the entire country was together encouraging the national team. This is important because in Spain is very difficult for the people to identify with the national team. Furthermore we always had a lot of hope in the championships but we always had have very bad luck. I still remember when South Korea stole the semifinals in the Korea & Japan World Cup. Anyway, the good news is that the wait is now over because at last, Spain won something and now all the country is enjoying a huge party.

I feel bad because it’s the first time since I was born that the Spanish soccer team won something and I can’t really celebrate it because I’m in the other side of the world. I can picture my kids asking in the future, “Daddy, where were you when Spain won the Euro2008?” I’ll answer “Watching the match in Seoul, surrounded by a bunch of German people while the sun was rising!

Spain is becoming a superpower when speaking about sports. We have top of the world teams and sportsmans in soccer (Euro 2008), basketball (World championship 2007), tennis (Nadal), cycling (Contador and Freire), handball (World Championship 2005), car racing (Alonso) water polo and lots of other sports. We only miss a great swimmer and performance in winter sports. We will see what happens in Beijing’s Summer Olympics later this year, maybe we will also have lots of great moments there!

Today Google have also joined the Spanish party

This was the longest flight of my life. 11 hours seated in a plane without nothing better to do than sleep, watch movies, and eat the occasional snack the plane crew gave to us. I saw 2 movies including The rocky horror picture show. A must-see-cult-movie that I never saw before. Pretty bizarre and original, and a very strange selection for a flight Does really Lufthansa think this freak movie is appropriate in a plane?

I had a very strange Korean seatmate. She was a young girl, married to a French guy. She spoke perfect French, good Korean and very bad English, so it was pretty boring for me because I don’t know anything about French, less about Korean. Nevertheless I tried to speak Korean with her with my overwhelming skills, which are basically the phrase “You are beautiful”. She understood it though

Incheon Airport
Seoul airport is really cool. They show proudly all around the airport that it had been declared worldwide best airport 2005,2006 and 2007. Looking at the cluttered departures and arrivals panels, you can see that the airport has lots of traffic but surprisingly everything runs smoothly. And everything is close, I didn’t need to walk for 20 minutes, take a train and walk for another 20 minutes to arrive at my gate like in Madrid!

Tip-of-the-day: It’s possible to travel with banned food in baggage. I was told that nothing was going to happen, but I was a bit afraid that my suitcase wouldn’t appear in the luggage reclaim area because I was carrying a small quantity of Spanish ham. Custom’s guys didn’t even ask me anything, and that means that if you pack ‘jamon’ very well it’s not detected in customs. Very well is precinct storage wrapped several times in plastic film.

Next time I will come with several kilos of jamon!

While going to the airport, I met Arispides in Madrid’s subway. He is a very nice Puerto Rican guy in their 50’s. This guy is an artist, a painter who come to Spain for a painting course (Although he told me they teach him but he didn’t learn anything!). This guy’s life perspective was fantastic, I’ve never seen a so conscious and positive person. He was constantly smiling and he was speaking with the self-confident provided by the years. He tried to give me advices, telling me to always stay out of the route all the people follow but not too much to prevent derailing.

This guy made my day, I’m happy because of him.

About the plane, nothing really speciall. I had the tipical ultra serious executive I_read_the_economist_but_I_travel_in_tourist_class seatmate and we didn’t really speak about anything.

I needed to wait for the plane in Frankfurt around 2 hours, time I spent trying to find german beer in the various duty free stores. But there isn’t beer, none. Zip. Zero. There were only spirits. I should had bought pacharan in Madrid!