A Day In the Life of Barcelona Intern Sarah!

Sarah Shefferly has spent the last few months in Barcelona as an intern for an online urban art, music, and events magazine. And this is a day in her life, taken from her blog: http://sheffrox.tumblr.com/.

8:17am: My alarm goes off. I press snooze and attempt to go back to sleep for another 30 minutes but my mind is buzzing from the dream I awoke from. A dream about money problems, aka the worst kind. My mind is reeling about how I can pay for my rent, due August 1 just a few short days, and survive on 50 euros for the next week. But I’m not too worried because I’m in Barcelona, Spain and the sun is shining bright through my window. Things can’t be that bad!

8:45am: I finally jolt myself awake and out of my mind stupor. Who wants to start their day off worrying, anyhow? I’m about to have a great Monday! I jump in the shower quietly because my roommate is still sleeping since she finished her internship last week and I still have until this Thursday (August 1), but I’m not complaining, I love my job. I get out of the shower and trudge on down to the cafeteria four floors down from my dorm-like room in Agora, the student residence I live in up in the mountains of Barcelona.

9:10am: At breakfast i eat the same thing I’ve had every morning of this summer. Toasted french bread with cheese, salami and a lemon yogurt with a cafe con leche—popular coffee drink in Spain—as my morning start-up. I chat with another girl in our MSU program and I tell her about how our other friend from the MSU program and I need to find a place to stay in Barcelona for the weekend since her and I are staying an extra four days. After discussing possibilites we randomly talk about Steve Irwin and how some I had met last Friday believe that he was such a legend and an idol in Australia. And we carried on reminiscing about the reknowned crocodile hunter.

9:30am: I get ready for work (which I have to be at at 11am and work until roughly 5pm). While getting ready for work I watch Grown Ups 2 because my roommate, who is also from MSU, had seen it in the Spanish theaters here in Barcelona and had said it was quite a riotousu movie….but the version I watched was of course in English.

10:20am: I head out of Agora and walk the five minute walk to the L3 Mundet metro station along the Vall d’Hebron highway. I get to the metro station (subway), its 81 degrees Fareinheit this morning, with perfectly clear skies and an all around beautiful Monday morning. I take the Metro about nine stops to Plaza Catalunya, the main square right in the heart of Barcelona. This is where I switch metro lines and then get on the L1 to get on the three more stops to the Marina metro station where I work.

(Metro ride to work. errrday)

11:05am: When I walk out of the Metro station and finally hit daylight, I walk across the street and look into the window of this little diner on the corner of Carrer de Almogaveres and Marina. I see the same man sitting in the same spot next to the window drinking the same coffee. Per usual, he looks up sees me, stares for a second while I walk by and we both go on our merry way back to our own lives. Its weird how I see the same guy sitting there everyday to work. It puts into perspective just how real my job here in Barcelona is and how I have my own routine and have become a “regular” whether its in coffee shops or just walking down the street, I begin to be recognized and also recognize others. Crazy. Anyway, I walk into work, sweating a bit from the intense morning heat and sun. My Spanish co-worker lets me in, per usual, and I chat with him for a second, then sit down and begin to fire up my computer. I work in a studio building.  It has great lighting and air conditioning, thank the lords!

11:45am: After chatting with my co-worker, Isla from England, for 30 minutes about our weekends, I get crackin’ on an article/ review of a bar I went to on Saturday night called, Tinta Roja. I also write about a neat little coffee place I ran into in the Raval neighborhood on Friday, named Satan’s Coffee Corner. A small place, but with surprisingly good coffee.

2pm: Isla and I head to the Mar Bella beach to the Chiringuito Relevant bar for lunch, which is the beach bar that my host organization also owns other than the online magazine and doing promotional events for various musicians and artists. We take the yellow line metro two stops over to the Poblenou area and onto the beach. I talk to Isla about random things, like our weekends and how she got free tickets from my boss, Dave, to go to a music event—which happens on a regular basis because we, as writers and reviewers, are technically part of the “press” and can get in for free to do interviews of the DJs and artists. It’s quite a good perk of my internship. Love it! At that moment, while walking to the beach, I knew it would be really difficult and sad to leave my internship in one short week :’(

2:30pm: We walk up to the Chiringuito Relevant and order drinks and some appetizers (tapas)—patats bravas (a Spanish favorite) and nachos. Isla and I talk with Dave, discussing life in general, what we would name ourselves if we could choose, the different types of genres and sounds of music, and so on. Dave, my boss who is 28 years old, is very into music and knows a lot about different genres. He is really a brilliant guy. He told us about how his friend and him once started a side project and made a TV series through YouTube called “In the Head of the Artist”. Its quite ridiculous, but very artistically done. At one point while shooting a scene they found themselves piling into a van filled with equipment and people and stopped in the middle of the Spanish dessert to film. Wicked. Not a dull moment on the beach side bar, with great friends, the beach breeze and surroundings of palm trees and nudists. The life.

(La Playa de Mar Bella!)

4:30pm: After a long lunch, we head back to the office. It’s a silent walk for Isla and me, set into a food coma. I think about home, my friends, how blessed I was to have been able to experience three spectacular months in Barcelona!

5pm: Back in the office I finish writing a promotional email for an event and head out of the office to go back to Agora. While leaving I see Dave making shirts which he tye-died himself for an event coming up. Pretty crafty. I definitely want one.

5:30pm: On the metro back, writing in my journal. It takes roughly 40 minutes to get back. Thank God the metro has AC because its about 90 degrees Fareinheit outside…oh how I want to jump into the Mediterranean.

6pm: I get back to Agora and stop by Andy’s room to get some change to do laundry later (and I mean way later because tonight we are all heading to the Montjuic Film Festival in the moat of the Castle. Playing tonight is Source Code about a train crash—which is ironic because of the recent RENFE train crash in Spain. God rest the souls of the 78+ people that were killed and help the 100+ people who were severely injured).

7pm: We leave Agora, all seven of us from the MSU group. We go to the market first to pick up some picnic food and wine for the Film Festival. We get french bread baguettes, chorizo slices, brie cheese, and a cheap 3 euro bottle of vino, classy stuff. Then head to the metro and take it to Plaza Espanya and head up on a bus up to the top of the mountain to the Castille de Montjuic (built in the 1600s).

8:30pm: We pay the 6 euro to get into the film, which is all outdoors in the castle’s moat, and get a good spot in the grass to sit down and socialize. Our Connect-123 program, which is the program that MSU had decided to go through when doing the International Internship in Barcelona, the coordinator, Lea Levy from Cape Town, South Africa, meets up with us with her Spanish native intern, Eli. We chat about various things, take pictures because its our last Connect-123 group meet up. We have been having Connect-123 group meetings all summer with the other seven students in the group. Through Connect-123 we have met so many great people from all over the United States. Lea is a great coordinator, organizing Connect events every other Thursday, where we have gone out for drinks, met up for the fourth of July, and so on. It helps us expand out of our MSU crew, where we are able to have other American intern friends. We continue to have a great time sipping wine, eating bocadillos (sandwiches), and laughing with friends we have met this summer. Truly a perfect way to start out the week!

(the Connect-123 group at Montjuic film festival!)

10pm: The movie begins and we lose ourselves in the action packed plot, and for some of us, in Jake Gyllenhaals blue eyes. Great ending to a perfect day in Barcelona!