El primer fin de semana

Hola!

Last Thursday, august 1st, I started my great adventure in Valencia. Although it was very difficult to leave everything and everyone behind my back for this semester, I couldn’t wait to start here.

Once we arrived at the small airport of Valencia, I would be picked up by Luuk Groen, who is my mediator. I had no clue about how this ‘gentleman’ should look like. Suddenly a blond boy of 20 years old walked up to me; Nica Ortu? Me and Milou, a friend from Maastricht who is joining me the first 2 weeks, were surprised that he was so young.

We had to wait a bit because one of my roommates also arrived at that moment. Robin will be my roommate for the coming 6 months. After half an hour talking with each other, we were quite sure that we could have an amazing time together. Saskia, a girl from Maastricht who is doing a language course for one month, was already waiting for us in the apartment. Luuk showed us around in the apartment and I was positively surprised about my new home. My bedroom is very big with a double bed and a huge closet. We also have a cozy living room, a balcony, a new constructed kitchen and 2 bathrooms. (see pictures)

We were all so enthusiastic that we almost forgot to eat. We didn’t know anything about the city so luuk took us to the burger king. I already knew that the Spanish people aren’t that good in English, but I didn’t expect that I already had to order my chicken menu in Spanish..

We were all very tired from the trip and all the nerves we had last week. This couldn’t stop us to enjoy our first night in Valencia. At 11 AM Dominique, Pierre and Max, friends from Maastricht who were visiting their parents in Alicante, were in front of my door. I was very happy to see them and we immediately started drinking some nice beers and vodka on our balcony. We wanted to go out but we had no clue which direction we had to take. We just started to walk towards the beach. There were a lot of promoters so we were quite sure that there was something going on. Of course they could see that we are Dutch and they approached us about an outdoor club at the beach. We didn’t know what to do else so we walked with him. This club was amazing. It was typical Spanish. The nightlife here is a total different story if you compare it with the Netherlands. Everybody is enjoying the music and Nobody is totally wasted. Everybody is dancing their ass of until they cannot follow the Spanish rhythms anymore. So.. the first night we already learned one thing: Spanish people really know how to party.

The morning after we were already very active at 10 AM, which means that we only slept for 3 hours. We decided to continue our sleeping at the beach because we couldn’t wait to see it. The beach is amazing in Valencia. We are living in a typical Spanish neighborhood, so we were surrounded by Spanish families at the beach, which was exactly what we wanted. The sea is so clean that we can see our feet all the time. We were acting like happy kids who never saw the beach in their life before, but we didn’t really care.

After some nice hours of enjoying the sun and our fantastic new life, we decided to eat tapas at night. It’s a little bit hard to adapt ourselves into the Spanish modus sometimes. You cannot eat anything before 10 o’clock because everything is closed. We texted Luuk about some nice restaurants and the only thing he said was: ‘just chose for the restaurant that looks like shit, those are the best ones’. So this is what we did, after 5 minutes walking we saw a small cafe lightened with strong LED lamps. THIS HAD TO BE THE ONE! Although it felt like we were in the tanning studio during our diner, the tapas were absolutely amazing (and cheap as fuck). We only paid 7 Euros for 7 different dishes and 2 drinks, which is absolutely impossible in Holland.

The rest of the evening and the weekend were actually the same. Chill. Beach. Eat. Party. Sleep. REPEAT.

This week I am going to start with my language course, but I will tell you some more about that next time.

Hasta Luego!!