Barcelona on a budget

Sunday morning I woke up and with the help of my new friend, Allasia, ventured to my hostel. Goodbye fancy living. It’s back to the slums for us.

Okay, not the slums. But I did pick the cheapest hostel in El Born… 16 Euros a night on the weekends and 11/12 Euros during the week. Not bad. Equity Point Gothic was the name. and little did I know… I was in for a good time.

I moved into a 14 bed coed dorm… Room 205. The sweet spot.

I had no idea how long I would be staying in Barcelona…. Maybe a few days, maybe a month. So I decided to pay for a 3 nights and feel it out.

After an easy day of walking around and brunch with Allasia, I headed back to the hostel to see if I could make some friends. I know how hostels work. Everyone pre-games in the common area before going out so I thought Id scope the place and see how I felt…

I took my laptop down and started checking email and getting caught up now that I was out of Africa.

I squeezed in at the only spot there was hardly room at in the middle picnic table surrounded by about 10 german guys. They were all speaking german and looking me up and down and talking about my tattoos etc etc. I was fresh meat. Oh dear. Is this how hostels in spain are gonna be? I was over it. I was texting my new friend, Allasia on whatsapp telling her all about the happenings in the hostel.

I was just about to pack up my things when finally someone came in and started talking TO ME. Not at me. In a language I knew.

Julian, from Germany also. Whats with the germans? But he was nice. And funny. And convinced me to put the computer away and join the group that was going out for the night.

I went up to my room about 4 times and kept changing my mind. I didn’t know if I was up to go out. Everyone had already been drinking and making friends. I was the newbie. And I was dead sober. And on a budget.

Julian had to stay in to babysit some drunk friends with an early flight the next am so I was really on the verge of bailing.

But something told me to go at the last minute so I caught the group and we headed into the Gothic.

The night was random, the bars were dead, but my new friends were the shit.

I met the frenchies that first night. Oooo the frenchies… Max, Charlie, and Nick are from Paris and theyre probably the only reason I’ll visit paris now… well to see them and the Eiffel tower I suppose.

Our crew developed quickly. Magic Mike, who’s Russian but lives in Philly now. Jonas from Munich, Germany. The Frenchies. And Me (Beefy). We were the originals. Our crew grew and shrunk with every day in the hostel. The best days were of course when we were one big family with the german girls whose names I never could remember, Katie and Chelsey from Manchester, Roman and Stephen from California!, and of course our friends we made that work at the hostel or in bars around town. We had the best hostel crew ever. We would wake up around 1pm, meet up and discuss plans for the day and night. Which was always pretty much the same. Beach at 4pm. Champagnaria (Champagne area as the frenchies called it). Hostel to clean up and play card games, we made up rules for as we went, and then out into the gothic, el born, wherever the wind blew us. Although the wind did blow us in the same direction most nights, there were also the nights we ended up at some pretty wild clubs. I was convinced that Jamboree was everyone who had never been to California’s idea of what a club in California is like. Early 2000’s hip hop and the craziest light show I’ve ever seen. But that was tame compared to the 5 story madness with tons of different djs and different music in each room at Razzmatazz.

Most nights turned into mornings. 3am/6am/7am… But you always have to remember… We were living the Spaniard way. Up for a bit. Then siesta in the afternoon. Then up all night. We made bets who would stay up for breakfast at 8. I would have lost a lot of money if we had to pay out on those bets every day. I made it to breakfast once at Equity Point Gothic and it was after sleeping for about an hour first. I showed my face, drank about a gallon of OJ and went back to bed.

Oh and then of course there was the night I was telling my poor sweet AND very sober roommates to “STOP YELLING AT ME”.

Me oh my.

I can definitely say Barcelona lasted so long because of the friends I made.

But I can also say life in Barcelona was not real life at all. Living in a hostel like that never is.

After 2 weeks, I was exhausted. The partying stopped (Thank God) after the frenchies left. It was just Jonas and I. Besties in Barcelona. Allasia joined us, too. We would go to the beach, sightseeing, lunch, dinner, ice cream, hikes. Things were calming down, but Spain was still needing to come to an end.

I was starting to feel worthless. I needed to get on with the trip. The reason for the season, if you will.

Time to go back to Africa. Time to help some kiddos. Time to make a difference in the world. Time to quit screwin around.