Derek's Successful Internship to Barcelona: The Journey

I registered at Studentsgoabroad due to the reason that I needed to do a semester and an internship abroad for my study ‘International Industrial Engineering’ at the University of Applied Sciences Stralsund.

While I did my semester abroad from August 2015 until January 2016 in Brazil, I was trying to find an internship in Europe in order to widen my horizon and gain new experiences. As finding an internship abroad was really difficult, I consulted the team of Studentsgoabroad and they immediately had a great offer for an internship with relation to my specification in Barcelona.

As the company and the internship activities met my internship requirements and Barcelona was really interesting for me, as I also have not been there before, I did not think about it too long and registered binding for an internship in this city. I kept my preparations for this adventure within a limit: Booking the flight, packing the suitcase, planning one week for orientation and discovering the city and then I could almost start. The one thing that was a bit more difficult to plan before the start was organizing accommodation. This is what the next part is about.

Finding accommodation in Barcelona is similar to what I am used to from other bigger cities: There are various platforms on the internet that one can use for help.

I mainly focused on the websites idealista.com and Facebook. It was not too easy to organize a room for five months from Germany without having the possibility to check personally. Thus, I opted for subletting for my first month and then try to organize a solution for the coming four months in Barcelona.

Via the Facebook group ‘Barcelona Rentals: Find or post rooms, accommodation, and housing’, I met Jose who wanted to do a language course in Berlin in March and rented his room for 4 weeks. After a Skype talk, everything was settled and I had my first room in Barcelona. I shared the house with an English and a French girl and one Spanish guy. Searching for new accommodation in Barcelona was then much easier but not always stressfree.

I have seen some rooms after work and often received a rejection. The biggest problem was my almost non-existing Spanish skills as well as the short time during which I wanted to rent the room.

In the end, however, I found a room via Facebook which I shared with a Polish and a German guy and an Ecuadorian girl. It was a nice housing and a great community and I am still in contact with my roommates from both accommodations.

The central location of the apartment close to the metro station ‘Verdaguer’ also allowed me to walk to work which saved a lot of money and 'metro sweat'.