Expat Life in Barcelona
Author: Robert Jacobi, Frontend Software Developer
In early 2019, XXXLdigital opened a new location for product development in Barcelona, Spain, under the supervision and with great efforts from our Location Manager Pedro Naue (Read about XXXLdigital in Barcelona in my first blog post.)
This was my opportunity to work abroad from mid of April until early August 2019, which added up to 16 weeks.
As well as this was a great personal challenge for me, this may cause intimidating thoughts to others that are thinking of working abroad and are hesitating.
For this reason, I will try to give some answers and insights with this blog post.
tl;dr
If you are motivated and want to work abroad - there are ways so simply do it!
Embrace new cultures and environments, be open and mindful.
Enjoy your time and experiences, but do not forget about relaxation as well.
What does it take to go abroad?
Actually, not that much apart from your intrinsic motivation!
Are you eager to experience and adapt to a different culture?
Are you open to new challenges that come with a shift from your current life and work routine?
With these tools in your pocket, you are only missing a commitment and project from your company to send you abroad.
This does not have to be a new location or a greenfield project, as there will be various reasons for a company to send an employee abroad.
In my case, I was lucky to be a crucial part in assisting to recruit our new colleagues and help them on their first steps with a company they probably never heard about before.
Off the beaten path at tourist hot spot Montserrat
Day trip from Barcelona to Girona, Catalonia
Nevertheless, I was about to go to Spain and spend several weeks in a country where I do not have proper language skills. At least outside of work, I could not solely rely on my programming language skills. So I signed up for a A1-level language course at Instituto Cervantes in Vienna, which provided me with a basic understanding of grammar and common phrases.
Little did I know, that I attended a "castellano" language course, practiced some Latin American Spanish vocabulary with Duolingo and would live in the overly-"catalan" neighborhood of La Sagrera. When you are talking about culture from abroad things are always a little exaggerated or biased by prejudices, you have to take the incoming information with a pinch of salt. Unfortunately, there really is some pride involved between Catalan and Spanish people, and the flowing mix of languages was heavily confusing for a newbie like me. But by simply hanging in there and exposing myself to the languages I was able to get around with the basics like ordering food or shopping for groceries by myself within a few days.
Routines and habits are a good thing, but when entering a new environment you should try to adapt to the flow as fast as possible. For me, this meant to adapt to the local lunch or dinner habits as well as to listen closely to the people and their concerning topics around me. Sure, I am only trying to integrate temporarily, but still, this helps a lot to respect the people that live there permanently. This way, you will get to know your surroundings deeply and will in return learn new things about yourself and your habits.
Professional challenges
It takes a lot of attention and a little patience to adapt to the local culture and norms, especially when you are involved into recruiting for building up a local team. But I can only tell you to embrace these efforts and find a good way of merging the values you bring from your company and culture with the ones from the local environment. This led to an abundance of moments, where I got more aware of the way I work myself and things are happening around me, which I could use to improve the work for more than just our new colleagues.
Sometimes - and sure there were more moments than I would have anticipated - I felt drained. Although it is fun, speaking in and listening to a non-native language (English as business language) with other non-native speakers with other accents, it also costs energy. Additionally, my tasks comprised recruiting, onboarding and mentoring new colleagues which did intensify the amount of words spoken per day. Being a software developer usually talking to his machine through the keyboard, this can be quite a bit and you will long for some quiet evenings.
This taught me, to pay close attention to the requirements of a new assignment - that can actually be independent of the fact of going abroad. I did need some time to adapt to the new needs, still see them as productive work and do not feel unproductive only because not writing lines of code.
Tourist hot spot Park Güell at sunrise
Enjoying some free time with hiking in Montserrat
Personal Highlights
As I wrote before, there are indeed challenges of living and working abroad that I wanted to share. Yet the overall experience was amazing, and I would highly recommend anyone to take the chance.
As soon as friends heard that I will work in Barcelona, they planned trips to visit me and I ended up with half of my weekends planned with visits. I am grateful for these friendships and the things we experienced together, although it taught me that I will have to actively plan some downtime from working and exploring a new city. Not only when you are staying 16 weeks or more, even from 2-3 weeks on you will start recognizing missing relaxation time.
As mentioned above, I stayed in the neighborhood of La Sagrera which is a little outside the city center and feels more rural in comparison to the overcrowded tourist hot spots of Barcelona.
Small weekend trip with Pedro to Galicia
Hidden streets in Barcelona’s old town
Summing up…
This little area turned out to be cozy and offer some hidden charms run by locals that made my stay worthwhile.
It also showed me again, that it is highly recommended to get off the beaten path during your travels and take some time for exploring and try out something new.
I hope this blog post will help and inspire you to take this step and spend some time abroad!
*German version to be found here