This story is quite long. Too long. But it does have a happy ending. Or at least I hope it will.
According to one of the faculty members at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (one of the two institutions at which I'll be teaching; the other being the University of Barcelona), most Fulbright Scholars do not bring their families with them. At first, I was surprised to hear this, but given that work and school schedules don't always easily allow spouses to accompany the scholars, it makes sense. In my case, my wife has been a stay-at-home mom with a contract that has been renewed four times in twelve years. So not once did I consider coming to Europe alone. According to the CIES, "most awards have no restrictions on accompanying dependents ... many grantees bring their families and report that the time abroad benefited all family members." When I read this in 2009 (yes, three years ago, when I first started researching the process), I took it as, "all aboard."
I can't speak to how housing assistance works in all cases, but my guess is that most institutions are not so easily prepared to provide housing for a family of six. In our case, we could have opted to live on campus at the Autonomous University, which is about forty minutes by train from the center of Barcelona, but we really wanted to be in the heart of the city. I mean, if we were going to move to a different continent for six months, we were going to breathe in every bit of the Barcelona air possible. It's a case of rural versus inner-city, or another way we saw it, a full Barcelona Gaudi experience versus an occasional Barcelona experience.
The search for an apartment began months ago. We went through various websites, some of them specializing in searches for students and faculty, others in relocation services for professionals, and others in housing tourists. Most of them have search engines in which one types in the dates and the number of people who will be in the apartment. And then the engine spits out possibilities. Yes, spits out, because in some cases the apartments have prices that few can afford. We're talking about twenty to thirty thousand a month. I got out of the way of that spit. A few agents sent us additional information about some apartments, but a six-month stay proved too difficult to book from the U.S. So instead we reserved a place for a five weeks, figuring that would give us plenty of time to find a place. In theory, that was a great idea. Here is the apartment we wound up booking:
It's in the St. Gervasi area, in a very safe neighborhood, with plenty of access to public transportation. It's also a two-bedroom with one bath and a whole 60+ square meters (the equivalent of about 200 square feet) of living space. Here is a picture of what happens when a large family who is used to exponentially more living space moves in:
I know, what was I thinking, renting a place that small? What did I expect? True, the outcome should have been predictable. We're usually gathered around the table you see, me working on course material, the girls on their school assignments, Nolan on finding new, creative ways to distract the rest of us, my wife hopping from girl to girl, helping them with their academics, and in between, the kids arguing about someone bumping them, someone else looking like they're about to bump them, or about how it's not fair that one of them didn't get bumped.
Above all else, I went by the online reviews of the agency and the location of the apartment. While a few of the other agencies had complaints about allegedly deceptive practices, ours had a clean record. Now that we're here, I don't regret the decision to rent this place. I do wish I hadn't rented it for five weeks, and that has nothing to do with the size of the space. It has everything to do with the fact that apparently, agencies do not want to rent more than two weeks ahead.
We had about three apartments in mind that went to others because the owners did not want to have their places vacant for so long. So we had to force ourselves back into the waiting game. We took off to London for a few days, came back, and in our third week here, we found a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment that actually consists of two adjoining apartments. That story also has a twist, and I'll have to write about it in some other post.
According to one of the faculty members at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (one of the two institutions at which I'll be teaching; the other being the University of Barcelona), most Fulbright Scholars do not bring their families with them. At first, I was surprised to hear this, but given that work and school schedules don't always easily allow spouses to accompany the scholars, it makes sense. In my case, my wife has been a stay-at-home mom with a contract that has been renewed four times in twelve years. So not once did I consider coming to Europe alone. According to the CIES, "most awards have no restrictions on accompanying dependents ... many grantees bring their families and report that the time abroad benefited all family members." When I read this in 2009 (yes, three years ago, when I first started researching the process), I took it as, "all aboard."
I can't speak to how housing assistance works in all cases, but my guess is that most institutions are not so easily prepared to provide housing for a family of six. In our case, we could have opted to live on campus at the Autonomous University, which is about forty minutes by train from the center of Barcelona, but we really wanted to be in the heart of the city. I mean, if we were going to move to a different continent for six months, we were going to breathe in every bit of the Barcelona air possible. It's a case of rural versus inner-city, or another way we saw it, a full Barcelona Gaudi experience versus an occasional Barcelona experience.
The search for an apartment began months ago. We went through various websites, some of them specializing in searches for students and faculty, others in relocation services for professionals, and others in housing tourists. Most of them have search engines in which one types in the dates and the number of people who will be in the apartment. And then the engine spits out possibilities. Yes, spits out, because in some cases the apartments have prices that few can afford. We're talking about twenty to thirty thousand a month. I got out of the way of that spit. A few agents sent us additional information about some apartments, but a six-month stay proved too difficult to book from the U.S. So instead we reserved a place for a five weeks, figuring that would give us plenty of time to find a place. In theory, that was a great idea. Here is the apartment we wound up booking:
I know, what was I thinking, renting a place that small? What did I expect? True, the outcome should have been predictable. We're usually gathered around the table you see, me working on course material, the girls on their school assignments, Nolan on finding new, creative ways to distract the rest of us, my wife hopping from girl to girl, helping them with their academics, and in between, the kids arguing about someone bumping them, someone else looking like they're about to bump them, or about how it's not fair that one of them didn't get bumped.
Above all else, I went by the online reviews of the agency and the location of the apartment. While a few of the other agencies had complaints about allegedly deceptive practices, ours had a clean record. Now that we're here, I don't regret the decision to rent this place. I do wish I hadn't rented it for five weeks, and that has nothing to do with the size of the space. It has everything to do with the fact that apparently, agencies do not want to rent more than two weeks ahead.
We had about three apartments in mind that went to others because the owners did not want to have their places vacant for so long. So we had to force ourselves back into the waiting game. We took off to London for a few days, came back, and in our third week here, we found a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment that actually consists of two adjoining apartments. That story also has a twist, and I'll have to write about it in some other post.
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