My year abroad has now brought me to Barcelona. An unexpected occurence as I previously vowed I´d never live in the ´chilly´ Catalan speaking second capital of Spain during my year abroad – I wouldn´t learn any Spanish and I wouldn´t get a sun tan – a lose lose situation. After passing the telephone interview for an interesting internship (in which I said it would be no problem relocating the day after my language assistant contract finished in Bordeaux) I found myself jamming all my belongings (which easily overflowed from my one small suitcase and rucksack) into many a large plastic bag in preparation for the 11 hour train journey from Bordeaux to Barcelona. Perhaps one of the upsides of not thinking through my life was that at least I could bring everything I wanted with me – afterall I was going by train – the only limit was my bicep strength (unrivalled) and the number of people I could encourage to help me along the 3-train-changes way – the airline company and their 20kg would not have let me get half as far. At 11pm the day before I was due to leave Bordeaux Catherine came up to my ´bedroom´ to say her goodbye. There was little left to say between myself and my French host family by this point – having spent the previous 2 weeks with little conversation due to them being offended that I didn´t think it was particularly normal to pay 400 euros (a month´s rent) for my final two weeks. Catherine however did make it up the wobbly attic stairs of death to tell me that I didn´t look like I was by any means packed and that her husband, Jean would help me the following morning. His help the following morning turned out to be driving me 200m down the road, taking out my many bags from the car, putting them on the pavement and leaving me in the pouring rain wondering how I would heave them to the tram stop and wishing I´d walked to the tram stop next to our house instead of being driven further away from both that one and the following. Still this was more generous than I could ever have hoped – Jean originally was going to drive me the 5 minutes to the train station – which I politely was decling just as Catherine cut Jean off and loudly told him (in front of her lunch party of Jean´s extended family) that that absolutely wouldn´t be necessary – nor would it be necessary to take me to the tram stop – afterall my suitcase had wheels.