First week in Barcelona

Hola! here is the next post of my Barcelona diary, I will talk about what I had to arrange to be able to work in Spain and how the searching for an apartment went.

The next day after I moved in the Airbnb I rented, I had an appointment to get the Numero de NIE. This is a really important identification for foreigners in Spain. With this identification you can basically do everything from working to searching an apartment and you even need it sometimes for receiving packages. Shortly it is a very important number and something I needed to get arranged as soon as possible. I tried to make an appointment on the webiste when I was still living in The Netherlands but it was sooo difficult to get even into the system. After about 3 months of trying I gave up and looked for companies that could help me with this, and luckily I found one really fast. I made an appointment with NieBarcelona, and after I sent all the needed documents they made an appointment to get the Numero de NIE and came with me as well. You have to pay for it, but honestly it was so easy to do it with them so it was definitely worth it!

After the appointment for the NIE, I had another appointment for an apartment. This apartment was located in the neighborhood Barceloneta, it wasn’t my favorite neighborhood of Barcelona but I had a deadline so I gave it a chance anyway. However when I arrived I already didn’t really feel good about Barceloneta, and the apartment was really small as well. She showed me 3 other apartments after the first one, but they were all in the same neighborhood and as I didn’t really felt save I didn’t react on it in the end. So that was a dead end unfortunately.

The next day I pretty much searched for apartments the whole day, and ended up reacting on a lot of them especially on the app Idealista. If you don’t know this app yet and you’re searching for an apartment in Barcelona/Spain as well then definitely start using this one. You can search so easily and even search in neighborhoods you want plus a lot of the owners/agencies react really fast.

When I still lived in The Netherlands, I had to open a Spanish bank account for my job. But the thing was that I didn’t had my Numero de NIE yet, luckily my job gave me a list of a few banks that didn’t ask for the number to create an account. I ended up opening an account at Nickel, and now that I moved to Barcelona I had to pick up my card. It was really easy, I only had to go to a Tobaco shop to pick it up. So that was arranged as well 🙂

Now that I got my Numero de NIE, Spanish bank and searched for apartments it was time to fix some documents for my job.

On 29th of July I finally got the message that I got an apartment!! I was soooo happy and relieved that I found something and before I had to start with my job. The apartment was located in El Born, the old part of Barcelona which is also one of my favorite neighborhoods. The only thing with this one is that I couldn’t see the apartment before I got it. I only saw photos of it online, and I know that that is risky but I was kind of getting desperate and you know I had a deadline coming really close. So I just took the risk, however later you’ll read that this was a terrible mistake. The agency where I got the apartment, rent them for short term periods. They focus more on experts, students etc. It is called SH Barcelona, but later on you’ll get to know why I definitely don’t recommend it. Anyway I can move in on the 4th of August 🙂

Because I move in on the 4th of august and I only booked the Airbnb till the 31st of July and I couldn’t book more days anymore I had to find something else for those 5 days. So I found an hotel in the neighborhood Eixample. I had to start my training from my new job on the second of August. so unfortunately I had to do it in the hotel, luckily the wifi was great!

eventually I got more free time so I enjoyed the beach and walked around a lot as well.

stay tuned for the next post about how it was to move into my first apartment in Barcelona 🙂