BARCELONA — AT LAST

The road to Barcelona was a long one, and as it happened, the fun didn't end after we arrived.

It's Thursday afternoon. We're cheerfully rushing around getting logistics done — signing bank documents and our lease (all of which were in Spanish/none of which I understood), getting the keys to the apartment, letting the kids see their new home — and having an "ahhhh" moment of happiness at the thought of finally settling in. We tell the kids that tomorrow morning they'll see all of their favorite toys. We toast to the very last night of living out of suitcases. I fall asleep with visions of home dancing in my head.

Aaron leaves the hotel first thing Friday morning to meet the movers at 9:00. As he's walking up to our block, he stumbles upon ones of those you-can't-make-this-shit-up scenarios: a water main half a block from our building has exploded overnight. Literally, blown up. The force burst windows in the building across the street, buried their parking garage (and the 20 cars in it) under 3 meters of water, and then — because we live on a hill — sent a tsunami-like volume of water down to every block below ours, which led to the inevitable closure of 15 streets. Our doorman confirms that in the 20 years he's worked here, he's never seen anything like it. Obviously this happens on move-in day, and obviously the moving truck isn't getting anywhere close to our apartment. No Friday move-in after all.

Because I'm starting work tomorrow (Monday), I was needless to say less-than-enthused about this news. (Maybe naively, I didn't pack one shred of work-appropriate clothing in my Grand Adventure carry-on bag.) But we did have three new mattresses delivered to the apartment on Thursday, so we loaded up on bedding and some other essentials, and there we found ourselves again — living in an all-but-empty apartment, just as we had done in Brookline. Full circle. How lovely. 

But the universe smiled later that evening; the moving company would make an exception to their normal operations and deliver our things on Saturday morning. Luck!

Six guys who collectively spoke 10 words of English showed up right on time to finalize the move. Because I couldn't communicate with them whatsoever, we spent the day playing charades. (Me: "Futon goes here. Futon...is like a sofa? Couch? No? Umm...like this? [Squatting] No, not table. [Mimicking arm rest] Ahh, yes like chair...but [waving arms frantically] longer, longer!") They successfully got all of our stuff up, unpacked the boxes and reassembled the furniture, and took away the trash. By 1:00pm, they were gone and we were home. At last.

File this under: "Things you don't want to see happening in front of your building on move-in day"

View from our driveway

Seriously?

Building across the street

Friday afternoon's shopping adventure

Aaron on his phone looking up the Spanish word for "elevator." Owen and Eliza getting geared up to push our new bag cart back to our apartment via public transit. We lived up to the "overindulgent Americans" stereotype and got plenty of dirty glances.

Happiness is...

A plastic playhouse next to a spigot on a 90 degree day with no clothes on.

WELL THAT WAS UNEXPECTED.

International moves require the careful coordination of two things — relocating boxes and relocating bodies — such that both ideally arrive at their final destination around the same time. Aaron and I spent months carefully planning the sequence of events, and we really thought we'd choreographed it perfectly: our boxes would leave by boat on May 2 for a 4-6 week journey, our selves would leave by air on May 31 for a 12-hour journey, and we'd all reunite in Barcelona in early June.

But an international move that goes off without a hitch would be so boring. What would I blog about if everything went as planned? 

If you'd asked me a week ago which parts of the coordination puzzle — the boxes or the bodies — would most likely go wrong, I would've given you a very confident answer: the boxes were obviously going to be late. Before saying goodbye to our cargo container, I'd made peace with the very real possibility that I might not see our stuff again for 2-3 months. The scheduled delivery date was early- to mid-June, but I knew any delay in Customs could tack on unanticipated extra weeks. Okay fine. Worst case, we'd arrive on June 1 and maybe have to be without furniture for (another) month or two. All part of the game, part of the choice we made. That—that I was ready for. 

But in the end, the boxes weren't the problem: what we're actually facing is an unexpected delay in body relocation.

Turns out it's going to take us longer to get to Spain than our furniture. I won't bore with details, but the issue boils down to taxes and the number of days we'll be in Spain in 2016. Bad things happen if we're there for more than 183 days; as planned, we were going to be there for 214. The overpriced tax advisors we retained in December failed to flag this issue, and it was only thanks to Aaron's poring over Spanish tax code that it was discovered at all. For various reasons, it won't be a problem for 2017, but it would've been a really bad one for 2016. 

The result: We can't afford to enter the country until after July 4.

So now what? We become homeless on Friday (we're turning the keys over to our condo's new owners on May 27) and are booked on a one-way flight from Boston to Barcelona via London next Tuesday (May 31). Can't stay in Brookline, can't land in Spain, so as of today, the plan is to board the Boston-to-London flight, ditch the last leg, and deplane at Heathrow. We booked a BritRail pass and a four-night AirBnB in London, but after that, who knows. The only thing we know for sure is that we'll be traveling around anywhere-but-Spain for the entire month of June and early part of July.

I can't say I was elated when we figured this out; it's surprising, to say the least, to have a tax attorney tell you 11 days before your move that no, in fact, you should not enter Spain as planned. I had my "holy-sh*t-we're-going-to-be-nomads" day of quasi-panic earlier in the week, but I've come around. The adventure just got more adventurey. The logistics of backpacking around Europe [with two small children on <2 weeks' notice] are sure to be complicated (e.g., we can only bring carry-on luggage since our bags would get checked all the way through to Barcelona), but it isn't everyday that you get dropped off in London and told you get to/have to kill 5 or 6 weeks doing whatever you want. 

MOVING RIGHT ALONG

On May 2, five mind-blowingly efficient men spent 9 hours meticulously wrapping and boxing everything we own, loaded it all into a cargo container, and hauled it off to board a Barcelona-bound ship. No turning back now; the move has commenced.

As all of our material possessions cross the Atlantic — fully one month before we do — we're living the simple life back in Brookline. I wasn't sure how living in a near-empty house would feel, but it turns out there are some definite upsides. For starters, it's much easier to maintain a household when there's nothing in it. Additionally, the kids are getting to preview the joys of college living. Highlights include a very low furniture-to-square-footage ratio, a kitchen stocked exclusively with Solo cups and paper plates, and mattresses and televisions that are set up on the floor. 

The best news is that we officially have a new place to call home: we locked down a 4 bedroom apartment in the Sant-Gervasi/Galvany neighborhood. Translation: you now officially have a place to stay in Barcelona and we would love for you to visit.

BEFORE: All ready for the slow boat to Spain. (PS: Can we take a minute to appreciate the mover's impeccably wrapped armchair? Swoon. The guy must kill it with Christmas presents.)

View fullsize

AFTER: An empty house has become a stage for all kinds of imaginative play. (Not pictured: batting practice, whose-echo-is-loudest competition, interpretative dance meets, and scooter derbies.)

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE HUNTERS

Admission: For solidly half of 2015, Aaron and I binge-watched HGTV's House Hunters International nightly. It was a trite but totally addictive indulgence, and probably would've gone on much longer had Aaron not staged an intervention and declared that it was time to move on. I love real estate/home improvementy stuff; throw in a foreign country and it's all over.

We're not going to be D-list television stars (curiously, the House Hunters production team didn't get wind of our move), but Aaron and I are flying to Barcelona on Sunday to do our own international house hunt. After cringing at so many episodes of HHI, I'm slightly fixated on not becoming "those people" — the bumbling Americans whose average list of "must" haves is ten times longer than the international average, who won't even consider an apartment that lacks Old World Charm, who need both proximity to the city center and silence and serenity, who scoff at European bedrooms sizes and giggle at bidets. (Confirming the basis of my fears, our relocation agent assured us that we'd take taxis from apartment to apartment because she "knows Americans don't like to walk." Oy.) That said, who doesn't appreciate an American-sized refrigerator paired with a little Catalan flare, am I right? 

I've been stalking the Barcelona rental market for 4 months; we sold our condo in January and it's a way for me not to feel homeless. I've fallen in love with at least two dozen places since then, but where we'll end up is a bit of a crapshoot. We've got four basic criteria: a generous outside space, a washer/dryer, 3+ bedrooms, and maybe A/C. Our plan at this point is to have Owen and Eliza share a room and then save the third for guests (that means you). Other than that, who knows. Much as I've tried, marching the little Google Street dude around the neighborhoods of Barcelona just doesn't cut it.  I'm sure we'll know it when we see it.

We land back in the U.S. on Friday, April 29 and our movers are taking away (almost) everything we own on Monday, May 2. We'll see it all again in 4 to 6 weeks at a location that's yet to be determined. I'm surprisingly not that concerned yet; we'll see how that changes when we're all living out of a suitcase for 2 months.

THE BENEFITS OF NAIVETÉ

We're boarding a one-way flight to Spain in fewer than five months. At that point, I anticipate an epic emotional struggle and a prolonged "holy %$*&" period of utter panic. Until then, however, I'm too busy preparing for what we're doing to actually realize what we're doing. 

There's a condo to sell, visas to obtain, a new apartment to find, a car to get rid of and a new one to buy, international schools to enroll in, movers to hire, boxes to pack and records to transfer, and a dissertation to defend so I'm actually qualified to take my new job. It's a busy and blissful little world of ignorance I'm currently living in. 

And from this privileged perch of denial, I'll say that I'm absolutely, totally, 100% excited about moving to Barcelona. Daily, I dream of learning Spanish, taking impromptu weekend trips around Europe, skiing in the Pyrenees, walking along Mediterranean beaches, and living in weather that doesn't suck for half a year. I tell the kids about all the castles we'll see — complete with assurances that of course there will be princesses living in them (I'll pay for that little untruth later) — and I daydream about all the memories we'll make together as a little family.

Every so often, as I'm doing said fantasizing — scrolling through real estate websites, playing the "what if we had 20,000 euros/month to spend on rent?" game — I come across something that reminds me what the hell we're getting ourselves into, the foreignness of it all. A real estate blurb that Google Translate won't decode properly (did the realtor really mean "the farm has hydraulic floors"?), or one that references something entirely indecipherable to me (what's an NIE? FGE?). Or photos of a dark, creepy apartment that looks unwelcoming by any country's standard, but that make me nervous we'll never find a home home when we go.  And you know what I do in those moments?  I press "X" on my internet browser and continue looking at unaffordable beach-side mansions. 

I'm living a life of deliberate naiveté right now, because in five short months, that will no longer be an option. I'm totally confident today that I will be totally unconfident come June, and that's cool with me; I'm curious to see how I'm going to fare. As David Brooks wrote about making big decisions, you have to ask yourself: "Do I have a profound desire to discover what it would be like to be this new me, to experience this new mode of living?" From this vantage point, my only answer is "yes."

Now all that said, here's one promise I'm making to myself (and incidentally, if you're reading this, also to you): I'm going to be very honest on this blog. Today it's rainbows and sunshine; tomorrow could be anything but. I'll make a point to be honest — we are, after all, living a regular old life, not going on an extended European vacation — and I know I'd be doing a disservice (if to no one but my 10-years-from-now self) if I painted it any other way. The only thing I ask is that if I start sounding self-pitying and whiny, you direct me back to this post.