DOWNSIZING

After 15 months of pretending that you've turned European, nothing makes you feel more utterly American than a house move.

In July, we decided to move from Sant Gervasi, an upscale, uber-residential area, to Gràcia, a grittier, livelier, more urban spot. The decision was based on a mish-mash of semi-articulated motives, but more or less boiled down to a way cooler neighborhood, a way cheaper rent, and a seeming deficit of big life changes this calendar year. After a whirlwind apartment search, we stumbled upon a neat little newly-constructed 3-story casita that's located about 20 yards away from the neighborhood market; I was charmed. Two days before our US trip, we signed a lease and that was that. 2017 life change? Check.

We were supposed to relocate in August, but our bad luck with house moves and water hazards persisted; the place flooded three days before we were supposed to arrive. We were delayed for a month while they gutted the bottom level, and they just finished last week. So this week was it.

On Monday, a group of packers boxed up our apartment, and on Tuesday, the same guys moved it all to Gràcia. But the sheer size of our furniture and quantity of our boxes overwhelmed them almost immediately. The lead guy took one look at our guest bed and said scornfully, "Sois americanos, no? Todo es muy grande." (You guys, it's a queen-sized bed. It's not that big.) It only got worse when they arrived in Gràcia to find a much smaller unit with a much higher number of stairs. The five guys scowled continuously for the duration, while I self-consciously bribed them with Twix bars and pizza (which, of course, only served to reinforce my Americanness). 

We're mostly settled in now, though Aaron's been making regular trips to the dumpsters to further downsize our very American quantity of stuff. While the process of relocating never seems to become less painful, there is something very magical about tidying up (someone should write a book about that) and simplifying the things in your life. Two moves in a year-in-a-half make you realize how much crap you just keep keepin' (even crap that you deemed mission-critical during the last downsizing, and thus moved 4,000 miles across an ocean, only to ditch in the latest house swap). So lesson learned, Mr. Grumpy Mover Man: as American as we still are and will always be, I henceforth aspire to the European model of living life smaller.