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| Valencía |
Last week I
totally felt over the moon, when I got an email from the “Büro für internationale
Beziehungen” and they told me that I’m nominated to study at the Universidad de
Valencía for the summer semester of 2014! Having the chance to study in Spain
means a lot to me as I’m totally into this country and I have always liked to
live there for some time.
But why
Spain? Why have I chosen Spanish as my second foreign language? Here’s the
story behind my “Spanish madness”:
When I was
12, I attended a so-called “language elementary school”. This meant that some
subjects like Geography and History were held in English by our teachers. We also
had many exchange teachers from abroad and sometimes we even had exchange
students from abroad, who stayed with us and went with us to school. Thanks to
this exchange programme, I also had the chance to go abroad with my school
class and stay at a host family in Italy, Spain and England. I enjoyed all this
trips very much, but the best one was definitely to Barcelona. When I was 12, I
went there with two teachers and some other pupils from my class and I still
remember how excited we were when our plane landed at the airport in Spain. We
didn’t know what lay ahead of us as none of us neither knew the host family nor
a word Spanish (or Catalan, which would have also been a great help).
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| The bustling Ramblas in Barcelona |
After the
transport to our partner school, which was just 5 minutes of the famous “Ramblas”,
we met our host familes brothers and sisters. I can still recall the excitement
when my name was read out and suddenly a girl in my age with dark-brown girls
walked up to me and introduced her as my host sister. I think this was the
moment my life changed – well, I can’t say it was love at the first sight, but
it was definitely friendship at the first sight! Anna was so open and
warm-hearted and we immediately hit it off. Also her little sister and her
parents were so nice and friendly to me and after one week with this family, it
felt like we have known each other forever. I enjoyed the time with them so
much, that I had to struggle with not starting to cry when I had to go back
home to Austria.
But my
sadness was definitely in vain: Since that certain week in April 2007, we have
visited each other every summer. I think I’ve already been to Barcelona 7 or 8
times so far – it already feels like a second home to me. And just imagine, even
our parents became friends! Last year we all went together on holidays to
Salzburg and Munich and I later travelled with Anna to Venice. I always love it
when I visit “my” Spanish family as it’s always great fun to be with them. I
started to enjoy it even more when I started to study Spanish and was able to
understand and talk to them as Anna’s younger sister and also her mother don’t
speak English very much.
I hope you
can now understand why I love Spain and its language so much… And I’m sure
after my time in Valencía I will love it even more!
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