¡Me gustaría volver!

Barcelona. A city I would love to live in. While spending only three days in Barcelona in September 2013, I've been astonished and favorably impressed by this gorgeous city. The beautiful city itself, the beach, the architectural highlights and "el ambiente" persuaded me to come back soon to this wonderful place.

However, what I found a bit challenging was the language. I've been learning Spanish for four years now, which is quite a long time. People in Barcelona speak Catalan though, which is very close to Spanish but often differs a lot from it. Nevertheless, if habitants notice that you are not familiar with Catalan, they immediately change from Catalan to Spanish.

As you can imagine, there were loads of reasons to visit Barcelona. For me, there was another very particular reason to come to this place. My favorite author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, was born in Barcelona and tends to write about the city in his novels. As I've read several books of this inspiring person, I was highly curious to explore this intriguing city.

I've fallen for this city and hope I can soon be back to explore even more. If you like to see more photos I took during my short stay in Barcelona, feel free to visit either the gallery on my website or on my gallery on flickr.com.

Barcelona is a very old city in which you can feel the weight of history; it is haunted by history. You cannot walk around it without perceiving it.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón