Homesharing through AirBnB: My thoughts on living together with strangers...
Hey guys! ☀ I want to tell you a bit about the apartment I live in and how it is to share it with people from all around the world.
Currently, I'm doing an internship in Barcelona. The search for a nice, decent room was quite hard. Many apartments here have tiny rooms with either no windows or a small window to the narrow courtyard, which is dark and stuffy. Having a nice room with good daylight contributes to life quality a lot, since I would going to have to spend time in my room to get some university stuff done.
So finally, I was lucky to find a room in a wonderful apartment. It's not too expensive, it's quite big and I have my own wonderful balcony. The apartment is fully equipped, and, as you can see on the picture above, we have a cute little terrace.
I share the apartment with the land lady, a beautiful columbian woman. She lives here full-time and rents my room to people like me who study abroad and stay for long term. Then, there's two more rooms in the apartment which she rents to airbnb guests. So, I have a lot of flatmates that come and go.
The first days and weeks, this was quite overwhelming. New people every week, people I didn't know. It can be a bit scary not knowing the people you live with, since a home is something really private and intimate.
Also, the guests can be very weird sometimes. Some do not talk at all, and some won't stop talking... They leave the lights on all the time, don't flush the toilet properly or let the water tap dripping. If they're girls, there's hair everywhere and the bathroom is always occupied. They don't clear up the mess in the kitchen or separate the trash properly. Some are loud all day, but some rarely appear and I don't even notice they're here. And I swear: someone just stole my food ...
But despite of all the cons, I started to love living in a shared home. Guys, my English has improved so much since living here! Most of the people are very open and communicative and so I get into conversations very often. They're from all over the world. I've met people from Kanada, the U.S., Columbia, Norway, Great Britain, Germany and a lot more places. And after a few weeks, I already had invitations from so many people to come visit their country and be their guest.
It also gives me a good feeling to be able to share my knowledge about Barcelona and the places to go. Many guests ask for sightseeing advice or don't know how to get to certain places and I'm always here to help. Sometimes they even tell me about a cool spot I've never heard of, or some tasty restaurant I have to try out.
One guest even gave me some Persian and Indian food and two beautiful T-Shirts, because he needed some space in his luggage.
I guess, that's the main idea of airbnb: Getting involved with people, sharing knowledge and helping each other out. My partner and I have been thinking of sharing our own apartment in Berlin - just to save some money on the rent and to meet new people from all over the world. We can all learn so much from each other and sharing our homes is a really good opportunity to do so.
Racism, Sexism and all the other -isms are still so present in todays world, as well as prejudices and skepticism over foreign people.
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