Lee and I are back into the real estate hunt full swing. It´s pretty remarkable how many buildings we have seen in Barcelona and how quickly businesses are turning over. I would estimate that on any given city block in the center of Eixample, we´ve seen at least three of the buildings. And now we´re starting to see them for the second times! The top contender right now is floors 1 & 2 of a building that we almost made an offer on the third floor of two and a half years ago. I have appointment today to go see this place that we had high hopes about almost three years ago. We´re going to see another place on Friday that we saw two and a half years ago, but the owner has evidently now decided that he´s okay with a hostel.

On Saturday, Lauren and I went to the grocery store around the corner. Yada, yada, yada, I got into an altercation with a crazy man who was trying to steal things and now I have to watch my back.

Lauren couldn't believe that I'd get involved in a situation like this but someone has to stand up for our neighborhood. Not on my watch!

In an unrelated story, some punks snuck into the hostel lobby on Friday night and did some mailbox vandalism. This happened once before to a more serious degree (involving a bodily function) but on Friday, they just went for the old-fashioned open the unlocked mailboxes and throw all the mail on the floor gig. I wonder if the Halloween season is a universal call to pranksters all over the world. Personally, I think TPing is a lot more effective than throwing junk mail about. Know how I randomly found six Euros in the mailbox the other day? Maybe that was paying it forward for the cleanup duties.

We'll call it even.

I too have been called out for not blogging ever, so here's a quick update of what's been going on the last few months.

Lee and I went to Morocco.




Lee and I celebrated birthdays in August - Lee threw me a surprise party at the new bar owned by the Comerc24 and Tapac24 guy, Carles Abellan. For Lee's birthday, we had a big brunch at our house and then went to Festa Major de Gracia. Alexa, our second most veteran employee, returned to the US for awhile. We hired Alfonso to replace her. He's been a great addition to the team.



Lee and I went to India.



Lee went home for a couple weeks to see family and friends, while I stayed behind to run the show here. I took my GMAT in September and have been applied to MBA programs at Harvard, Wharton and Kellogg (due today!). Cassie, our most veteran employee, left Barcelona to return home to the States. It was tough to lose her, but I'm sure she's got great things ahead of her. The hostel has been doing really well. September was almost as busy as August, and October's shaping up to be a pretty full month too.

Lee and I went to Munich to visit Monica and enjoy Oktoberfest.



Now we have no more trips planned until Thanksgiving, MBA applications are done (well almost- they will be done today), and we're buckling down to do some improvements at the hostel and work on finding hostel #2. We're closing down for a couple of days in early November to do some repairs, painting, etc. We hired an intern, Paulina, who is working on some graphic-design related projects for us now. Lee and I are essentially writing a Barcelona guidebook and walking tours for our guests. We also hired Alexander to work some night shifts while Ariel was on vacation. They've both been super helpful and all of the guests love them. Right now, we're scouring our neighborhood for another spot to open a hostel. We've seen quite a few places. The top pick so far is an old retirement home on Passeig de Gracia. It's two floors, about three times the size of the current hostel, and has a giant patio out back. Our idea is to do some minor fix-ups before opening, run the hostel for about a year, and then close one floor at a time to do a complete overhaul. We still need to look at a lot more places and figure out an exact budget for ourselves. We had a rather depressing meeting at our bank, Caja Navarra, the other day. Apparently they're not giving away free money anymore. Now, you essentially need a wealthy Spanish grandfather to secure any type of loan. The options we thought we had with them might be a little more limited.

I promise to be better about blogging and keeping you all updated with all of our trials and tribulations over here.

So, we've been terrible about the blog recently. My excuse is that we've neglected it in order to ramp up our Twitter usage. I realize that we're targeting two different audiences- potential guests and Barcelona residents with our Twitter and friends and family with our blog- and we should really do better maintaining both.

There's too much to fill in since our last post so I'll just jump right back in with tales of strange hostel stories.

Yesterday, I checked the Somnio mailbox in the lobby of our building. Nothing urgent ever comes here so there's usually a stack of mail whenever I think to check it. There were a few bills (boring), more than a few ads for Domino's Pizza (score!), and a wad of paper. Our neighbors are no longer our enemies but they continue to passively attack us by throwing all of their garbage mail (read: Domino's ads and other wads of paper) in our box. I nearly dismissed this wad of paper but I think I stopped because of its heft. At first, I thought it was a wadded up chewing gum wrapper and was a bit sicked out. But, when I actually looked at it, I realized it was money! Someone had wrapped a five Euro note around a one Euro coin and left it in our box!

It's a mystery. I have no idea who left it there or why, but you better believe I check my mail every day now.