Living in Spain through the eyes of a Hungarian expat

Ákos moved to Spain as a university student. I asked him how it felt to leave his home country, how he coped with difficulties, what he gained and what he missed the most about Hungary.

Leaving your home country is in no case an easy decision whether it arises from the desire to enrich your CV with international experience or you just want to prove yourself in a novel setting. In any case, you might face difficulties: you struggle with the language, you come across cultural differences, or you just encounter other unforeseen circumstances where you can only count on yourself. After a while, though, once your new life becomes dull, you start to miss your old habits: hanging out with your friends or just eating out in your favourite takeaway place.

The language

When I first arrived in Spain, I was not really familiar with Spanish, since I had never imagined that one day I would need to speak it. English was of no use in that rural small town where I ventured to start my new life. The first few months I had realised that without speaking Spanish I could not carry out even the simplest tasks, like going to the hairdresser or buying food in a supermarket. “Tell me how would you like your hair” – the hairdresser would ask me. Showing pictures just did fine at the beginning, but

I knew that eventually I had to start speaking the language. So I took classes.

Subsequently, life got easier for me. People started communicating with me, which was a very good thing as I had had difficulties establishing new connections. Finally, I stopped being looked at as a foreigner and people started to be willing to accept me as a newcomer living among them.

Cultural differences

As a Hungarian, I had not anticipated the Spanish culture to be outrageously different from mine. However, there was a particular minuscule phenomenon, which never stopped bugging me, that is, life stops between 2 and 5 PM.

The siesta hours were sometimes considerably annoying, especially when I wanted to do some light shopping after finishing my part-time job at 2PM and I found the shops closed. This was a huge change when you think about the comfort of easily finding 24/7 shops in Budapest.