Wrapping up my exchange
My exchange journey in Barcelona is coming to an end. The last post, almost three months ago, was written at the halfway point. Now, with the bags almost packed and the flight back home booked, it’s time to reflect on the experience.
The second half of the exchange went by faster than the first. At Easter, before the third term started, I went to the small port town of Sóller in Mallorca for three nights. From Palma to Sóller, I travelled on a wooden train through the island. I hiked there for two days and the views were unforgettable.
New courses started after Eastern and the weeks quickly fell back into my familiar rhythm, campus, classes, work, evenings at the apartment and training. When the sea got warmer, I often went swimming almost every day. The free train travel across Catalonia was still running, so weekends often turned into small trips.
In May, my friend travelled to Barcelona from Finland. We booked an apartment near Barceloneta Beach, and we spent the first full day lying on the beach and swimming. In the following days, we went on a beautiful coastal hike from Vilanova to Sitges and walked around Barcelona’s streets and alleys. As my friend said, Barcelona is the perfect city if you want to combine beaches, nature and big-city life.
The third term brought different courses and a different group of people to work with. Some of the friends from the first term, the three-month exchangers who left in January, had already gone back home. It’s a strange thing about exchange programs when the community keeps changing and you just need to go with the flow. You meet people quickly and genuinely and then everyone is pulled in different directions.
Tecnocampus turned out to be a good fit. The campus where companies and the university share the same space creates an atmosphere that’s a bit different from a traditional university. However, I didn’t get to see much collaboration between the companies and the university. The teaching quality stayed consistent throughout. I’m glad I chose the courses I did.
Mataró grew on me more than I expected. At first, it felt like a small town next to Barcelona, a place to sleep, study and work. But over six months, I started to notice the smaller things, like familiar faces in places I visited several times a week, such as the market, the fruit shop and the calisthenics park. Living with Spanish flatmates gave me a closer look at everyday life here than a tourist would ever get. My best dinner was with my host Victor, who took me to a traditional paella restaurant. We ate full menu, he told me stories about Mataró and about the photos covering the restaurant’s walls.
When I arrived in January, I wrote about a slightly anxious feeling that came after the initial excitement settled. That feeling didn’t last. What replaced it was something more stable. A comfortable feeling in being somewhere new, in the daily routine of being a foreigner just getting on with life.
Six months is long enough to move past the surface layer of an exchange experience. Long enough to get bored sometimes, to have off weeks and to miss people at home. But also long enough to build some real understanding of a place and a more honest sense of what it’s like to live somewhere rather than just visit.
Thanks to all the students, the people I met on campus, the family I lived with and everyone else I met during this unforgettable journey.
-Otto
Posted 6/17/2026