What Visitors Think of Seattle – Spain (30 M)

L(Male-30) was from Spain. Catalan to be exact.  He rented a car and went Couchsurfing from Seattle to Portland to Eugene to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon for about 4 weeks and was now back in Seattle. He’s a girls basketball coach in Spain. He’s a huge NBA fan and was able to buy 5 jerseys because he won $800 playing roulette in Las Vegas. He also wanted to see the basketball court at UW, so he walked to Hec Ed Pavillion. I warned him he wouldn’t just be able to walk in, but he somehow finagled his way in and was thrilled to see a college basketball arena.

L’s Questions/Observations about the US: 

• He thought Americans were overly friendly. He told me a story to demonstrate this opinion. He went to Portland but couldn’t find a place to stay. He met some random guy on the street who tried to help him find a place to stay by calling friends and hostels. He couldn’t find anybody to host L, so he invited L to stay with his family for the night. His family enjoyed L’s stay so much, they let him stay for 5 days. 
• Because Spain is a smaller country and has better public transportation, he was not used to driving for so long. He said he probably drove more miles in his 4 weeks in the US than the last 10 years in Spain. His record in the US was driving 11 hours in one day. 

L’s Questions/Observations about Seattle: 

• Pike Place Market is “insanely crowded” and stayed for less than 30 minutes. This was July in the heat of tourist season.  
• Loved the atmosphere of the Seattle Center. It was during the Bite of Seattle, so it was full of people, nice weather, beer gardens. He had alligator on a stick. 
• I took him to the 5 Point Café and he said this is exactly what he pictured an American bar looking like. “Just like the movies!” 
• He met some of my friends and we met some random people at Bite of Seattle that we hung out with. He was surprised how normal it seemed that so many different ethnicities could be friends. It’s not common where he’s from. 

My observations of L/learnings from L: 

• He is from the Catalan region of Spain and he feels the majority of Catalans want to break off from Spain and be on their own. Said that Catalans make up 35% of the people in Spain. 

• He made Paella, his countries most popular dish for me. It took him at least 2.5 hours to make it and he was very concerned I wouldn’t like it. I told him I’ve had Paella before and he said, “but not from a Catalan”. It was good and worth the wait
• He looked like Freddie Prinze Jr.
• He really liked watching Friends. In Spain it’s the law that all episodes are dubbed in Spanish, so he got a kick out of hearing the real voices of the actual actors. He said it was really strange for him.  
• Since he went to visit UW, I had to explain to him what, “throw your dubs up” meant. 

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