Benjamin Gunst
Summer trip to Spain with the family and Xanaphia
Summer is here, and with the COVID restrictions easy for the first year, everywhere in the South is hot! My parents made a reservation month before an Airbnb in Barcelona, Spain, and surprisingly they invited Xanaphia. She arrived from Switzerland a few days ago and had no intention of doing anything fun during the summer. I believe the Swiss are ok with being boring. Xanaphia intended to stay in Luxembourg for a Rocket League competition for a couple of weeks and then go back to Nyon for the rest of the season.
When I explained to my parents Xanaphia's plans, they didn't hesitate to invite her. Xanaphia was not entirely convinced, but she learnt about a Rocket League aficionado competition in Barcelona and registered immediately.

Our first day in Barcelona was madness; the airport was as packed as possible. In addition to that, we didn't pass any COVID-19 screening. Airbnb was located in the city centre, where buildings are small. We stayed on the fourth floor. Since the elevator was tiny, we decided to send the pieces of luggage through the elevator. On the second trip of the elevator, it didn't open. It got stuck with half of our bags inside.
My dad called the host, and this guy contacted the maintenance company. Three hours later, we got our luggage back. But we had lost most of the day in the city.
The next day we walked around downtown and visited several nice city spots. We delayed our trip to Sitges since Xanaphia wanted to participate in one Rocket League competition. While my parents visited the Picasso Museum, Xanaphia and I attended the party.
We teamed up with another couple, one Catalan boy with his Caribbean girlfriend. Our first adversary was a team full of South Americans. We won. We won again against a team of polish girls and then we had a difficult battle against a group of recently arrived Ukrainians in Spain. We finally won.
Unfortunately, we lost the final with a team as diverse as ours: One Swiss boy, one French girl, one Colombian guy and one Senegalese girl. They were all French speakers. Our team was different: the Catalan boy had the worst English of the group, while her Caribbean girlfriend had a strange Bob Marley-Style accent. That was our Achilles heel since we couldn't communicate fluently.
Later, we became friends with the couple and ended up eating in a KFC (they had the best marketing around the city). They had met in Miami while the Catalan boy was visiting her cousin. The Caribbean girl has been living there since she was 10. She was half Cuban-half Bahamian, so she could communicate fluently in English and Spanish. The Catalan guy confirmed that she also had a funny/sexy accent in Spanish. A Cuban-Bahamian mix is as strange as a Finnish-Belarusian mix; that's something you will never hear.
The rest of the summer was fantastic; my parents and Xanaphia got along. However, there was still something strange about her. I don't know what.