If you have moved to an apartment in the United States, after living your whole life (or some part of it) in an apartment in Spain, you might have noticed a few differences at first glimpse. Here are the main ones I found out when I moved from my Spanish flat to an American apartment: United States apartment vs apartment in Spain.
Carpet flooring will welcome you in
You probably won’t walk on parquet or tiles in your apartment in the United States. A carpet flooring will welcome in your first steps, while you realize how different it feels to walk in that surface (specially barefoot). A lot has been said about the pros and cons of the carpet flooring, but truth been said, it feels pretty cozy if you manage to keep it clean (at some point the vacuum cleaner might become one of your best friends).
A different concept of blinds
This might be confusing at first, but I will try to explain the best I can. We have both curtains and blinds in most apartments and houses in Spain. These blinds are placed behind the window and you can pull them up or down (depending on the light you want to come in) through a mechanism than can be automated or manual. Then we have the curtains, to cover the window and also to complement the blinds in their light regulation (hope this simple explanation gives you an idea).
But I found a pretty different system when I first came into my apartment in the United States. Curtains and blinds seemed to be fused in one: vertical blinds covering the window (but not outside, they were placed inside) and doing also the function of the curtains at the same time. These blinds had a pretty tiny wand in one side of the window, through which you were able to open and close them (it took a twist movement to pull them up or down).
Blinds in Spain vs. the “no persianas” experience
At this point you might think: “Why is she describing with that level of detail a simple system of blinds?”. Well, I have an answer for that. I remember the first nights, going to sleep and closing those blinds carefully. Once they were totally closed, light from outside still made it through the blinds which had me struggling to get my sleep because of the lack of total darkness in the room. And then when the sun rised up, the first sun rays sneaked into my room at around 6am.
I don’t know how, but I ended up loving that soft light entering the room at night, and also waking me up. And after years have passed, I never pull down the blinds to a total darkness. I love to leave them slightly up and let that light in the morning to come in (a total unexpected blinds love story).
Plugs are different in Spain
We wrote about the difference among American plugs versus plugs in Spain in one of our latest articles Things you need to know before moving to Barcelona. So in case you are bringing with you electrical appliances or important technology devices take into account that you will need an adapter.
A mini trip to do the laundry
This is so American in my imaginary: going to do the laundry to the nearest laundromat, and sitting on a bench reading a book while waiting for your clothes to wash. To be honest, I never did that, since we had a common laundry room on the first floor. So I actually had to go down to the first floor whenever I wanted to do the laundry or dry my clothes, instead of washing them in my apartment and hang out the washing in the patio or terrace.
If you too moved from an apartment in Spain to an apartment in the United States, do these differences ring a bell?