Fresh and cheap!

It has become very expensive to live in Barcelona, after Barcelona olympic in 1992, and after changing to euro currency. It was quite ok to earn 1,000 euro a month when I came here 12 years ago. The living cost in Barcelona has almost doubled for the last 12 years, yet salary of Spanish people has not doubled during those years…

Raising prices seem to be stopped for now thanks to the crisis… It is still expensive to live in Barcelona, more expensive than living in Berlin, Germany. Germans earn almost 3 times more than Spanish. All my German friends have left Barcelona. They can have better life back home.

It is quite expensive to eat out, and it is very expensive to have drinks at night. It is very hard and expensive to do anything if your income comes from Spain.

Yet, I still find some things are very cheap and good in Barcelona. It is very cheap to buy anything at local market or supermarket. And fresh food is very reasonable at local market. So it is quite good to cook by yourself to have a very good dishes, if you can cook. And alcohol is very cheap! You can get 500ml of beer at price of 1euro any where and you can get 1l of beer if you go to supermarkets.

And wines are quite reasonable as well. A bottle of white or red wine could be around 3-5 euros for ok ones. And you would get a very good bottle if you pay 10euros. This is great deal for people who love to drink.

There have been many vegetable shops run by Chinese in Barcelona and they have great deal of vegetables. They are so cheap that they make me wonder why they are so cheap always… In fact, they don´t have great looking vegetables like you can find in shops in Japan. Great amount of vegetables must get trashed in the Japanese food market system before they come to be displayed in shops… I like those BAD looking vegetables and they are quite delicious. I can get those three bunches of spinach for 1euro. And it is so good!

I cook soup for my kids with this spinach, and asparagus, zucchini together. And my kids eat the soup very well even though they don’t eat those vegetables when we serve the vegetables as they are. It is good way to feed our kids by changing the original shape of vegetables. We do it a lot in my house.

Zucchini, tomato are 1 euro for 1 kg!

And this whole pineapple is only 1 euro!

You still can eat and drink cheap in Barcelona if you can cook. I still have hope to be able to live in Barcelona, since I can cook quite well…