I wouldn't go back to Jaén

I just hated it. I lasted 4 days before I made my university change my destination to somewhere else. People might say I should've waited longer but I already knew it wasn't going to work.

A group of us flew to Malaga first of all which wasn't too bad but then we had to get an 8 hour bus to Jaén as it was the only thing available (trains stopped at 2pm). The cost wasn't so bad but get ready for dog eat dog. Don't bother queuing nicely, as soon as that bus turns up, you get your luggage on and then queue to show your ticket.

Once on the bus, we all noticed we had assigned seats and someone was sitting in them, it was a mistake, they needed to sit in the ones behind so my friend, politely in Spanish said 'I think you're in our seats'. The guys in the seats moved with no problems but some other man had heard and started shouting at the rest of the bus what we'd done. I don't know if he didn't think we could understand but I wanted to deck him. My whole bus journey was filled with me being angry at this man for something that didn't concern him so I was already annoyed.

We arrived in Jaén at about half 10, we'd booked a lovely hotel on the outskirts of the city, I think it was called Ciudad de Jaén or something like that. My friend and I got a garden view room which on one side, you saw the lights of the city, on the other, was complete darkness. There was nothing in the distance. That's when I started realising how isolated we are.

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One of our friends was, and for lack of better words, clearly gay. And I mention this because it actually was part of the experience of why I didn't like Jaén. As we would walk around the city, my poor friend would keep getting looks of disgust thrown his way, one woman in a restaurant walked by him and was only about 2 feet away from his face giving him a look of disgust but didn't even blink. All he did was smile because what else could he do?

Another thing was restaurants. Everywhere we went, people would say they weren't serving food and to this day, I have no idea why. In one restaurant, we were only looking at the menu outside when a waiter came to us and suddenly started saying the restaurant was closed and shut the door on us. I look through the window and everyone was eating and having a drink. In another restaurant, we asked about food and the waiter said they were only cooking from a small menu, so we thought fair enough. The small menu only had 4 things available though, but we didn't moan. That was until a Spanish family walked in, ordered a massive pile of food with no problems, ate it all and walked out. I have no idea why we were treated differently.

My friend went into a phone shop to try and get a Spanish sim card, so he asks a shop assistant about the deals she's got. She "politely" turned around from talking to her mate, rolled her eyes and then turned back round to her mate to finish the conversation. If my Spanish was better at the time, I would've had some words. Even when we tried, we were being ignored.

At the university, the staff was ok. Some were friendly and others weren't. We asked for help with accommodation and a woman walked us to a lamppost with some advertisements and then left us there. Even the other foreign students arriving at the university weren't friendly. I remember queuing to sign up and there were some Italian girls who stopped talking to stare at all of us, then turned back around and laughed. I'm ranting at my mate saying how rude this is (I really didn't care if they could understand me or not) and I'm really annoyed at this point. When we got to the front to sign up, it turned out our English university had forgotten to send important papers to Jaén so we couldn't sign up. At this point, my gay friend had already decided to quit the year abroad altogether and my other friend was thinking about quitting (there were 4 of us in total). Fair enough we couldn't sign up but we decided we would try and ask for help again with accommodation. The woman at the desk said she couldn't help because we weren't students at the university yet and then said to us that we need to get the forms and there was a printer in the library when we got them. So obviously, we ask where it is and how to use it, and she says we won't be able to because we're not students at the uni. Brilliant.

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For me, this was a huge weight off my shoulders. I didn't want to sign up. I didn't want to stay there. My friend burst into tears, the only proper meal we'd had in 3 days was a Burger King so we were all tired and incredibly frustrated. It was the final straw. That's when I said to my mate that we weren't staying here and we were going to be transferred. If you're not happy with where you are, tell your university straight away and don't back down. If it was like our university (Sunderland) they will try and make it as hard as possible for you to change but hold your ground.

The only thing great about Jaén was the hotel. They were always polite and we had incredible weather. It's just a shame the majority of people ruined it. I wouldn't go back there if you paid me.