Christmas break in Romania

Last Christmas were the most special ones ever, as I went to visit Iulia's paradise(1). We stay all days but one in Braşov, the first day in Bucureşti. At this opportunity I have the chance to meet her parents, with the seriousness that this implies. Also, I met her friends who were constantly asking for us, taking to different places, and enjoying with us our stay.

For me it was the chance to experience both a real winter and a real Christmas, like the ones we see in the movies, or in the Christmas postal we get during this time of the year. The temps were on average around -8°C, with peaks down to -20°C. I have to admit that at the beginning I was quite frightened with such a cold, but slowly I got used to it, wearing underpants, gloves and the unmissable scarf. We did some winter sports, like skiing(2) and going down the hill with slay.

I also tried everything from the Romanian cuisine, honors go to Iulia's mom who delighted us with very delicious dishes. Someone asked me to enumerate the things I don't like and there is only one: one kind of cheese that tastes as butter milk. The rest is excellent.

It's difficult to explain everything that happened in a few lines, it was a very nice time for us of joy and discovering for me. I leave a link to a photolog I made while I was in the trip. You'll have a chance to see a little bit by yourself.


(1) This is the name given to Braşov by Iulia.
(2) To be honest, I barely managed to get skies on and off, and turn around me. It's not as easy as it seems.

A summer vacation

I must admit I'm quite careless with my blog. The thing is that at some point one has to prioritize some things over others, and that's why my blogging activities has been reduced to a bare mininum almost null.

Anyway, I'll try to catch up and revive the main aim of this blog: to keep update all of you about my activities at this side of the ocean (for all my friends on the other side).

Let's go to the point then. This post is about last summer, where my parents came to visit me. They stayed in Europe for a period of 3 months, of which 2 I spent with them. We decide to take most of the chance they were here, so we did some crazy things. As the flew into Barcelona, I went to meet them and come by car to The Netherlands. This was our itinerary:


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We stayed overnight in Lyon where we did some sightseeing in the city. The day after, we arrived to Eindhoven, stopping at midday in Luxembourg.

My parents stayed at my place for one month that we spent traveling of course. We went to places as Cologne, Aachen (in Germany), the punt of the three countries (D-B-NL), Middelburg, Kinderdijk, Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, Den Bosch, Maastricht, Liège, Verviers, Leuven, Antwerp, Gent, Brugge, among others. As I was coming to the university, Brenda y Alberto, friends of mine and the family already, took them out to visit places in the surroundings of Eindhoven. Thanks them a lot!

In the way back to Spain, we passed by Paris where we stayed overnight. The day after passed by Andorra, to stay a few days in Barcelona. Then, following the route of the Mediterranean, we went to Tarragona, Murcia, Lorca, to finish our trip in Pedro Martinez, the village where my father was born. There, we stayed for the main celebration of the town with most of our relatives. We also travel around the village, like going to Granada and Almería.

Of course, in the meantime, I had to come back to continue with my obligations, while they continued enjoyed, with the very nice companion and support of my relatives.

This trip was the best gift I could ever have done to everyone, this was as thanking them for all they always have given me, all the love they could give. Thanks a lot to them, and all who cordially helped us to have a very nice time.

Return trip:


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Leisure Trips Part II

The another trip I mentioned in the previous post was this, going to Scotland. The main goal was to hike the highest mountain in the UK, the Ben Nevis. Together with some friends, Rogelio, Ángela and Iulia, we went into this adventure.

We flew into Edinburgh and from them we took a rented car to go to Fort William, the town just at the base of the mountain. The first experience for the drivers, and also for me, was to get used to the right steering wheel, and driving on the left. Everything is symmetric, even getting into a roundabout, or drive slowly in the left, overtake from the right. Just weird... Even our drivers would go to the other side of the car, as a left-sided steering wheel car! Luckily our drivers got used to it after some hours :)

The Scottish outback is just great! It resembled me the Puna grassland, but of course, we never went higher than 400masl.

The D-day was the second day there. It started raining quite hard, but later we sunshine started breaking through the fog and the clouds, and we have a very beautiful date hiking the mountain up. With this pictures you can see how excited and happy we were at the beginning.

Later, our faces were reflecting the tiredness...





We got encouraged to go further when we saw the top of the mountain, an incredible experience, provided that you are very exhausted by then!


On the top, everything was just joy and hungriness :) We had lunch, took all pictures for the record, and went down again.





Of course, the going down wasn't as exciting as the ascent because we were already very tired, but the landscape was there to be just contemplated... as going up we had some foggy conditions.




The figures: we climbed up 1300m approx, that's the height of the mountain, but we start from the sea level, so we climbed all its height. It took us 4:40h to get to the top, and 4h to get to the base back. That day, after a very desired warm dinner, we went to bed at 21:40 (time that we just got to the hostel).

The day #3, we continued our trip, a bit improvised, though. We went all the way north-east to Inverness, driving across the Loch Ness. (Un)fortunately we didn't manage to meet Nessy...


In Inverness, after some beers, we wandered around the city, stretching our soring muscles, specially those in our legs! In the evening, we drove all the south to Edinburgh, talking about very spicy topics ;)




In Edinburgh, we had a hostel just in the coast of the North sea, so we decide to go to the coast, and drink some authentic Scottish whisky! It was so cold that all the whisky we drank served to warm our bodies up. Each of us took a quarter of a bottle on average, and I think that at least I wasn't as drunk as I'd have expected...

The day after, the obliged driving over an English car. So did I over a not so busy road next to our hostel :)

And of course, the tour through the downtown... The main attraction the castle. As you can see, the weather played a very nice role, sunny although it was very cold.





The final day, we just had to back home... having very nice memories of this fantastic trip, the four of us as a group spent a very nice time, enjoy 100% every moment. Thanks all of you guys for thaaat(1)

All or most of the pictures are gently provided by Iulia following this link. Thanks a lot!

(1) Common sight for Scotts: every time they are sorry, they say "sorry for/about that", with the 'that' quite stressed. We even laughed when someone was sorry... just funny :)

Leisure Trips Part I

After some time, finally I managed to find some time to sit and write. The question is of course what happened? Just some trips, quite some work, and some social life. Indeed I'm supposed to work now, but I don't feel like doing that, I feel actually sleepy, tired, then let's write something.

Back to the end of April, some cousins came to visit me for the second time, I also took some days off, and we traveled a little bit, through Holland, we visited places as De Keukenhof, the huge park full of tulips and many other flowers I visited 2 years ago.


We also went to Gouda, the town where the Goudsekaas (the Goudse cheese) is originally from. Also to the capital city of the Noord-Brabant province, 's Hertogenbosch.

As as it couldn't be less, on April 30, we went to Amsterdam to celebrate queen's day. I did this already last 2 years, but every year it is a different party. Too crowded according to my perception.

From there, we flight into Prague, and during two days, we visited such a beautiful city. The people a bit rude though, but we had a nice time walking through its streets, going to restaurants, and more walking!



After that, they came back to Spain, and I visited a friend in Bonn, the birth place of Beethoven. I had gone to Köln which is just "next door", but this small and peaceful city is gorgoleous! It just coincide with the Rheininflammen, an exhibition of fireworks that takes all the Rhein river long. Together with her friends, we had a nice time. Here there are some more pictures by my friend.



That week I enjoyed a lot, ended very tired, but after 4 days just another trip was going to come... this, for a future post :)

İstanbul

What a wonderful city! Between Europe and Asia, Istanbul is the city I went lately. A treasure for humanity, three cultures shaped it to make it unique. I still can't find the words to describe how beautiful the city is. To this, I should add all the wonderful people that inhabits it: just a mixture of cuteness, politeness and trickiness. The monuments it holds are just impressive and far unique for a city. Its traffic is also a mix of adventure, irritation and illegality. Of course, this trip couldn't have been the same without the companion of two of my colleagues at the university, Peter and Sebastiaan. To give some impressions, let me elaborate more in some experiences I had, in a somewhat chronological order.

* Sleepy taxi driver.
Just arrived, after some waiting, going to our hostel, our first adventure starts. I wanted to look at the city with more details, I decide to go to the front seat of the van that transported us. After some minutes in a traffic jam, the driver starts falling asleep, to what I reacted giving some conversation. After pointing out that he looked tired, he asked whether I had a driver license and after my positive answer, he offered me to drive the van to the hostel! I scarily denied, and after all, we safely arrived!

* Attracting/sticky sellers.
Every time we walked in front of a bar/restaurant/shop someone standing outside will persuade to sell something... the game was to convince the prospective customer with different techniques. One of them will explain us everything he had to offer in the restaurant in everyone's language: Dutch, Spanish (in our case) but also French, English, Italian... not only that, the spontaneousness to make a topic conversation.

* Tulips all the city around.
Do you think that Holland is the paradise of tulips? Well, yes, but the only one place! During our stay they were celebrating the tulip festival with different kind of tulips, figures made with them everywhere! Most of tulips were imported from Holland though :)

* Topkapı Palace.
Main residence of the sultans during the Ottoman regime, it holds many antiquities, and beautiful building as well.



* Basilica Cistern.
A cistern basilica-shaped, ordered by a Byzantine emperor. Very well restored and a nice atmosphere. Two Medusas were used as support of one of the pillars.

* Grand Bazaar.
It's a big market place, a mixture of a flea market and some tend shops. The structure of the building is unique, and sellers quite smart: bargaining is mandatory, and giving up early would follow by some subtle teasing... Even more surprising is that *all* sellers will address me in Spanish, without opening my mouth at all!


* Black sea.
Istanbul is just 30km away from the Black sea which at a first glance seems to be close and easily reachable. It is indeed a short distance, but took us 5 hours to get there. First, because noboby really knows how to get there, specially by public transport. After figuring out how to get closer and closer, we didn't count on the traffic jams: we were going for nearly 2 hours at walking speed. By chance in one of the intermediate stops, we saw a bus with a sign to go to Kylios. After some time, we finally arrived. It was a dreams made true for me, although the beach isn't the great thing. In any case, I could dip my toes into its sand...


* Cheating taxi drivers.
When you take a taxi, you would definitively be fooled. They will, for example, magically make the tachometer run up very fast and sudden. Also change the banknotes when you pay them. Fortunately, we were aware of this issue and we weren't teased. In a sense, we tried to avoid taxis to avoid stressing situations...

* Taksim square and Beyoğlu district.
This is the very city center in the European side. Woohh I can't explain how vivid is this part of the city: full of people at any time! Bars, discos, pubs, restaurants all over this portion of the city, the indisputable heart of it. BTW, going to discos is quite expensive: 5€ for a 330cl bottle of normal beer!

* Golden Horn and Bosporus strait.
We also took a boat trip to have a view of the city from the sea side. We crossed under the two bridges that communicate both continents. Under the bridges on the Golden Horn there are fishermen getting some fresh fish, I think as a hobby.


* Aya Sofya.
This is a Christian church converted into a mosque by the Ottoman occupation. Interestingly, from inside it looks like a church, but full of Islamic symbols. Aya Sofya means Holy Worship, not Saint Sofia as sometimes is translated into.


* Blue mosque.
Situated in front of the Aya Sofya. It has very beautiful internal decoration with blue tiles. Its yards are just huge and imposing.


* Time to pray.
One thing that really makes this city to belong to a Muslim religion are the praying songs played 5 times a day across the city from (I guess) each mosque. Here I recorded a video to make you feel what it is like. People, though, don't pay much attention to it, a few really go into the mosques to pray, getting cleaned at the faucets located outside some mosques before entering to pray.

* Turkish bath.
We couldn't have left Istanbul without taking a hamam. First 15 minutes in a hot room (86ºC, 30% humidity) and a shock slump into cool water. Later, lay on a marble bed, receiving splashes of cold and warm water and a scratchy massage. After we are covered by foam and a complete corporal massage follows. Finally, you are so relaxed that you must go to bed!

* Nargile (Shisha, hooka or water pipe)
Nothing compares to sit on a street of Beyoğlu district and enjoy a water pipe. This usually comes with some flavoured tobacco, like apple, banana, orange among others. It is a quite relaxing activity, accompanied playing black gammon. It would be strange that some strangers join you at the table to tell all their adventures in Istanbul.

* One city, two continents.
This is yet another magic thing about Istanbul: it is divided by the Bosporus strait which separates Europe and Asia. It is all an experience to cross a bridge and being in another continent.


Just to make a summary: the best city I have ever visited! It defeated clearly to Barcelona who was among my favourite cities.

BTW, and although it is not mentioned, this was a business trip, but we took some days off to do some sightseen. And this explain why I went to a workshop in another continent and came back to Europe in a few hours :)

I'd like to thank Peter and Sebastiaan for providing most of the pictures in this post and their very nice humor sense, kindness, support and companionship.