2003 tagged posts

In Learning German 2003, Europe On  02/09/2003  One comment

Weimar reminded me Leipzig. It seems that the two towns have lots in common, besides Goethe, of course. I waked around the historical center, it also rained. I, then, spent a time in a café to read a little about the city.

In order to know more about the city history I visited the Weimar Haus – das Geschichtserlebnis. It is a museum with an automatic guided visit. Doors open to different rooms and sceneries with wax personalities, videos and lighting effects. As audio explains the history of the place.

Other two important museums in town are Goethes Wohnhaus and Bauhaus Museum. The Goethe house was crowded, it should be a day for school visit. The museum is a walk through the different rooms of the place where the writer used to live. The Bauhaus Museum was not big, I expected more. It was a sort of repetition of what I saw in the Bauhaus museum in Berlin.

Concluding my quick visit to Weimar I had dinner in a Thai restaurant...

In Learning German 2003, Europe On  01/09/2003  No comments

I arrived in Leipzig on a Sunday morning. Since it was raining, I spent a lot of time in a Frühstücksbuffet (a brunch). I had lots of food and went back to the hostel for a nap. It was a perfect day to relax.

After the nap I walked around downtown, sometimes the sun tried to show up a little bit. The historical center is beautiful, with its old building, cafes and shops. Leipzig is a town with an artistic and intellectual background, here lived personalities such as Goethe and Bach. Today it seems to be an student town. This was one of the few European cities where I saw people kissing each other on the streets. That caught my attention because, in my idea of “cold German people” wouldn’t be youngsters kissing in public. Maybe they were tourists… I don’t believe so…

I visited the Bach Museum. It is not big, it has some images from his time, partitures sheet music and a handset with explanations on his life and work. I like it...

In Learning German 2003, Europe On  17/08/2003  No comments

The following weeks in Berlin I had German classes every morning. Long walks around town in the afternoons, plus museums, parks, zoo, aquarium, cafes, beach, flee market… And the evenings: pubs, movies, orchestra, live music, dance festival… It was a very cultural summer vacation, and in company of good friends.

Second week

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Third week

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In Learning German 2003, Europe On  16/08/2003  No comments

Together with 3 other classmate from Germana classes we got a train to Dresden. We used the Schönes Wochenende Ticket (Happy Weekend Ticket), a very cheap ticket that can be used unlimited times (only on regional trains) to up to 5 people. The trip was fun, we laughed a lot the whole journey. The city reminded me Prague or Budapest, we walked all over downtown. I love cities with rivers or sea.

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In Learning German 2003, Europe On  09/08/2003  One comment

A short trip from Berlin is to spend a day in Potsdam visiting palaces and gardens. Our first stop was the Sanssouci Palace (Schloss Sanssouci). We did a tour (in German) in the interior of the palace visiting many rooms. It is like others palaces I have already visited, something unreal for me, exaggerated and exuberant.

From there we walked on the beautiful gardens to the Chinese tea house (Chinesisches Teehaus). Once more; exuberance. The house is surrounded by golden statues. We continued to visit the Roman baths (Römanischer Bäder). It is incredible to imagine how they lived here. Everything it is so pompous that looks like it lacks life, that it is really cold and distant.

We got late to the new palace (Neues Palais), it closes at 5pm. Since I was tired I lay down on a branch in the shade and waited for Lorena. She went walk around the palace to see its architecture.

By dusk we walked to the lake to see the marble palace (Marmorpalais) and the Dutch village...

In Learning German 2003, Europe On  08/08/2003  One comment

The first week in Berlin was a sort of getting used to the new routine that it will last for a month. I always liked routines in cities where I don’t live. It is like to have an intimacy with a place for a short period of time.

I started with German classes in the mornings and I had afternoons and evening to know the city, see friends and visit museums. On the first days I met Thomas, Lorena and Kai for a beer in Mitte. Thomas I met in Bolivia in 2001. Lorena is my friend from Barcelona and Kai is her friend. We enjoy the warm Berliner night sitting outside and chatting about travels. The talk was a mixture of Spanish and English with some words in Portuguese and German.

I visited the Wall Museum (Haus am Checkpoint Charlie) with Lorena. I thought it was a little disorganized, there was a great amount of photos and newspaper pages hanged on the wall. By the end one could notice some organization. Great part of the museum was about people who wanted to escape from east into west...

In Spain, Traveled places, Cycling & Diving in Catalonia 2003 On  13/07/2003  2 comments

Liked the experience of a weekend by the beach that I decided to repeat, this time I went to Palamós . I left Barcelona early in the morning and as soon as I got in Palamos I went straight to the dive center. We arranged the equipment and went by boat to “Cuevas del Eden Rock”, a dive site with caves. We went into 3 different caves. For me it was good that in the caves we could see the way out. Since I am claustrophobic that it is very important. It gives me the ideas I am not tied up. As I know myself I didn’t stay too long inside the caves, I went into and out to the other site pretty fast, small places really bother me.

After the dive I had lunch, went to the hotel to leave my stuff and went to
the beach to take a nap. Great! I slept with the sounds of the sea. By the end of the afternoon I walked by the beach. I stopped to see a huge group of men and women dancing “Sardana”, the typical dance from Catalonia.

It impressed me a lot here is the huge number of seniors...

In Traveled places, Cycling & Diving in Catalonia 2003 On  09/06/2003  One comment

Lately I have been missing the ocean so much. I’ve watched on TV a documentary about whales and I got a incredible desire for diving. In a bookstore, getting some books for the university, I bought a book by Garcia  Marquez called “The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor”. I got home, sat down the sofa and just left when I had finished the book. It was really good, I could feel the sea.

In order to satiate this will of being in the water I decide to spend some  weekends diving in Costa Brava. The first place was Lloret de Mar. I got a bus early in the morning to get there with time to do two immersions the same day.

From the bus station I went straight to the dive center. There I met 3 Portuguese guys from   Porto. We went on a boat to a dive site called Bolets. The sea was calm and the water cold. The visibility was “sort of” good. We saw many small fishes and a lobster...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Europe, Cycling & Diving in Catalonia 2003 On  27/04/2003  No comments

Friday we got a train from Barcelona to Nonaspe where a part of the group stayed camping. As i didn’t have a tend I continued with two more friends to sleep in a hostel in Caspe (Aragon). Next morning we got the first train back. We got together with the group at Nonaspe train station to start the tour organized by Abert (Gata and amics de la bici). We biked towards Batea where we stopped to visit the village, the small streets, the church… We had a break, a snack before lunch. From there we continued to Caseres. We stopped a few times. Once to fix the chain of a girl’s bike. Then to look at the map, we were a little lost.  Since we had to go up many times, my knee started hurting. I had already felt some pain on my last bike tour…

When we get to Caseres stated raining so we had a long lunch break.  The way from there was beautiful, many fruit trees. By then, I couldn’t enjoy the tour anymore, my knee was hurting a lot. I couldn’t move it...

In Adventure, Cycling tour, Spain, Europe, Cycling & Diving in Catalonia 2003 On  06/04/2003  No comments

We left Barcelona on a two hour trip to Cervera where we met other people and Lluis, who was organizing the tour. We started visiting the town, its interesting center with some narrow streets. I really liked the street of the
witches where there is a tunnel through the houses.

From Cervera we continued to Bellpuig through a former trail from Sant Jaume de Montserrat to Santiago. It was a pleasant trip because the whole itinerary was flat and we could go relaxed appreciating the landscape. We passed through some small towns and stopped for picnic by some irrigation water canals. They were beautiful because they looked like small rivers.

In Bellpuig we slept in a hostel from the municipal district (it was clean and organized). Dinner time I end up trying the snail, typical food from the region. The feeling was horrible. The idea of getting a stick and digging out the nasty animal from its shell and eating didn’t attract me. I tried one, the taste wasn’t that bad...