15.- Semana Santa 2008

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Hi everyone, wellcome back to my writing spot. First of all I gotta say thanks to you all for keeping track on this site and its posts and specially putting attention to what I'm doing over here. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do writing it. As you surely have noticed I've added certain features to it so it becomes a little bit more accesible and attractive for my "audience". Many of these I'll let you find out for yourselves, although I should mention that there's one which is very important: Suscribe option. With this feature, if you register your email account you shall then receive a notification every time I update this space or publish a new post, so it'll be easier for you all to keep track of any news on my adventures.

Today's post is about my activities during Eastern holidays right after Fallas ended (Thankfully after 5 days of little sleep and lots of partying). Basically Christine and I decided to remain in Valencia to take time to recover and also travel around without spending much more money. Therefore the first couple of days where destined to sleep, eat propperly and little going out on our behalf. Perhaps somedays we destined them to visit some of our friends and having some beers with them or drinking up some coffees on the usual places: uncomplicated things for umcomplicated times.

However it wasn't the plan to stay put the whole time, which is why we decided to make little excursions to places nearby our place. The very first one of them was Parque de Cabecera, which is a park located at the outskirts of Valencia where there is a lake and some bike paths: the perfect time to spend a day, having some picnics, flying kits or simply enjoying the sun. So we took the metro there and half an hour later we where there taking some time to walk or lay down as we went by. Actually it was also quite romantic cause the sole view of the lake, the sunset and my lovely companion (Yes, I'm talking about you Christine) made it a very special day. Although we just spent there till after sunset I'd say it was, in an overall, a really good day.

The next day we planned then a trip to Sagunto , to visit the ruins of the castle a previously talked about on another post and after that going to another place, depending on the time and effort we were willing to put into sightseeing. And so we did. Early in the morning we took the train to Sagunto and reached there on time to have some breakfast and then visiting the castle. I really can't describe the beautiful sight it was to see my girl on this really nice sorroundings and thats why I went a little bit crazy with the pics I took of her (as you can see on the slideshow at the beginning of this post). Although we hadn't spent that much time on the top of the castle the clouds and the widn warning us of an incoming storm made us go back to the town and sit down to have something for lunch. Actually this was a very good idea cause then it started reaining and it was quite a releif to be inside a coffee shop having a warm drink and not only because we were not getting wet, but for the good planning we had the chance to make about our next destination: Castellón.

This little city is actually a small version of Valencia: a place near the beach with tourist/summer oriented structure, just one hour away from home. What we didnt expect was that the rain was even tougher over there and we were doubting about what to do when we arrived at the train station. Since we didn't go there for nothing, Christine and I decided to move forward and explore at least a little bit of the place, stopping from time to time in coffee shops and places like these when rain was to bad to bare. This was the only bad thing about this trip I would say, because the city was lovely and we almost made it to the beach (sort of like 4 km from the train station) so we did walked a lot. Again the view of my beatiful girl and the soaky-sad-look of the city made me go crazy with my camera and also took a whole bunch of pictures of Christine posing for me with some stuff at the background.

That's the end of our Eastern adventures because after that, next monday, I had to go to work and also during that week Christine had to leave back to Germany, so vacation time was over. What was left was to keep on our Beer/coffee routine while we could and starting to prepare ourselves to face "reality" once more. That's it my friends, keep track then to get the first glimps at my next posts. See ya!

14.- Fallas Marzo 2008

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Well back and again with Valencian adventures, this time on English mode so this post could be a little more international, as a shown of my concern for my non-Spanish-speaking readers.Today's post is about what happened around here during Fallas time and all the activities wich where involved during this celebration.

A little bit of story about this holidays is that back in the good ol' medieval days carpenters in Valencia held special devotion to Saint Joseph and on the 19th of march, every year, they took a day off to worship him and also to take the opportunity to clean their workshops from pieces of wood and stuff left by putting all that on the street and start a fire. Obviously neighbors also joined the fire with old furniture or clothing to burn and before you know it, became a big gathering. As the years went by people started to dress up this pieces of wood and arranging them on a shape of people or animals in order to parody daily life situations. Nowadays these wooden sculptures are called fallas (also the whole celebration is called that way) and there are every year more than 300 of 'em scattered trough the city, each one sponsored and taken care of by a special committee called Casal Fallero. The 5 days celebration starts on the 15th of March by setting all the fallas up and lasts until the night of the 19th (Saint Joseph's day) in which the fallas are burnt away.

Further information

There are many activities during this holidays here, not to mention that the amount of people visiting is astonishing, although basically there are typical events at night or day to which most of the people attend. I won't go to much into details about'em which is why I strongly suggest to check the "Further information" link posted few lines ago. What I can definitely tell is that during these days I had holidays from work and university from the 15th to the 24th of March, thanks to the combination of Fallas and Eastern, for which I was more than grateful. So as I was free Christine decided fly in to Valencia for a couple of weeks to spend time with me and check what this Fallas thing is all about, as well as one of her very good friends (and I proudly say also one of mine) Martina.

Since there were many things to do, and so little time and energy to do them, we got a schedule of the already programmed events for every day and chose some of them as our goals for that specific day. Honestly if we were to pursue each one of the things happening around the city we would've died. Specially because every night we went to the fireworks (which started at 1:00 am) and then we hit every verbena (parties organized around the fallas) we could see until early hours in the morning. Every single day we did this, until the very last Cremá (Burning) night in which all these festivities where over and we couldn't take it any more.

However during this time we hung out with lots of people and made very good new friends such as my man Paco, from Madrid and many others which I'm not gonna mention coz then it'll fill my blog out of "special thanks". Good thing after the last night vacations where still on, for Eastern holidays cause then we had time to recover from the hard-5-day-long-partying.

13.- Praga 2008

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De nuevo aquí estoy reportándome, por fin, con un poco más de frecuencia que las veces anteriores. Ahora toca el turno de la narración de la visita a Praga en enero pasado de este año. Un poco más de información respecto a esta ciudad está disponible en el siguiente enlace: Información Praga

De nuevo fue una aventura con el tradicional dueto Zamorano-Wittmer donde básicamente el plan era salir de Alemania (de las cercanías de Munich) en tren hasta la "Ciudad de las Cien Cúpulas" (¿ven porqué era importante revisar un poco la información adicional?) donde nos encontraríamos con mi amigo Martin y permaneceríamos ahí por espacio de dos noches para conocer la ciudad. Viernes 4 a domingo 6 de enero, oséase "in & out" con 7 horas de ida y 7 horas de vuelta en trayectos y un presupuesto un tanto cuanto limitado para gastos extraordinarios en la ciudad: ese era el plan.

Bien pues la cuestión de tomar y el tren y llegar a la ciudad no tuvo mayores contratiempos que el estar sentados replanados en el vagón del tren por siete largas horas. Tuvimos buena suerte al encontrar un compartimiento vacío por lo que pudimos estirar las piernas a nuestras anchas y llegar descansados sin contratiempos a nuestro destino. A nuestro arribo nos encontramos con Martin en la estación y de ahí fuimos a dar un pequeño tour por la ciudad. El centro, la catedral y hasta la zona comercial pasaron por nuestros ojos (con equipaje al hombro y todo) antes de llegar a donde nuestro amigo había arreglado nuestro alojamiento.

De hecho el alojamiento era en los dormitorios universitarios, que alquilan a estudiantes y jóvenes los cuartos que tengan disponible en el momento de la llegada. Para las personas no conocedoras de lo que es un cuarto de un dormitorio de estudiantes, y antes de que se les venga a la mente una imagen de alguna típica habitación universitaria de las películas americanas, debo decir que son cuartos más bien austeros y pequeños y que por lo general se comparte un área común y los baños. A fin de cuentas es un lugar donde se puede dormir, dejar las maletas, ducharse y usar los servicios por un módico precio. Y nada más.

Una vez instalados y después de refrescarnos un poco después del viaje, fuimos a cenar a los comedores de los estudiantes muy al estilo "pragueño", es decir, los comedores estudiantiles de esos dormitorios eran en realidad bares y pubs comunes y corrientes, que a la vez ofrecían sus productos a precios módicos al alcance de los chicos y chicas que ahí recidían. Es decir, comimos y bebimos bastante bien en compañía de Martin y sus amigos, por un buen precio y en un ambiente bastante jovial. Después de cenar, Christine se fue a dormir, por lo que Martin y yo decidimos salir por la ciudad, comprar una botella de Becherovka y encontrarnos con unos amigos.

Una noche larga, de visita en unos cuantos bares y terminando en el piso de uno de dichos amigos. Sin ahondar en detalles debo comentar que estos checos/eslovacos sí que tienen mucha energía para ir de fiesta y sí que les gusta divertirse y pasársela bien. Tan bien que no fue sino hasta las 5 am cuando regresamos a nuestras habitaciones y por fin a dormir.

Creo que fue una mala idea, al menos operativamente, esta noche de parranda, porque el día siguiente fue levantarnos y salir a recorrer la ciudad un poco más. Christine estaba bastante freca pues había dormido toda la noche; yo estaba a "medios chiles" para decirlo más coloquialmente y Martin no reaccionó sino hasta las 4 pm para unírsenos ya en la ciudad.

En fin, no es necesario que cuente detalladamente nuestros ires y venires por Praga pues sólo me resta decir que cubrimos el resto de lugares que no habíamos visitado el día anterior en nuestro tour express. Una cosa que sí es justo y necesario comentar es que al caer la noche fuimos a la Mini-torre Eiffel en la colina más elevada de la ciudad. Dicha torre fue construida en los años 30s por un grupo de personas adineradas emulando a la torre Eiffel de Francia. De hecho, aunque no son del mismo tamaño, la punta de la torre en Praga está a la misma altura que la punta de la torre en Francia. Interesante, ¿no?

Con ya pocas fuerzas para seguir de marcha, fuimos a cenar al comedor universitario de la facultad de tecnología (muy bueno y barato, por cierto) para después reunirnos de nuevo con amigos para ir a tomarnos unas cervezas en el centro de la ciudad. Dicho evento nunca triunfó puesto que nunca decidimos en el grupo a qué lugar iríamos, por lo que terminamos más bien en un club donde había un concierto de un DJ famoso en la localidad. Christine y yo compartimos tanto el gusto de la música electrónica por lo que después de unas horas de estar ahí y beber unas cuantas cervezas, regresamos a casa para tener un merecido descanso. Un poco complicado el regreso puesto que no contamos ahora con guía y empezó a nevar, lo que hacía más "interesante" la caminata hacia los dormitorios.

El último día fue prácticamente nulo, puesto que salía nuestro tren relativamente temprano, por lo que destinamos la mañana simplemente a desayunar y trasladarnos a la estación de trenes. Martin de nuevo estuvo desaparecido, puesto que el estuvo de fiesta mucho más tiempo que nosotros. Sin percances tomamos el tren y después de 6 horas llegamos a Alemania. De ahí en adelante todo pasó muy rápido, puesto que el siguiente día debía yo tomar mi vuelo de regreso a Valencia y debía dejar mi equipaje listo esa misma noche. Cenamos, dormimos y por la mañana fuimos al aeropuerto, terminando así mis vacaciones de invierno y trasladándome ahora hacie mi nuevo año en España...