Conquering Spain

Hola! Que tal? You may guess it already from the map above... Right, we took a trip in Spain! First we visited Salamanca, then headed north to the region surrounding Llanes, Asturias. Next destinations were Burgos, Medinaceli and Cuenca till we finished the road trip in Albacete were we where guests at Stefan's second cousin's wedding. Let's start in Salamanca: we were lucky to be there while they were celebrating their "ferias", which ist about a week or ten days of party all over the town including various events.


The most-lucky thing for me was that by coincidence the galician musician Mercedes Peon was playing at the Plaza Mayor! Great!



Lucky me!


Maybe the best known riddle in the whole of Spain: Find the frog!


Well, let's continue the journey now. To Asturias, where we spent most of the time laying on the beach (actually different beaches) and eating seafood, mmmh!


And what sort of beaches they were: long sandy beaches, rocky bays and rather coldish water!


...but beautiful in any way!


But we also had to bid farewell to sea (how i hate goodbyes...). As a little comfort we went to Burgos, which lies directly on the "Camino de Santiago". We spent about three hours there =^+^= Uhm, we didn't have so much time...


The most impressive cathedral of Burgos:


Then we rushed off to the beautiful one-horse-town of Medinaceli (not on the map, but the fourth point on the route), which was quite a puzzle of different architectural and cultural manifestations. The roman arch of Medinaceli:


Mediaeval houses:


It also has a great ruin of a castle (where i must confess that i forgot in which period it was built)


Let's move to Cuenca now, the "enchanted city", where clocks still run a little different:


Cuenca is famous for its hanging houses:



The last point of the journey was Albacete, were the wedding took place. Unfortunately this town doesn't have anything worth taking a photo of - and those of the wedding are top secret, especially those of the day after... =)
To sum it up, it has been a great journey with lots of things to see and to taste and so i came back with a whole bunch of strong impressions and immediately subscribed to a spanish course!
Hasta la próxima!

Touring Austria

I've willed, I've walked, I've read
I've talked, I know, I know,
I've been here before
(LIVE, "Selling the drama", 1994)


We thought, we should make use of the austrian railways' "Sommerticket" before it expires... ;)


First we went to Linz....


...where the world is still the same as 10 years ago ;D
isn't that a cosy place?


*cheeeeese*


Vienna instead is rather strange:


Create Your Own

...but fortunately we met the "original salzburgers"


...who saved us from the evil!


Well, THIS is even more EVIL, haha:

Working class

well, as you may surely know - at least i hope you belong to these kind of people - almost every student has to have (at least) a job to make ends meet.
i belong to that group of students as well!


And as it is, common student's jobs are not really "good" jobs, nor do they bring much qualifying skills for you, since i would not say, that when i will apply for a job, i might remark on my abbility to envelope many letters within an hour... What do you think?

Beware the accessory!

The racoon's accessory:


(Little Panda, Red Panda or Firefox)

Together they fight for chocolate! Donations please on account no. 4856936515 at Salzburger Sparkasse!

Patters in the night...

Shhh! Did you hear that? Patters at night, the opening of the fridge and silent rustling and munching, mostly between 2 and 6 am? And my boyfriend heard it too...
First i thought it were a sound from the streets. Then i got the hang of it: there must be something or someone in my kitchen. After all, in the morning i always found crumbs and empty packages of chocolate, biscuits, milk and juice... Maybe a somnambulant? Or even a stowaway?


But most recently i found the solution to the riddle:
I got up at night after hearing the special sounds in the kitchen! And there i found it/him, my racoon! I simply got a racoon in our flat without knowing it - although my boyfriend and me always had certain suspicions...


(Here you can see the photographic evidence)

Mediaeval sounds in the castle

OMG, it's been already by the end of july that we went to the concert of the band Faun which was to take place in the beautiful little castle of Amerang, somewhere in Bavaria close to Rosenheim. Since we knew that the stage ought to be in the courtyard of the castle which itself was actually open (as you see), only covered by an awning, we hoped for good weather...



In fact the weather was perfect with a bright full moon - which i was unable to take a photo of in lack of a camera that's fit for that. The castle itself was beautiful as well, tiny though but very romantic lit by candels *sighing* - and one can rent it for weddings as well... *smile*


when i have grown, i want to have a castle myself!
waiting for my personal prince charming...


...oh yes, there he is! well, let's go for the concert:


Oliver SaTyr, the leader of Faun, was very good mood this evening!



Faun in action.
I was very pleased because this time they were playing again after a while an unplugged concert without all that electronic stuff. It's not that i don't like that, but the thing is that i like both styles and i always found that the unplugged part of their repertoire was rather small in their concerts.
Now i'm really satisfied with them and it was a great evening with beautiful music in a beautiful ambience.

Scandinavia Part III: Helsinki & Tallinn

Finally i will post the last pictures of my trip to the north! (Please can i have some rataplan!)
And yes, surely Tallinn is in Estonia and doesn't belong to Scandinavia, but we simply took the ferry from Helsinki - which is Helsingfors in Swedish, which sounds actually much cooler - to visit Tallinn for a quick spree!


Helsinki is cool: a mixture of old/historic buildings (culture, OMG!) and a young lively city at the same time!


i simply fell for its market hall:


Helsinki is a real culinary treasure chest! at the end of the day, i really felt quite a stomache ache from eating too much... O;)


one can make out clear russian influence all over the town, but this multicultural touch is what makes the particular flair of Helsinki!



On the second day we chose to take a trip...


ok... not such a bad trip, please!


well, not such a slow trip! we need to go fast...!


..to Tallinn, the beautiful capital of Estonia.

i even found the door that fits my dress *ggg*:


well, and this is goodbye now to northern europe and to this chapter in my blog!


farewell to our gorgeous youth hostel... and goodbye to it all! thanks for having us! ;)

Scandinavia Part II: Finnmark

hi again and a very warm welcome to the second part of my scandinavia-report - although i know very well, that i'm already a bit late. but since i have a lot of things going on at the moment i didn't find enough time yet to post all of my photos. and i have to admit that i can only show you a selection of my photos on that way cause i took about 1.000 pics... O;) what shall i do? i fell in love with that landscape... *sighing*

i decided to create a slideshow, that seemed to be the best way to post as much photos as possible - and it was very very hard to select them!!!

Scandinavia Part I: Road trip

Finally i found my way back to the computer in order to show you a selection (we got about 900) of our Scandinavia photos:
the starting point of our trip was Kemi, at the Gulf of Bothnia, from where we went to Tornio/Haparanda to attend the wedding of a friend of mine. The funny thing is, Tornio is in Finland, Haparanda in Sweden and those two towns actually flow into each other only separated by a river. Both towns belong to different time zones, which made things a little confusing for us 8)
After the wedding was over we rent a car and took a road trip which lead us trough Lapland, northern Norway (Finmark) straight up to the North Cape and back to Kemi via Alta.
This is what a typical road there looks like:


It was a good feeling to drive there - especially cause we got a real good car (my preciousss):





Here you can see typical Scandinavian houses which are all painted in that special red tone.



The landscape was marvellous: Inari Lake


It was really not as cold as we thought before, we even got very hot - north of the polar circle! (somehow we had to flee the mosquitos...):



The road to the North cape was... different! We noticed from lack of radio reception that we were far from a bigger city, if you know what i mean ;) The landscape lost its woods and turned into a coastal region - we were now close by the Arctic Ocean, ooooh!



Norway belongs to a different time zone than Finland does, so we had to switch again - or actually switch back since Norway has the same time as Austria has. *confused* Now the night were really cold which prevented us from camping outside. In addition it got very windy:



We spent the coldest night on this trip some 100 metres south of the North Cape cause we slept in the car and the wind was blowing very cold even into the car! Horrible feeling the morning after, i can assure you!




... to be continued ...