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(English) “Yes they could”
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(English) Responsible citizenship
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(English) Unwanted residents, hiking and how to buy cleaning powder
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Posted in St Gallen Tagged everyday life, stupidity, trips
Billeder fra Filzbach
En snedig sjæl har indsamlet billederne fra seminaret i Filzbach. Besøg hendes Picasa Webalbum for at se dem.
(English) The case of sustainability
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(English) Arrival
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Vagtskifte
Om 19 dage gør Jakob sin længe ventede hjemkomst fra sit ophold i Chile og 14 dage senere forlader jeg Danmark til fordel for Schweiz. Meget er sket siden vi sagde farvel for godt 7 måneder siden. Jakob har oplevet en ganske betydelig forskelligheder, som du sikkert ved fra hansindlæg. Fra det ene mere fantastisk syn til det næste, nye venner og spændende udfordringer. Hjemme i Danmark har også jeg oplevet en del, dog af den mere mundane salgs. Og som med en hver anden rejse har vi formentligt begge ændret os en smule. Præcis hvilke ændringer Jakob har undetgået i løbet af de forgangne måneder, skal jeg ikke kunne sige, men jeg vil være meget overrasket hvis han ikke har gennemgået nogen.
Små ændringer synes at forsåge mindre ændringer i deres umiddelbare omgivelser. Vi har ændret os en smule i Jakobs fravær, ligesom mit fravær sikkert også vil. Ændringer som disse opstår ikke bare - de udfylder det hul som andre ændringer efterlader og udvikler sig i den retning som vi hver især tillader dem.
Jeg ser på mange måder frem til min tur og er opmærksom på at ændringer vil ske i mit fravær. Jeg er ikke bange for disse ændringer, men nysgerrig efter at se hvordan de udvikler sig. Jeg efterlader både Nina og Erik, som jeg vil komme til at savne inderligt ligesom jeg vil savne resten af min familie og venner. De ændrer sig måske alle en smule imens jeg er væk, men jeg er overbevist om at disse ændringer alle vil være gode.
Vagtskiftet nærmer sig - Jakob hjemvender og jeg tager afsted. Nye ændringer er på vej.
A cultural day in Madrid!
Arriving at Madrid at 1 o´clock this night was not as troublesome as we had expected. After a small detour with the metro we arrived at our hotel, found something to eat and were in bed by 3 o´clock.
Today has been very active. After an Andalucian style breakfast we went down to the Museo Nacional del Prado for some great views of spanish medieval and rennesance painters such as Goya and Velazguez - a very interesting experience. Amongst many exciting paintings we got to see the “The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid“. Fantastic painting.
From here we went straight for the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, which contains modern paintings and of special interest to us a big collection of Miró, Dali and Picasso paintings and scultures. The museum closes at 14.30 on sundays (but as with the Museo Prado the entrance is free on sundays) and arriving not until 13 o´clock we were in a bit of a hurry. We went straight for the permanent collection and started exploring the Picasso and Miró exhibitions. After being dazzled by the horror and intensity of the famous “Guernica“, by Picasso, we went on to explore a painter that has caught Jakobs interest quite a bit: Dalí. He even got the chance to look at his favorite painting, but I´m sad to say that I don´t know which, and can therefore not tell you.
The rest of the afternoon has been used wandering the streets to get an impression of the city, which seems much nicer now compared to the impression we got last time, and in the park just relaxing.
Originally we should have met up with a good friend of mine, José, here in Madrid. Unfortunately it didn´t work out. I hope to see you sometime in the future my friend and wish the best for you and all your loved ones until then.
Now we are going for something to eat. Tomorrow, after doing the last bit of shopping, we are heading back to Denmark, where we both long to see family and friends.
Hasta Luego!
Kasper
Posted in Excursions, Week4
The last night in Granada
So, we have now reached the final night in Granada. Kasper and I did the last shopping after school, and we have actually reached the point where every store and shop have been searched.
As a last goodbye we invited Justo to dinner´and we met up at the cathedral around 21:15. We went out for some tapas and beers at various places and we have really grown accustomed to the spanish way of having many light dishes. Justo is a really nice guy, attentative and patient, and we have enjoyed his company. After a few tapas we decided to get a coffee and Justo let us to a plaza at the foot of the Alhambra. We had the view of Alhambra, a coffee and amazing company… a good way to spent the last evening.
Before saying goodnight to Justo, we had one of the amazing icecreams that Granada offers and strolled slowly back to the appartment.
Thank you for everything Justo, you have been an important part of our trip here. Give our best regards to Manolo.
Br.
Kasper & Jakob
Posted in General, Week4 3 Comments
The final day in school…. continued
Here follows the telling of Jakob and the finding of resacas (hang-over in spanish…. I am reading “The Lord of the Rings” - again)
Anyways…. after Kasper left us in The Irish Pub we stayed there fore a few more pints and when on to find another bar. Estela, who is the most beautiful teacher I have ever had, led the way and we (Estela, her brother, three german students from the school and I) ended up at a more local bar which is known for their Caipirinas, a brasillian drink. We had a few of those and at around 3 o’clock we went out in search for yet another place. As you properbly have figured out it is very normal that a night out can be compared to a pub crawl. A few drinks here, a few drinks there…. actually it’s a nice way to party because you always find yourself in a new place with new people.
Well at this tme most of the smaller bars had closed and in the end we gave up and Estela invited us to her new apartment. A very homely and very big appartment, and the conversations went on till the morning. We listened to spanish music, talked and had fun but at a very cosy level (”tranquilo” as they say here). Anyways… the night ended at around 5 o’clok and I really enjoyed the last fiesta with some amazing people.
Thank you all so much for the last four weeks. I hope to see some of you in the future and if not “BUENO SUERTE” to all of you.
Br.
Jakob
The final day in school…
Today was the last day in school. Even though the motivation might not have been as high this week as it has been a good week alltogether. We were moved up a nudge in levels in the beginning of the week. Jakob continued on with the more advanced stuff, while I decided to follow a lower graded course for this week getting the opportunity to to speak more of the language.
Yesterday we went out with some of the students and two of our teachers, Estela and Paz. We went to a small tapas-restaurant in the north-eastern part of Granada where we had a few drinks and some tapas and continued on to an Irish pub not far from the restaurant. I went home to the flat around 1 and Jakob continued on. Exactly where they went I have no idea, so you have to speak to Jakob about this. All-in-all a very nice evening, and good to finally get an opportunity to experience people from a more personal angle.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to all of you this afternoon after school, which nags me a bit. To those of you reading this: Thank you for a great 4 weeks!
Hasta futuro!
Br,
Kasper
Posted in Week4 9 Comments
Tour de Andalucia IV: Jaén & Granada
The last day we decided to be a bit cultural and go to the old Moorish town of Jaén. It’s relatively big and full of historical sites. Unfortunately, Monday is not a tourist day in Jaén and all the sites we wanted to visit were closed. However, Lonely Planet tells us there is an exquisite old castle and some restored Roman Baths, which we would have loved to see. Instead we found some lunch before we headed back to Granada. The afternoon was spent in the local outdoor swimming pool. Great to get a bit of sun and relax in the shade.
We went back to Jakob and Kasper’s flat in the early evening and had a little break before dinner was consumed at the local Chinese restaurant, which offers a daily menu for only 5,5 Euro including a drink. Difficult to beat. Jakob had discovered a great ice-cream place the evening before and went for a nice walk around the fountains of Granada. It is a very beautiful city, at day or at night.
Tuesday was back-to-school-day for Kasper and I just had a few hours in Granada before I headed back to Malaga to drop the car off. The sales are great in Spain, and on top of the stuff I bought on my first day alone, when Kasper and Jakob were at school, Erik got a good bit of new clothes.
All in all it has been a fantastic little holiday. We can really recommend to get away from the touristy Costa del Sol and either head east for Costa del Tropical south of Malaga or even better – forget about the beach and go into the backroads and the mountains. The pace is slow, the roads small and winding and leads you to small villages where you feel surrounded by Spain and its olive grooves. Thank you for a great holiday, Kasper.
Posted in Excursions, Week3, Week4
Tour de Andalucia III: Almuñecar & Sarabriego
Sunday morning we headed straight to the beach and enjoyed the sun for a few hours. It was great to get a swim in the ocean although the waves were rather big – actually so big the looped me roll over backwards. But none of us has much patience for a beach and just after noon we set of to get back in the mountains. Away from the masses and into the tranquillity we enjoyed the day before. I had managed to buy cheese and chorizo in a supermarket (though sign language) and we had a lunch break in the shade of an olive tree. After a few struggles with the directions we found the way to our pre-booked B&B in the village of Sabariego about 3 quarters of an hours drive north of Granada. Sabariego is not much more than a cluster of houses on the way into the mountains, but here, the British ex-pats Richard and Loulou have lived for four years and offers a nice little room to passer-bys for the great value of 25 euroes. Nice and cheap – if you are prepared to listen to their constant talk about how it is to live in Spain. An interesting acquaintanceship we must say, and for sure supportive of the common impression of British and their ex-pad communities.
We declined to have dinner at their place, decided against their advice to go for dinner in their favourite bar in the nearby Alcaudette, and instead went to Alcala la Real (or Alcareal) as they called it in broad British accent. It is a nice Moorish town with a big castle and over the weekend, they had had a multi-cultural festival in town so the place was full of the gypsies and other travellers, who performed, played and had a market in the old town. It took us a while to find the newer part of town, and apparently restaurants are not welcome in the old part, but we finally found a place for a great dinner of Spanish specialities. It is definitely recommendable to order deep-fried eggplant with honey if you can find out what is called in Spanish. We didn’t know when we ordered, but it’s a very nice side dish.
Posted in Excursions, Week3, Week4
Tour de Andalucia II: Comares & Herradura
Kasper had (as usual) no problem with getting to sleep whereas I had a few hours in our rather unusual accommodation before I fell asleep. The backdrop of singing zikades and view to multiple shooting stars on the Andalucian sky above was wonderful though, and we woke up the next morning around 9 o’clock ready for a new day. With rumbling tummies, we set direction for the little village of
The landscapes in the areas are stunning. Mountains and valleys covered in millions of olive trees. The landscape is very dry and colours are restricted to various shades of brown and dark green . It is breathtaking in its own special way and you can’t help wondering how such a dry climate can produce as rich a product as the olives and their oil. Occasionally the dry hills are supplemented with a dried-up riverbed, but it still delivers enough water for big plantations of dark-green citrus trees and avocado-trees. So very different from any other landscape I have travelled through…
Saturday, the plan was to head north and find a B&B, which we had a phone number for. The winding roads of southern Spain and maybe the rather insufficient map lead us on another direction, though, and were far closer to the coast than the inland when we finally found a main road. It became apparent that plans are only there to be changed and we decided to head for the coast and a few hours on a soothing beach. We drove all the way from Malaga to Herradura though very touristy sites on the coast. Took a short break at a local market with knick-knacks and bought a few souvenirs. Kasper also managed to buy a whole kilo of apples for one euro. A bargain even though most of the apples were pretty scrappy. After a good walk around town, we found a little pension in Herradura and checked in late afternoon just in time for a much-needed siesta. We decided for an early dinner by Spanish standards and were lucky to get a table in the first row on a restaurant on the beach. Here we enjoyed our traditional Spanish dishes of garlic prawns in oil, gazpacho and a great paella, while the sun set behind the mountains and the beach around us got dark. Oh well – must admit I became a rather big fan of the Tinto de Verano (red wine with ice and lemon soda) and cerveza con limón (beer with lemonade) so maybe we had just a few of those too…
Posted in Excursions, Week3, Week4
Tour de Andalucia I: Nerja & Lake Viñuela
As some of you might know Nina has come to visit us for a couple of days. Nina and I haven’t had the opportunity this summer to go away on vacation together so we thought that we’d drive around the countryside in Andalucia for a couple of days exploring the small villages.
We headed off today after school and drove off to drop off Jakob at a medium sized village near the beach called Heradura. Here Jakob was going diving. From here we headed off to Nerja which has one of the largest dripstone caves in the world. This was a breathtaking experience. The caves are inimaginably sized with gigantic stalactites and stalagmites contained in five caves as large as 30 m. high and more than 400 m2 each. Both the size of the caves and the dripstones made it hard to believe as “real stuff” and not just some fake tourist attraction made of plastic and expanded polystyrene. But they are very real indeed and have been so for many thousands of years. We were a bit amazed though, that they hadn’t placed reading boards on the making of dripstones and caves like these. We therefore hope that Ninas friend Mie, who is a talented geologist, might want to drop a comment on the makings of this amazing phenomenom… (Hint hint…)
From Nerja we headed off to an area near a big water resevoir in the vicinity of the village Viñuela. The resevoir lies some 20 km. north-east of Malaga and this small trip became somewhat of an adventure with the main theme “Searching-but-finding-nothing”. Our first goal was to find the lake, which proved a bigger challenge than expected. It wasn’t until we drove into one of the highest located villages that we actually found the lake (far away from where we expected it to be). Finding the lake became biggest achievement that day. Our second goal was to drive there because Nina had found some Bed&Breakfasts in some of the small villages. We hadn’t booked anything because we thought it easy to find them by signs on the road or other indications. But we were proved wrong. There might have been (and there might still be) Bed&Breakfast accomodation in the area, but they do not advertise with it. This drove us onto small mountain roads (some paved, and some definitely not…) in our search for ANY accommodation and into the small village of Períana. Here we asked for accommodation in the local supermarket. After having spoken to a friend of the cash-register-girl (in spanglish…) we found out that the nearest place to sleep would probably be to head down to the coast and find a hotel there. We decided to give up on the place-to-stay hunt for a while and in stead find a place to eat dinner. The nice cash-register-girl gave us directions to a restaurant not far away. And so, believing that we had actually run out of bad luck and misplacement, we comitted our final stupidity. We bought 3 muffins, a beer and 2 sodas and were off to find the restaurant. We drove as directed (or as interpreted, anyways…), but we didn’t find a restaurant. After a couple of kms though, we found a sign saying “Finca La Callejona - Restaurante Casero”. Our mood went up. We followed the signs down more narrow mountain roads only to discover that which once had been a restaurant was nowcompletely deserted. The place is best described as one of those pig-on-a-spid party places for charter tourists. Please look at the pictures in the picture section, to get a better view of this strange, but somewhat very beautifull place.
We were a bit tired after the long drive that day and decided to camp for the night on the terrace of this abandomed restaurant. And so we did, after having a magnificient feast consisting of three muffins and a bottle of beer…
Posted in Excursions, Week3, Week4
Poeta en Nueva York
…(or the Poet in New York) is a dance performance running in the gardens of the Alhambra (”Generalife”) until the 31st of August. We went to see this excellent performance the same day that Nina (Kaspers girlfriend) arrived to visit us. It is a flamenco dance performance written and choreographed by the famous spanish coreograph Blanca Li based on the poems of Frederico García Lorca.
The trip was arranged by our school and it was indeed a very astonishing experience. You can find some footage of the performance below (a little something found on the internet).
[flash http://videos.ideal.es/dalealplay.swf?file=1327/PIEZAESTRENOLORCA.flv&]
Posted in Excursions, Week3
User log-on requirement disabled…
We have now disabled the requirement to log on to comment on posts because it seems to malfunction. This means that commenting will now be much easier.
Posted in General, Week3 9 Comments
Aplujarras IV: Capaleira
The last village on our excursion was a very hot stop. Eventhough it is high up in the mountains the heat was emmense. Capaleira is situated in the same valley as Pampaneira but much higher and on the pictures it is clear that the village produces a very picturesque environment.
The picture speaks for themselves but notice the
Posted in Excursions, Week2 2 Comments
Alpujarras III: Trevélez
A 45 minutes drive on narrow mountain roads later we arrived at Trevélez. This small village is often said to be the highest village in Spain, elevated 1476 m. above the ocean, and being so is often used as an offset for mountaneers venturing off into the Sierra Nevada.
Our first goal in Trevélez was lunch. We ate at a restaurant, surprisingly capable of handling the horde of tourists arriving at the village. We had a pork soup of some sort (strange taste) with serrano ham, and a pork chop served with potatoes and… serrano ham. Around the table all courses (except desert and coffee…) were actually served with serrano ham. This is not normal for Spain, and by such one could wonder why this was so. Apart from its elevation, Trevélez, is even more known for producing the best Jamón de Serano (Serrano Ham) in Spain, which might explain the excessive use of serrano ham.
Very appropriately our next goal was to see how the serrano ham is produced in Trevélez and to discover the “Secret of the Ham” as we came to call it. For this we got admission to to a production facility. To get a visual impression of this, please go to the picture section. The ham is produced in 3 main steps:
- Initially the ham is cured (salted) for 10 days in a big fridge. This is done by laying out a layer of salt, a layer of ham, a layer of salt etc. This process drives the water from the ham, and prevents it from rotting in the later processes.
- After the curing, the ham is watered to get rid of most of the salt and the ham is hung in another fridge to dry. We didn’t get actually for how long the ham is hanging in this fridge…
- It’s at the final stage of the process that we find the secret of the famous Trevélez ham. Here the ham is hung in temperate rooms, like any other serrano ham. The secret is that they actually ventilate with the fresh mountain air, which is said to produce the special taste that the Trevélez ham is reknown for. We went into two such rooms - very big rooms to be specific, resembling large butcher halls - with endless rows of ham hanging from the ceiling. We have never seen so much meat in one place before. How inviting it might sound the ham is hung in these rooms for 6 months to 2 years depending on how dark and strong the desired taste should be.
The smell in this meat factory was pretty peculiar, which is why we were releived when we finally got outside and got up into the bus heading off to our final destination: Capileira.
Posted in Excursions, Week2