Unas Navidades Originales / An Original Christmas

26 October 2006 1:45 PM | In Travel | 49 Comments español

Well fellas, after days and days spent looking for flights on the web (mainly in Rumbo and Expedia), the 2006 Christmas calendar has been set. Pay attention cause the deal is promising again. After the recent asian experience now is the american continent turn. Even with Bush on command the place is interesting enough to justify and aventure there. Therefore, on the 13th of December I am landing in San Francisco to meet Giorgos in a 2 weeks tour all over the american West Coast. Like a road movie, we have planned to rent a car and drive all the way down. A trip which pretends to be a mixture of the wild nature of the Yosemite and Colorado Canyon parks with the cosmopolitan environment of a place like San Francisco, considered by many to be the most european an alternative city of the yankee country. Not to forget the glamour of places like Los Angeles or Las vegas, neither the funny mexican night of Tijuana. Such an adventure that I hope will not dissapoint.

But this is not all folks, 25 years spending New Years Eve in Madrid have been enough. The plan for this one will be a little different. A few days in Stockholm to recover some energy and then a radical change. Destination…Istambul, beautiful city, crossing point between Europe and Asia has been selected for the ICEX New Years Eve european meeting. It´s four of us already confirmed and this numer will hopefully grow up, the place looks very promising.

So, who said money was important? No this year, this year is for travelling, there will be time for saving in the future. As an aperitive of all this, tomorrow I am heading to Prage where I will spend a few days since I heard beer is pretty cheap :-) I will talk about this trip in the next posts. Take care guys!

Settled Down at Stockholm / Asentado en Estocolmo

16 October 2006 10:06 AM | In Stockholm | 12 Comments español

Getting accommodation in Stockholm was not so hard, even though the city was supposed to be a difficult one for this. It was necessary, however, to pay some money. Here you have to pay in order to get contact details of landlords from the main web site, 696 swedish kroner, arround 75 euros. At least for me, it was worth it, in just 2 days I visited 3 places and decided to stay in the third one. Funny thing, it seems that the main thing that made the landlord give the flat to me was the fact taht I work in the Spanish embassy. He made me submit a letter stating this and from that moment everything was easier. I could even negociate the price to make it 100 euros/month cheaper and reduce the deposit to the half. Anyway, the place is gonna be expensive, 6500 swedish kroner per month (arround 700 euros) but I think I get the right value out of my money, it is a 70 m2 flat, 7 min from the centre by train. Very, very big to be living at my own, I even have a spare room for visits. Here you can see how it looked like when I moved in. As you can see furniture was very crappy but, as I did when I was living in Cardiff with ebay, I decided to invest some money in the place. At Blocket you can buy second hand stuff and in the Statoil gas stations you can rent a van to transport it. This was the final result…

The van

First drink at Paco´s club II

So I already feel comfortable here, during this month I will have a guest in the other room: Jaime, another ICEX internship, very galician man. Among with the other ICEX guy, Eric and the representative of the Madrid commercial chamber, Rodrigo, they form my social circle here so far. I guess I will have to wait for getting to know some swedish people. On Wednesday we celebrated the inauguration of my flat and the sissard I bought in Granada. One of these drinking nights you end too wasted to go anywhere. Thursday we had an official reception in the Spanish embassy, we got to know the ambassador and ate as many food as we could. However we didnt go as crazy as the huge bunch of Erasmus who had invited themselves to the event. I may be getting old cause I had the feeling these guys were behaving totally unproperly. When I was Erasmus I didnt do those thing, or maybe I did?

Rodrigo (cámara de Madrid), Jaime (ICEX, yo (ICEX) y Eric (ICEX)

The guy in the middle is the Spanish ambassador in Sweden

Stockholm: First impressions / Primeras Impresiones

2 October 2006 10:02 AM | In Stockholm | 9 Comments español

So here we are, after a trip whose only interest was the huge bridge to be crossed for getting into Sweden I got to Stockholm very late on Sunday. During these first weeks I am staying at Pili´s place, a member of the office staff who is been living here for the last 32 years. Very friendly person, she told me everything I need to know about the “Spanska Ambassedens Handelsavdelning”. The same applies to the rest of the people here. The wellcome has been very very warming, I cant not complain at all. We are located at the center of Stockholm, on a 13th floor so we have a great view over the city. Besides, I have a really good place, appart from the rest of the interns but very comfortable.

About the job, easy as it was to be expected, the office is currently under phase VII, which means the systems available are the most updated ones and the load of work for the IT responsible the minimum. There is not much to do, backups, users management and a few things more. It is quite clear I will not learn much but I will have time for some other things such as finishing my Phd, keeping this blog more updated and the most important one: travel, travel and travel Big Smile The time table is very convinient, I get into work at 9 and leave at 4, with one hour break for lunch. Really easy going, before you can realize about it the shift is over. Not too many surprises with this.

The city is beautiful, just the central part of Stockholm consist on 14 islands, the periphery is extended over an archipielago formed by hundreds of them. Therefore, the water is an esential part of the urban landscape. Channels and bridges make Stockholm an unique visual show. One of the most beautiful cities I have never seen. Besides, the weather is not to hard yet, we even had a couple of sunny days. However, on a first moment, in comparation with Copenhagen the city happens to be unhandy. This is a bigger place, the use of cycles is not so extended and instead metro and tram are to be used. Apparently I got too used to the quiet and easy going Danish capital and I feel a little lost here, so many islands and channels make orientation kind of hard and here distances are something to be taken into account. In a way, it reminds me to Madrid, it seems I have spent too much time living in small cities.

All pictures here!

And let´s move to one of the most important topics: nightlife. I dont wanna get conclussions yet but so far it looks worrying. Stockholm looks very very posh. It´s been just a weekend but the experience was somehow dissapointing. It was a way back to the culture of the night club guarded by these elegant bouncers who believe themselves to be God. To get or not to get into the place deppends on the fucking will of these people, i.e wheter you are propertly dressed or not, if you are in companion of women or just whatever stupid excuse they can make up. The environment is terribly snob, at least in the places we visited this weekend, maybe this is because we chosen the worst ones but people living here for a long time tells me this is the way it is. Again, there is a big difference with Copenhagen were everything was more unformal, in Stoclkholm the environment is absolutely posh. Guys dressed with suits standing in the bars pretending to be something, amazing women who seems to be more worried about credits cards than anything else.. It looks like a very complicated place for going out and also terribly expensive. Drinks hardly get cheaper than 100 swedish kr (arround 11 euros) and they are 25 ml of shit, no good rums here.

Besides, swedish people look less easy going than danes. Appart from the really warming swedish staff we have at the office, people in general looks less friendly, less willing to help you. Again, the comparation with Denmark is unavoidable. Apparently, swedish people are more nationalist and proud of themselves. But, again, these are impressions I got from what people told me, once again I will wait to make up my own opinion. I was said the same about danes but then they happened to be very nice people. In the mean time, I am pretty busy looking for an apartment, soon I will have news about this.

A hug for everybody from Sweden!

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