09/05/2007
09/04/2007
Info...
At the Barcelona airport earlier today.
09/03/2007
09/02/2007
Plaça Catalunya
Tourists feeding our "flying rats" at Plaça Catalunya.
09/01/2007
Would You Pay 1.000 EUR for a Pencil?
If you like ball-point pens, fountain pens and stuff like that, you should visit Casa de la Estilográfica near Plaza Urquinaona, Barcelona. But remember to take your Visa with you! The most expensive pen I saw costs around 3.000 EUR. (But a pencil only costs around 1.000 EUR, so thou shall worry not!)
More info on their website: www.casadelaestilografica.com (in Spanish).
08/30/2007
Silence is Golden...
It's been several weeks since I last updated this blog (But wait, I have a good excuse! It's not my fault!). An Irish friend of mine (not his fault either!) commented a couple of weeks ago: "Hm... Kafka has been a little bit quiet lately..." What could I say? Yes, I know... But the thing is that it's a little bit difficult to update your mobile blog - if you don't have a mobile phone!
Now they are finally fixing it (I think), and I finally have another phone that I can use, with more or less the same features as the previous one - no WiFi on this one, though, so I'll have to pay for the terribly expensive WAP connection (mobile services in Spain are approximately 3 times more expensive than in other EU countries). But, hey, we only live once, so... who cares!
I would like to post a couple of vids from Finland, but right now I can't, so I'm attaching this memorable photo instead (it's memorable because it's the last one I took with my mobile phone before it died) - and this is not from Finland, it's from my street in Barcelona.
06/19/2007
06/18/2007
Lake
Believe it or not, there are 188000 lakes in Finland. This is one of them.
06/13/2007
Finland, Finland, Finland...
Going to Finland for holidays... Hopefully I can post some nice pictures from there (I will be staying in the middle of nowhere.)
If you don't know anything about Finland, please don't have a look at these lyrics by Monty Python: Finland, Finland, Finland, but rather see this Wikipedia article or go to Virtual Finland instead (disponible en castellano también).
:-D
05/14/2007
Cultural Differences?
OK, so, we lost the game against Canada that I was "boasting" about in my previous post. However, it was strange, because everybody seemed to be really happy anyway (all the Finns, I mean). I was wondering why, and they said: "Hey, we did better than the Swedes and the Russians, so we didn't lose. Actually, we won." (For those who are not interested in ice hockey, Sweden and Russia are the "arch enemies" of Finland).
As I am not very much into sports myself, I wasn't really worried about winning or losing, but thinking about... cultural differences.
People usually say that the Spaniards are really "hot-blooded", passionate and all that, whereas the Finns are known as "cold" people who don't really express their feelings.
Yeah, right...
Let me show you a quick audiovisual comparison:
These are the passionate Spanish/Catalan people, seeing an FC Barcelona football game (Barça was winning):
...and these
are the cold Finns, watching an ice hockey game (Finland was losing!):
05/13/2007
Finland vs. Canada
Fully equipped to see the Ice Hockey World Championships, Finland vs. Canada :
There is only one place in Barcelona where you can see the game:
EDDA
NordiskBar - BarNòrdic
Blasco de Garay, 15
08004 Barcelona
Going there
with two other Finns. Keep your fingers crossed (for Finland, of course)!
:-)
05/05/2007
Street Artists
Street artists, La Rambla, Barcelona
05/02/2007
Feria de Abril, Barcelona
They say
that the only "real" spring fair is held in Seville, but we do have our own feria de
abril here in Barcelona as well. It's probably not as big as the
Seville Spring Fair, but well worth seeing. (I went to see it last night.)
Links:
- The Barcelona Spring Fair at www.bcn.es (English)
- The Seville Spring Fair in Wikipedia (English)
Feria de Abril en Wikipedia (castellano)
04/25/2007
Sant Jordi
It was Sant Jordi (St. George's Day) here in Catalonia on Monday, so I went to the (Barcelona) city center to see some books. This day is also known as el Dia del Llibre (literally "the Day of the Book"), so, it's when everybody goes to the city center to buy some books... This, of course, means that you cannot really do or see anything; the streets are so full that you can hardly walk. But it's well worth seeing anyway.
This year, I only bought two books (I usually buy at least 4 or 5, because they give good discounts on St George's Day):
- Cosmofobia by Lucía Etxebarria (in Spanish)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
I also found an English bookstore, which is nice, because it's sometimes difficult to find good English/American/Irish literature here, except for the top 5 best sellers perhaps. Now I know where to go when I'm looking for something interesting to read in English.
Links:
- Sant Jordi in Wikipedia
- St. George's Day in Wikipedia
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in Wikipedia
- Lucía Etxebarria in Wikipedia (English)
- Lucía Etxebarria en Wikipedia (español)
English bookstore in :
Come In - Llibreria Anglesa de Barcelona, Balmes, 129 bis., 08008 Barcelona
04/17/2007
Shopping...
One of my favorite shopping centers in Barcelona:
04/11/2007
Pamplona
" After Hemingway's death in 1961, two tickets to the upcoming Pamplona bullfights were discovered in his desk drawer." (http://www.pbs.org/hemingwayadventure/spain.html)
Links
- "Ernest Hemingway" (en.wikipedia.org)
- "Lifelong Aficionado" (www.pbs.org, same as above)
- "Hemingway in Pamplona" (www.literarytraveler.com)
04/09/2007
Great Food
If you ever go to Zaragoza, remember to have lunch at the "La Republicana" restaurant. The place is beautiful and the food is just great.
More information:
La Republicana (Closed on Sundays)
C/ Méndez Núñez 38, Zaragoza
Sweet Home Barcelona...
The trip was great, but it's good to be back home again. Seeing 3 cities and one or two pueblos (villages) in two days is very interesting, but also kind of tough... Especially if you get lost in the mountains... But, hey, it was a great adventure!
(More pictures and video clips to follow later today.)
