Stuttgart & Tübingen

View of Stuttgart from the TV tower

After running all through Munich’s central station to catch the 3:39 pm train on Friday to Stuttgart (I had the wrong departing time in my head and never bothered to confirm it until it was too late) I made it to this capital city of the state of Baden Wüttemberg right at 6:00pm. Carlos E. was waiting for me at the train station to begin what was for me an awsome weekend. I went to Stuttgart (population: 600,000) to visit Carlos and Geraldine, two friends from my school in Colombia who now live in this city. Carlos E, Geraldine, as well as Carlos F (el mellizo) from Munich, and I went together to the same German school in Medellin all the way from pre-k, when we were 4 years old, until graduating from high school 14 years later. Carlos E, Carlos F and I were together in the same classroom about 13 out of the 14 years; and Geraldine, both Carlos´ and I were together in the same classroom the last 3 years of high-school. With that introduction you can picture how a big part of the weekend was spent: reminiscing about the past, remembering all the good things we lived and experienced while growing up together, remembering all those funny stories about our classmates, teachers and ourselves, getting updated on the lives of all our other friends, sharing the latest gossip we have on some of our friends, and making once again plans to have our first reunion and to finally open the pyramid. As a graduation gift to the school, our class of 91 (with only 37 students) built a concrete pyramid on the school grounds. The pyramid has a bronze plaque with the name of the 37 students engraved in alphabetical order and what we call a "time capsule". In this time capsule we inserted letters and essays we all wrote 16 years ago with the original idea of opening it 10 years later. I believe we also put in there a video that we made of ourselves during our last months in the school.
Stuttgart is a rather small city, so 15 to 20 minutes later we arrived home and started chatting away for hours accompanied by a couple of Camparis, Greek appetizers, a bottle of Malbec and a delicious home cooked dinner. Afterwards we drove down to the city where I got a walking tour of Stuttgart’s downtown. The downtown is not very big so the most important sightseeing attractions can be walked by and photograph in a short time. We also walked by a couple of streets where the locals hang out at night. I have to admit I was surprised by the amount of bars and café’s that were opened at that time (it was around midnight), how full they were, and also by the amount of people who were out in the streets enjoying the good weather. We stopped at a Café for a non-alcoholic drink to boost our energy level and continued our tour by going to a bar where a friend from Carlos was celebrating his birthday.

Schloßplatz at night -----Schloßplatz by day

After helping Geraldine bake some brownies on Saturday morning I was rewarded with an unbelievable breakfast: an Arepa with cheese. Yes, you read correctly. An arepa in Stuttgart. And it wasn’t one made out of areparina or any other kind of "ready-to-make" mixtures. This was the Real McCoy; the same type of cooked-and-grounded corn made arepas I was raised with and helped me to become the healthy adult I am today. Someone very wise said once that in "paisaland’ (the region where I come from) that a breakfast without an arepa is like a marriage without love, so you can say that at least for Saturday I was in love once again. Ok, I know I’m exaggerating (another very paisa trait) but you can’t imagine how happy I was after 3 months and change without eating one. I continue: after breakfast we drove once again to the city center to view its most important buildings and monuments during the daylight: the Schloβplatz (a big square in front of the Neues Schloβ and what to me seemed to be the heart of Stuttgart), Schillerplatz, and Königstrasse (a pedestrian street filled with shops on each side) among others. In the afternoon "el Mellizo" caught up with us (Carlos F from Munich) and joined us in the remaining part of the walking tour and the visit to the building of the Mercedes Museum. The night was spent once again with another delicious home cooked meal, a couple of bottles of wine, and great conversation until odd hours of the night.

Mercedes Museum

On Sunday morning we continued with our eating extravaganza by having ourselves a hefty breakfast, prepared on the most part by Carlos E, which included but was not limited to: scrambled eggs "a lo colombiano" (with tomato and onions), baked ciabatta, café con leche, fruit salad and some German add-ons: nutella, confitures, ham, cheese and yoghurt. The first stop on Sunday’s tour was Stuttgart’s TV tower. This is the first TV tower of this type built in Germany (between 1,954 and 1,956) and offers the best panoramic views of the city.

Saturday night dinner (Carlos F, Carlos E, Geraldine)

Sunday Morning breakfast (Adriana, Carlos F)

Tübingen

After visiting the tower we headed to the nearby city of Tübingen (population 87,000) about 30 minutes south of Stuttgart. This university town looks exactly how they described it to me: the perfect example of how you would picture a typical German town to be; the quintessential German town that is depicted in books, postcards and children’s books. The facades of the houses are usually of a light color with lots of wood sticks of a dark color and lots of windows. As with many German town Tübingen is equipped with its own castle on top of a mountain overlooking a big part of the city. The place is soooo beautiful!!!!! But you can judge for yourself.

The trip concluded with a last stop to eat at the house before hitting the road. It took us 2 hours to get to Munich and I experienced for the first time in my life what it is to be at a German freeway with no speed limit: pretty cool and somewhat scary at the same time. The next step: for me to drive on a freeway, which I shall have the chance to do when I embark on my moving trip to France.

I was very happy and very much looking forward to going to Stuttgart, but I left even happier and content. It was a great weekend to connect with my past and that part of my life that defines on the most part who I am today; and therefore I have to conclude this post with some thoughts from the whole weekend experience. Like I said it was a great weekend and I had an awesome time. I loved getting together and spending time with old friends and visiting beautiful new places. It was a weekend to celebrate friendship!!! But most important of all it was great to confirm once again that in spite of the distance and in spite of the years there is always that fraternal bond between us. That bond hat makes it possible to conserve our friendship no matter how far we usually live from each other and how many years it may take us to see each other again. That bond that allows us to continue being friends even tough we may not talk for months and months but that every time we see each other makes us feel as if we saw each other the day before, just like we did when we were at school. And finally agreeing on how the education and upbringing we were given at school (very German, open-minded and way more liberal compared to most of the schools in the predominant catholic, elitist and conservative Colombian society) had such an influence on forming the people we are today and how it played such a big role in shaping our personalities: therefore, we share so many common traits. I’ve always loved the school I went to, treasured the years I spent there and been greateful for having gone there. And just like Carlos E said: In life we run into a handful of"Y’s" where we have to decide whether to go right or left. The decision we make is a turning point in our life. And one of those decisions which became a turning point in our lives was made for us by our parents: send us to the German school. If that hadn’t been the case I wouldn’t be here living this adventure!!!

Ammersee

Ammersee

The next day after returning from Ibiza the school had planned a trip to Ammersee (Lake Ammer) and the nearby Monastery of Andechs. I know, what was I doing on a school field trip since I’m not going to school this month? Well, even tough I’m not taking any classes I left a couple of contacts/connections at the school and therefore I still get invited to all of the activities they have planned for the month of August by no other than the coordinator of the extracurricular activities herself. Just another proof of how important Public Relations and having contacts is. Ammersee is yet another lake near Munich were people go mostly to sail, rent paddle boats, walk along side the lake promenade filled with restaurants and cafes, or to take a tour across the lake on one of the many boats that look like Mississippi River boats. As soon as we arrived to Ammersee we began our journey to the Andechs Monastery which is located about an hour by foot from the train station (3km or close to 1.8 miles). The Monastery is on the other side of a mountain called the Holy Mountain and you have to walk through a forest to reach it. The walk was not that bad but it had its stretches of very steep and long stairs to help you climb up the mountain. What kept most of us going was our target: reach the Monastery so we could sit down at their Beer Garden to have something to eat accompanied by a locally brewed beer.

Trail on the Holy Mountain -- View of the town of Andechs from the Monastey

In Bavaria no matter how remote a place could seem you can always count on finding a Beer garden in it. Most of the Beer gardens (at least the bigger ones and more traditional ones from what I’ve seen) are self service and allow you to bring you own food. However you need to buy the drinks there. Since I gave up on beer - fearing I would end up with a beer belly by the end of my stay in Germany I had my last beer sometime during the last week of July - I had myself an Apfelschorle to calm down my thirst. An Apfelschorle is an extremely popular drink in Germany which is just a mixture of apple juice and carbonated mineral water. As a matter of fact you can have a schorle of any kind of juice; however apple and pineapple are the most popular ones. After visiting the Monastery (Jose G, Angelo and Louis Molina would probably be happy to know I picked up an application. I will be contacting you later on for some references) we walked down to the lake where we just sat down to enjoy the view and have a coffee right alongside of the lake promenade.

Monastery Church

Group pictures in the Monastery

With this visit I believe I’m up to date with visiting the majority of the most famous lakes near Munich. The only one that I can recall I still haven’t visited, and would like to visit before I leave, is the Stanberger See: the one where King Ludwig II was found dead. You would think that by now I would be "laked-out", but I’m not.

Ammersee

Ibiza

I left Munich on Saturday morning hoping to finally experience what the summer is like in Europe. I have to think that global warming is definitely doing something to the world’s climate. The summer in Munich has simply been missing in action. I left the city on yet another cloudy and rainy day with a temperature of about 57 degrees, hungry for sunny days with clear blue skies where I didn’t have to worry about carrying a sweater, a jacket and an umbrella. Not that I was necessarily looking forward to the hot European summers but a couple of warm days to go bathe in one of the many lakes near Munich or to go back to the “Eisbach” would’ve been nice. As a matter of fact I had already prepared psychologically for the warm, sweaty and sleepless summer nights without any air conditioning, the rides on the subway in the middle of the summer days in wagons with no AC and going to the shops and internet cafes where the only ventilation came from a couple of fans that did not work all of the time. Now that I think about it I guess that in a way I lucked out because by the looks of it we won’t have a warm summer after all.
So I left Munich on yet another cloudy and rainy day with a temperature of about 57 degrees (just trying to pick-up where I left off) looking forward to warm and sunny Ibiza via Cologne on board an Air Berlin flight. Luckily I wasn’t disappointed. The flight to Cologne was about an hour long where I barely had time to advance on my reading of “La casa de los Espiritus” from Isabel Allende. The connecting flight to Ibiza was delayed about an hour and forty minutes making the connection in Cologne about 4 hours long and putting me in Ibiza right around the same time that my friend Eliana would be arriving from Frankfurt. Just in case you don’t know her Eliana and I went together to the German School in Medellin. We both started in the same pre-k class when we were 4 years old and continued together in the school until graduating from high-school…not too long ago (ji ji ji). She lives now in Frankfurt.
Once we landed in Ibiza I discovered yet another trait that we Latinos inherited from the Spanish: clapping when our plane lands. I have to admit it brought a smile to my face and I couldn’t help wonder what the German on the plane, as reserved and introvert as they can sometimes be, where thinking at the moment of such a folkloric expression of joy. Or is it an expression of relieve for having made it safely to one’s final destination? I have no clue why we do it but for the sake of old times I had to join them in the clapping. We arrived to the hotel at around 930 PM and Marelys, our friend from FIU who is now living in Madrid, was already there as her flight had gotten to the island early in the afternoon. That first night we just went out for a walk around the hotel to grab something to eat. We were actually staying at an apartment type of hotel about 500 meters from the water. Since the apartment had a fully equipped kitchen we were able to do some grocery shopping and have breakfast in the room before heading out to the beach, prepare some sandwiches to take to the beach and have some snacks for the nights: perfect for the student/unemployed/salary-less life I live nowadays.

The first day in Ibiza we woke up very enthusiastically and headed out to one of the many beaches the island has to offer: EsCaná. And like I said earlier we were not disappointed. The weather was SUPER! (no wait…that is German. They use super to say great, wonderful, and awesome). The weather was great: sunny, a clear sky and with a very pleasant breeze. It was never too hot that you couldn’t be outside. The nights were a little bit cooler, with a very nice breeze and no humidity: the perfect weather conditions to sit outside while having dinner or just to go out for a walk. We made it a point to go to a different beach everyday: EsCaná (Sunday), Santa Eulalia (Monday), Salinas (Tuesday), and Cala Nova (Thursday). We would get there usually around noon and 1PM (I know, the time where the sun exposure is the worst) and leave between 6PM and 8PM. As a result I have a tan to die for (Eyy..I have to compliment myself from time to time) which now I cannot show off because of the cold weather in Munich. But I’ve also started to peel on my stomach as one afternoon I forgot to put on some sunscreen and it became red from all that Balearic sun.

Ibiza from the airplane ------------------EsCana Beach

Salinas Beach ---------------Santa Eulalia Beach

On Wednesday we took the ferry to the nearby island of Formentera and spent the day in one of its beaches together with the rest of Italy. I’m not kidding; it was surprising to see the amount of Italians that visit the island of Formentera. Everywhere we turned there was a group of regazzi. After spending the whole day under the sun and in the water I was super tired to go out partying at night. So as much of a party town as Ibiza can be you will probably be disappointed to hear that we did not do that much partying. After coming back from the beach we would just go out for dinner and maybe have a drink at a beach bar and then head back to the hotel. I guess we are getting old!

Island of Formentera

Sunset at Cafe del Mar

One afternoon we went to the town or neighborhood of San Antonio to watch the sunset at the famous “Café del Mar”. It was soooo beautiful. We got there just in time to watch the sunset together with the hundreds of people that gather on the beach in front of the café to enjoy the stunning view of the sunset, take lots and lots of pictures and listen to the lounge type of music played on the background by the Café’s DJ. Once the sun sets everyone started to clap and whistle (Mmmm, clapping once again. It must be an Ibiza thing) after which they continue enjoying a drink while sitting down on the beach.

Sunset at Cafe del Mar

Cafe del Mar

On our second night we discovered a delicious and cozy Indian Restaurant which by the end of the trip became our Cheers in Ibiza: that place where everybody knew our name. The owners are 2 sisters from India who were raised in England and have lived in different countries where they have always opened the same type of family-owned restaurant. The name of the place: Bollywood. This is also the place where we had our last supper on Thursday night and where we ended up dancing to Indian music in the middle of the restaurant with the owners, the crazy Italian cook from the restaurant across the street and some other guests.
All and all the vacation in Ibiza was very laid-back, relaxed and quiet: exactly what I was envisioning and looking forward to. I had a wonderful time and would definitely love to go back there again. The return back home was thank God uneventful. I made it back to Munich at 8PM on Friday after having left Ibiza at 2PM via Dusseldorf. When the plane started to descend and I began to see the green fields near Munich I had that comfortable sensation of being back home and the realization of how good I feel living in this wonderful city. I put on my sweater, took out my jacket and was ready to once again hop on the first train/subway into the city.

Tan progression

Passau

I honestly can’t get over how beautiful the Bavarian landscape and the Bavarian towns and cities are. I think I said it before but I truly enjoy the train rides on this part of Germany. The landscape is filled with wide fields and hills colored in different shades of green, with heavily populated forests that always remind me of the Little Red Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow-White stories; with small and very quaint towns which are so fairy-tale like: so Heidi, so Hansel and Grethel, so all the stories from the Grim brothers. And then, as you start reaching the southern part of the state you begin to peek at the Alps and their still somewhat snow-covered mountain tops. It all looks like a postcard. That is why I love sharing the pictures of all the places I’ve visited in this region.

Pictures taken from the train

Last week for example I visited the town of Passau (population: 50,000) which is located east north east of Munich right on the border with Austria and very close to the border with the Czech Republic. On a regular basis the train takes about an hour and a half to two hours but right the same day that I went they had started construction on a section of the rails and the trip took close to 3 hours. We had to take a train, then a 40 minute ride with a bus to another train station to catch the second train that would take us to Passau. When I came here as a student exchange back in 1990 (parenthesis: WOW I can’t believe it has been 17 years since then) Passau was the closest town, from the small town where I was living, which had a train station. This is the city where I was picked up by my German parents, the city I would go to with the bus to catch a train when I wanted to take-off for the weekend, and the city where I was dropped to catch the train back to Frankfurt on the second to last day of that adventure. I lived in a very small town about 25 kilometers (aprox. 15 miles) from Passau. The name of the town: Freyung, population: 1,000. So as you can imagine I was really looking forward to visiting Passau and seeing how much it had (or hadn’t) changed and how much I remembered about it. Some things where just as I remembered them: the exit of the train station, the Holiday Inn right next to it, the castle on top of the mountain, St. Stephen’s cathedral and its pipe organ (the largest in the world) and the corner where the 3 rivers that cross Passau meet: the Danube, the Inn, and the Linz. Other parts of the city I’m not sure I visited back then or if I did I did not remember them. In any case this city is beautiful and it is worth visiting if you are just in the mood for strolling, chilling and having an ice cream while you enjoy the views

The Inn and the Danube -- View of Passau from top of the castle

We took a 45 minute cruise ship along the Danube and the Linz. The day was perfect for it: sunny, clear sky and not too hot. Perfect weather for the perfect pictures which by the way I hope do some justice to the place.

To the left of the hill on the backgrond is already Austria

The trip back home was a long one. This time around, due to the construction, we had to take 3 trains and a bus. And on top of that the last segment, a train from Landshut to Munich, was delayed for about 30 minutes. So much for the German punctuality: 4 hours after leaving Passau I arrived exhausted in Munich but with the sense of having accomplished one of the trips I was most looking forward to making while in Germany. The one that I’m looking forward the most?!?!?!? Going back to Freyung. I still don’t know when or how is going to take place but I sure do not want to leave Germany and the Bavarian region without visiting it!!!

In the meantime I’ll continue enjoying the sun, the beach and the summer in Ibiza. I arrived 3 days ago. I’ll tell you all about it in the next post.

An Official Munich Resident

Last day of school in July

The first week and a half of being a total bump (no school, no work, no responsibilities) are almost come and gone. I was afraid I was going to find myself without anything to do, that I would get bored and that the days would go by very slow. But that hasn’t been the case. I still feel I haven’t caught up with everything that I wanted to get done. I’ve been busy running errands, trying to get the telephone connection solved, registering at the office of Foreign Authorities, getting my residence permit so I can stay here an additional 3 months, getting ready for my upcoming trip to Ibiza, updating the blog, planning some of the things I want to do in the next couple of months, celebrating the birthdays of 2 friends, a couple of sightseeing activities, and getting caught up with all the things I have to do myself now that my dearest mother is not next to me: cooking, doing laundry and ironing. The cooking experience has not been that traumatic, as a matter of fact I´m enjoying cooking, even if it is for just one person. Something I never thought I would enjoy. The story about getting the laundry done is a little bit more interesting. There is a 24 hour laundromat very close to my building (3.50 Euros per load on the washer, 2.00 Euros for 15 minutes on the dryer and a 2 minute walk), a washing machine on the 6th floor of my building (2.00 Euros per load on the washer, 1.00 Euro for 20 minutes on the dryer and a one minute walk) and a friend who told me I could use the washing machine in the house where she lives (0.00 Euros per load on the washer, 0.00 Euros for unlimited time on the dryer and a 7 minute walk to the subway station, a 5 minute drive with my subway to the central station, a 5 minute connection at the central station, a 20 minute drive with the second subway and a 15 minute drive with the bus). She lives out in the boonies.. Ja, ja ja!!!! The things you have to do when you have no income!!!! I’ve only gone to her place once but with the current exchange rate it is very tempting once I start doing the math. Specially because being as picky as I can be, I have to have a load for dark clothes, one for whites, one for colored, one for the linen and one for delicate clothes.

As a foreigner when you stay in Germany for longer than a week you are obligated to register your presence in the country at a Registration office from the local government; in my case the city of Munich. Every time you move you have to go back to the same office and register your new address and once you decide to leave the city you have to go back and unregister. I was a total procrastinator and only did it last Friday. Since being registered was one of those things that I never needed, I never felt the rush or urgency to do it. But it so happens that one of the requirements to obtain a residence permit, a permit or visa which will allow me to stay in Germany longer than 3 months, is to have registered in the city office. On August 15th, it will be 3 months since my arrival in Germany. Can you believe it? That 3 months have already passed? Not having a lot of time remaining, and given the fact I won’t be in Munich next week, I finally went on Friday to register and pick-up the application for the residence permit. I went expecting the worse and thinking I was going to have to waste the whole day or at least the whole morning registering. I waited about 30 minutes before my number was called and had to walk into an office where I was finally registered. The whole process took less than 5 minutes. I was also afraid I was going to be given a hard time for having waited so long to register; but not at all. I was helped by a very polite (and by the way good looking too) man who gave me the piece of paper I needed to take to the Foreign Authority office to apply for the residence permit. I was asked what I was doing here in Munich so I explained I was attending a language school. The whole conversation took place in German and I was even complimented on how good my German speaking skills are. Yesterday I went back to the office of Foreign Authority to apply for my residence permit. This time around I was sure everything was not going to go as smooth as it did on Friday. I´ve always heard about how much bureaucracy there is in all of the institution of the German government, how inefficient their processes are and how slow their employees work. Even tough I had all the required documentation (health insurance, bank account, school registration, passport, photo) I was expecting spending the whole morning there. I was also expecting to undergo a heavy and dreadful interrogation by a “Beamter” (government employee) who had been trained by a former agent of the secret intelligence agency of the times from the cold war. But once again I was wrong and was happily surprised with a very smooth and quick process. 40 minutes and 50 Euros after my arrival to the building I walked out with the visa already stamped on my passport which allows me to stay in Germany until November 30th

My class the first 3 weeks in July -- My class the lat week of July

My teachers are the two in the front: Gabi & Regina

.…And even though I’ve had my hands full getting all of this done I also have to admit that I miss school and the routine I had gotten used to: getting up at 8:00 in the morning and getting ready to go to school, which included preparing a “lunchbox” with a sandwich and a fruit for the break, riding the tram to go to school and doing some people watching while I was at it, socializing a little bit before the start of the class and finding out how everyone made it home from the previous day outing, socializing some more with the teachers and school staff, learning new things about the German language in the class, taking the 30 minute break where I would go downstairs to a bakery together with some friends to get a cup of coffee (the coffee machine from the school broke down), eating my sandwich and socializing a little bit more, catching up with the latest gossip from the school and the “Gray’s Anatomy” lives of some of our class mates, returning to the last hour of class, and making plans to meet in the "Waiting Room" for our daily event.

School Building -- "The Waiting Room"

I’ve already registered for my next course in the same school. The classes begin August 27 and they run until September 21st , the day before the beginning of Oktoberfest. My mom and my brother shall be arriving (God permitting) on September 29th and will stay on this side of hemisphere until October 14th. My plan is for them to spend some time here enjoying the city and all there is to see, the Oktoberfest, and Munich’s surroundings before taking off to Prague and probably another still-to-be-determined destination. After they leave back to Miami I make take another 10 day trip with some friends from Munich and I would then come back to my last week in the capital city of Bavaria. My plan is to be taking off (actually drive off) from Munich to France around October 31st and before I know it the first part of my adventure will be coming to an end.

Celebrate Munich

Celebrate Munich

On Sunday night, after returning from our Chiemsee trip everyone was beginning to feel somewhat sad as we were starting the last week of school in July and with that the last week in Munich for a part of our group. So we promised to make it a point to have a celebration every night during this last week: celebrate the fact we had met each other and had gotten to know such a group of fun people, celebrate the good times we shared at school, during our trips and the going out at nights, celebrate our plans of meeting somewhere in the future, and celebrate our own personal experiences in the last month. Simply celebrate MUNICH!
The first celebration took place on Sunday night. The place: Buena Vista, a small Cuban beer garten/club close to Marienplatz. I know what you are thinking. Out of all places in Munich how did I manage to go to a Cuban place? Our Brazilian friends, who know all the party places in Munich, had been there before and recommended it. And then our Russian classmates wanted to go to a Latin place because they wanted to dance to some salsa and merengue. The place was rather nice and low key: perfect for a Sunday night. If I had to compare it to something I would say that it is like the Senor Frogs on the Grove. A couple of tables set outside, some more dinner tables in the inside which are later on removed to create space for an improvised dance floor, and a rather long bar. I wasn’t feeling too good so I decided not to have a beer or any other alcoholic drink for that matter and told everyone I would stay there only for a little bit But as soon as I started dancing to the first song from Juan Luis Guerra and 440 the “not-feeling-so-good feeling” went away. But like Cinderella I had to run out of the place just past midnight in order to catch the last subway home since I didn’t want to be stranded once again in the middle of Munich trying to get home and then having to catch a cab (on Sundays and weekdays the subway does not run until 2AM unlike the weekends).

Buena Vista

And the week continued more or less in the same way. We went back to Buena Vista on Monday night to say goodbye to Emma (she was flying back home to London on Tuesday morning). A very nice and hip Mexican “beach” bar called Sausalitos and a beer hall on Wednesday night to say goodbye to Andrea (he was flying back home to Sardinia, Italy on Thursday afternoon). The Irish pub with a live band on Thursday night (no one was leaving on Friday but…why not??). And last but not least a big party at a restaurant/bar on Friday night to say goodbye to all the ones who were leaving on Saturday/Sunday and where we once again danced to some music from Shakira and Juanes. No matter where we go in Munich and the type of music they play there is a big probability that you will listen to Shakira’s “Hips don’t lie” and Juanes’ “La camisa negra” which of course makes me feel very proud.

Eliana, Adriana & Humberto - The 3 Colombians dancing to "La Camisa Negra"

The rest of the weekend I spent it quietly (trying to recuperate from the whole week) just sharing some last “quality time” with Humberto and Marina: the last 2 from the group of people who were leaving Munich in July. We walked around the city center, made lots of pictures, had some pizza, laid down on the grass on a small but very nice park next to Marienplatz, listened to some music, ate gummy bears and revived one last time all the stories from the last month. On Sunday, Eliana and I (Eliana is a girl from Bogota who is staying here almost 3 years getting a master’s degree in mathematics) went to the central station to say good bye to both of them. It was sad: they didn’t want to leave and we were sure we were going to miss them a lot!!! Fortunately I’m still left here with a group of people who are staying in Munich more or less the same time I am or even more.

Chilling out on a park near Marienplatz

The last week in July was also my last week of school (for now) as I am not going to class this month. I plan to do some side trips and also take some time off (you are probably saying… time off?? From what??? Que descarada!!. But this week that I have been off I’ve realized I haven taken any time to truly relax. It’s been nonstop from my last weeks at work and finalizing everything for the trip. And even tough the first 3 weeks in Europe were dedicated to vacationing with Karina and Marelys, this type of vacation where you visit 3 cities in one day and take buses, trains, planes and boats all on the same day, can be pretty exhausting. I came back from vacation on June 3rd , started school on June 4th , and went to school everyday until July 27th. It has been an awesome 2 months and the time has gone by way too fast. So it is now time for me to stop, take a step back, relax, chill and enjoy!!