Zagreb & Split - Croatia

ZAGREB

There is so much to tell about Croatia I had to split the stories into 2 posts: Zagreb and Split (Part I) and Dubrovnik (Part II). Croatia, another nation which was once part of Yugoslavia, is a very diverse country. There are not only geographical differences between an inland city like Zagreb from a coastal city like Dubrovnik but also differences in the character of its people. The vast history (which includes a bloody war not too long ago) of Croatia´s regions could also have me writting for days. Recall that the war between Croats and Serbs in this part of the world(Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina) for total independence, where over 100,000 people were killed and up to 3,000,000 people were displaced, ended only towards the end of 1,995. I arrived to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, after taking a 3 hour train from Ljubljana. On that day a cold front was hitting eastern Europe. It was snowing hard when I left Slovenia and it snowed all along the train ride. Everywhere I looked there was snow: on the foot of the hills, on the mountains, on the rooftops, on the sidewalks and on the streets. I arrived around noon. Since I was taking the overnight train to Split that same night, I left my luggage in the lockers at the train station.

Snowy road to Zagreb - Zagreb


Old Town in Zagreb, Cathedral in the back

Zagreb is a big commercial city which looks like many of the other western Europe cities I visited. The whole metropolitan area has close to 1.1 million inhabitants making it the most populated city in Croatia. Contrary to what I was expecting Zagreb seems to have quickly recuperated from the damaged caused not only by close to 4 years of an Independence war during the 90´s but also from the more than 40 years of a communist regime. Something that is for example more palpable in cities like Warsaw. I was also surprised by the fact that everywhere you go in Zagreb people speak English. I stopped at a random bakery to get a cup of coffee and a pastry and the lady at the counter was able to even suggest a Croatian pastry and tell me what it was made up: something that you sometimes have difficulties finding in a bakery in Miami.

Zagreb´s city center is rather small and can be explored in a couple of hours. The whole time that I was there it rained and it was freezing cold. I had to stop from time to time and look for refuge inside different shops to avoid catching a cold. I visited Zagreb´s cathedral, a neo-gothic cathedral with 2 very tall and distinctive towers which can be seen from anywhere in the city, the fresh produce market, the National Theater,and the University buildings. Right after the sun set the temperature dropped even more and it became too cold for my taste. I headed back to the train station to wait for my 11 o´clock at night departure. And let me tell you that the almost 3 hours I waited in the station were.....interesting to say the least. I always had my suspicions that train stations are a magnet for weird and strange people but on that night I confirmed it. The ticket office at the train station, the one that is manned by real people, stays open 24 hours in Zagreb (the first time I see this) so I sat on the chairs next to it to enjoy a sandwich for dinner and read a couple of chapters of my book. A few weird characters came to ask me some things but I sent them away politely and easily. Most of them were either homeless people or older and lonely people just looking for someone to talk to. I saw them repeating the same routine with other people at the station. The police was continuously making its rounds around the station and to be honest I always felt very safe. Then a younger women who seemed to be waiting for a train approached me and talked to me in another language. I assumed she was talking Croatian but from the signs she was making I figured she wanted to know if the seat next to mine was free. I nodded with my head and told her I did not speak any Croatian (in English). She sat down and asked if I spoke German. When I told her that yes, I spoke some German she broke down and started to cry. Once she stopped crying she was able to tell me that she was heading to Munich from Belgrade (Serbia) with her husband (he was trying to enter the European Union illegally) and they were caught on the train, they had been removed from the train, he was sent back to Belgrade and she missed her connection to Munich and had to wait now about 4 hours in Zagreb for the next train to Munich. She was somewhat scared to be at the train station with all the freaks and weirdos so I stayed with her until her train arrived to the station about 30 minutes before mine. During the time we waited together for our respective trains she told me about the discrimination she suffers to find a good job because of her origin and her beliefs. She wears a turban which covers her hair and she has been asked by several potential employers if she would stop wearing it to the potential workplace. After she tells them No, she does not get the job. After that eye opening conversation with the girl from Romania I took my train to Split. I was very lucky that the train was not full so I was able to get a compartment by myself. I said I was lucky because this train had no couchettes (the compartments with bunk beds for you to sleep). It only had seats and since I was by myself I was able to sleep across the 3 seats.

SPLIT

I arrived in the city of Split at around 8 o´clock in the morning. I was very tired from having slept uncomfortably on the train´s seat and headed straight to the hostel where I was staying and slept a couple of hours on the comfort of a bed. Split is the second largest city in Croatia. It lies on the Adriatic coast in the region known as Dalmatia. The Diocletian´s Palace, Split´s pride and joy, dates back to the year 300 AD and it was built as a retirement palace for the Roman Emperor Diocletian. It is located right in front of the water and it has a lot of well preserved ruins. Lots of other Roman ruins can be seen all over the Old Town. Even though it continued to rain all day long I walked all over the Old part of town, climbed up to the top of the Cathedral´s bell tower for the most amazing views of the city, visited the cathedral and walked along its wide and recently renovated boulevards close to the water. Since it was eastern Sunday most, if not all, of the shops were closed and the streets were also pretty empty. I could only imagine how these boulevards, together with its many restaurants and shops, get filled with tourists and locals (probably just tourists) on the sunny and rainless summer days.

Bell Tower

View of Split from top of Bell Tower

Old Town ' Walls from Diocletian Palace

I found the people in Split to be extremely nice and welcoming. Everyone was very friendly and helpful to me. In Split, as in the rest of Croatia´s Adriatic coast, most of the budget accommodations are in the form of private home accommodations. People transform a couple of rooms in their homes into rooms for rent. In some instances you have your own private bathroom, some other times you have to share it, and usually you have access to the kitchen so that you can buy food, keep it in the frig and cook it later on. The people at "The best" hostel where I stayed for example were super nice. They gave me all sorts of information and suggestion about things to do, places to visit and restaurants/cafeterias where to eat. They really do go out of their way to make your stay in their city as pleasant as possible. They told me for example that I could not leave Split without trying a "borek": a cheese or meat pastry, which I later found out is from Serbian origin, that is eaten all over Croatia. That is why early on Monday morning I had the chance to try one (a cheese one) before embarking on a 5 hour long bus ride to Dubrovnik.

Slovenia

Ljubljana with the Kamnik Alps in the background

I arrived in Slovenia with some apprehension: it was 10 o´clock at night (the train got delayed about an hour at the border crossing), I had no hotel reservation and the tourist information office was closed at the time. I of course can´t speak a word of Slovene and had no clue how much people there spoke English or any other language, I had not really heard much about the country except for the fact that it was part of the former Yugoslavia, and I thought I was going to be the only tourist in the city of Ljubljana. Come on, how many people would pick Ljubljana (you know I love that name) as their weekend destination?

Buildings near the Old Town - Preseren Square

Slovenia is a small country. In total it has close to 2 million inhabitants with Ljubljana, its most populated city, having a population of 267,000. I walked out of the train station for about 5 minutes and I was very close to the area where, according to my guide, there were about 5 hostels. I asked a young couple on the street about how to get to the hostel I was looking for and very nicely and in a very good English they told me how to get there. Since the moment I got there I felt very safe and my apprehension started to fade away. I got to the hostel, they had a room, I went upstairs to leave my belongings and came back down to use their free Internet service. My first surprise: there were about 2 to 3 different groups of people staying at the same hotel/hostel who were from Latin America: I overheard a women from Venezuela with her mother, another couple from Mexico and a small group of friends from Spain. The next morning I walked to the Old part of town first. I felt a very good vibe all over town. Lots of people on the streets, lots of outdoor cafes, lots of small stores, and a big market on one of the main squares. The second surprise: I wasn´t the only tourist in town. The city was filled with groups of tourists who were listening very carefully to all the detailed explanations their tour guide was giving them. And to add to that surprise, many of those tourists were coming from Spain. Even though in the time I´ve spent in Spain I have not seen any specials or offers or promotions to go visit Slovenia and none of the Spanish people I have met have mentioned Ljubljana as one of their favorite vacations spots the place was filled with Spanish people. Something for which I still haven´t formulated any theories but that intrigues me a lot. I wanted to stop for a coffee to go so that I could continue on my tour of the Old town. I stopped at a small coffee shop/bakery along the river, in front of the street market. And that is when I knew that this was a place I was going to like...a lot. How can´t you fall in love with a place where you ask for a cafe latte to go and it not only tastes good and costs just 1 euro but they also give you a small plastic cup with 3 cookies and 2 pieces of home made chocolate balls to take with you?

Ljubljana´s hill castle - View from the castle


Market - Church of the Annunciation

Ljubljana has its own castle on top of a hill located in the middle of the city. I used the newly inaugurated funicular to get to it and be able to have the best views of the city with the Kamnik Alps in the background. I also visited the Church of the Annunciation and the Cathedral of St. Nicholas and walked past the University. Ljubljana reminded me a lot of Germany. Actually it reminded me a lot of the small cities in the state of Bavaria. The buildings, the squares, the churches, the pedestrian zones and the layout in general are very similar. Everything works just the way it is supposed to. Even the plastic bags in the supermarket where you pack your own groceries at the register open easily. An impossible task for me to accomplish in the rest of Europe (France and Spain for example) where I'm always holding up the line because I can't open the bag to pack my things. The streets are clean, the city is organized and the people are very civic-minded. Well, actually the people are not only very civic-minded but they are very friendly, nice and polite; and to add to all of this the men are very good looking. Everyone I met and everyone I encountered was always very polite and very helpful: from the people at the hostel, to the waiters at the coffee shops, from the store clerks to the park attendants, from the bus drivers to the random people I asked for directions on the streets. Another plus is that almost everyone speaks English or Spanish so there was really no need to worry about not knowing the language. Even though learning how to say "Good day" (something that sounds like dubri dan) comes in very handy. It is the same word in Croatian and it can also gain you the instant sympathy of the locals.

Bled Castle

The following day I went to the nearby town of Bled to visit its famous Lake and Castle. I took a 45 minute train to the town of Jesenice and then the 10 minute local bus to the Lake. Of course I ran into another small group of Spanish people in the bus, which by then did not surprise me at all. Lake Bled is stunning. In the middle of the lake you have a very small island with a church. Then on one side of the lake you have a castle which was built on top of a cliff. I hiked all the way up to the castle via some very tiny and steep stairs, something which did not really help the strain I have in my ankle. See, sometime towards the very beginning of the trip I must have twisted my ankle or done some sort of movement which I can´t remember but which caused me to have a strain. So of course all the walking, and going up and down stairs and hills would cause me to have pain and discomfort towards the end of the day. Some of the rooms in the castle are undergoing renovations so I could not go in. However it was worth to climb to the top and once again be able to enjoy the beautiful views of the Slovenian landscape. This time around the Julian Alps. When I got to Bled it was starting to snow. Small snow flakes were falling and as you could imagine it was freezing cold. Bled, as I found out when I got there, caters a lot to people who enjoy outdoor activities and extreme sports; mostly outdoor sports that are practiced in the summer. There are plenty of hiking trails that take you to different towns and different mountains. There are lots of companies offering water rafting trips, paragliding and kayaking activities. So it was a shame to be there around this time of the year when most of these activities, or at least the ones I want to try out, are closed. I got back to Ljubljana in the afternoon and decided to take the rest of the afternoon/night off to give some rest to my ankle and prepare myself for the long day ahead of me.

Lake Bled

The town of Bled

An Executive Decision

Train ride from Hungary to Slovenia

When I found out how much time it took to get to Bulgaria from Hungary and how much it costed to get there I knew it did not make much sense for me to embark on that trip. Specially because I wanted to visit 3 cities in Bulgaria, it was Tuesday and I needed to be in Croatia on Friday/Saturday. I turned to my loyal trip companion (the Lonely Planet guide) to get some information about potential countries and cities I could visit in those 4 days which would not move me too far away from Croatia. My first choice was Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia...but doing a little more reading and doing a small logistical analysis by the end of the day I had changed my mind and had decided to go to Slovenia instead. Ljubljiana (Slovenia´s capital) was on the route from Hungary to Croatia, and the city of Bled, with its castle nestled on a mountain cliff and its church on an island in a lake, sounded as the perfect spot to go on a day trip. The idea of going somewhere totally outside of my plans was also very appealing. This is what these trips are all about: improvising as you go along, adjusting your plan when needed and going with the flow. But let me tell you that I´m so glad to have gone to Slovenia. I got there with zero expectations and was taken by surprise by a very welcoming country with beautiful landscapes, lots of things to do and where you feel very safe. Since I only made up my mind by the end of the day I waited until Wednesday to go buy a train ticket leaving in the late afternoon or night. I got up early on Wednesday, left my bags in the storage place at the hostel and got to the main train station just before 11 o´clock. I was helped sometime around 11:30 only to find out there was a special offer to Ljubljana for about 13 USD leaving at 12:50PM from another train station. I decided to take that train and had to literally run to the hostel to pick up my bag, run back to the main train station to catch the metro to the other station where this train was departing from. I got to the train station at around 12:30 and just had time to purchase something to eat for lunch in the train as there was no food service on it and the trip was about 8 hours long. The long ride to Slovenia came at the perfect time. It gave me the chance to rest and recharge my batteries. These types of trips where you are visiting so many places and walking so much everyday, where you sleep in a different place almost every night, where you are constantly dragging a bag and when you have many nights where you only sleep a couple of hours can get to you and you do need to stop and take some time to rest and recharge your batteries. And that is exactly what I did: I slept on the train, I listened to music, I read and I enjoyed the views. Because everything happened so fast I did not have a chance to go to an Internet cafe and book a hostel and was therefore counting on the recommendations from the Lonely Planet guide to find a place to sleep that night.

Hungary

Budapest (Parliament)

BUDAPEST
I arrived to Budapest around 8:30 in the morning of Saturday March 15th after taking the overnight train in Krakow (Poland). Even though I was not meeting Mare and her troop (friends/co-workers) until noon I went straight to the hotel to see if they would store my bag until they arrived and got their rooms. But to my luck I was able to check in and thus take a shower and change clothes: something I was really looking forward to after having slept on a bunk bed dressed with jeans and a sweater. The Revolution of 1848 was being celebrated that day and the streets, as well as the "Chain" bridge, adjacent to the hotel were closed to the cars and instead there were bands playing Hungarian folk music and people dressed in traditional clothing who were re-enacting life in Hungary in the 19th century. I met Mare and her troop around noon and soon after that we were off to explore the city. The first order of business: Lunch (Hungarian Goulash).

Celebration of the 1848 Revolution - View of Pest in the background

Budapest is actually 2 cities separated by the Danube River: Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesh). We first visited Buda: the Buda castle, the Fisherman´s Bastion, and Mathias Church. Afterwards, but still in Buda, we went to the Labyrinth of Buda Castle: one of the highlights of the entire trip. Many many years ago (as far back as half a million years ago) a series of caves were formed under the location where Buda Castle was built. These caves were later connected with each other as well as with the cellars of the houses in the Castle´s district forming what is known today as the castle´s labyrinth and which was used as a shelter and as a secret military installation in the past. We walked into the darkness of the labyrinth and started to walk without a clue of where we were heading or what we were supposed to look for. The guy at the entrance told us there would be signs along our way which would tell us where we were. Given the fact that it was pitch black once you entered the labyrinth we were not really counting on those signs to guide us. At some point we had to each one take out our cell phones and used them as flashlights to help us guide ourselves. That is how we noticed there was something painted on the walls which we could not quiet identify. As resourceful as we engineers are ( I just had to throw that one in there) we started taking pictures of the walls. That is how, with the help of the flash and through the pictures themselves, we discovered that the walls were painted with animal figures such as deers and bulls.

Animal paintings on the walls of the labyrinth

We did not really see any signs posted on the walls but as we were looking for the exit we ran into a woman and her son. To our surprise, they were each carrying a lamp which helped them find their way around the labyrinth. They told us they had given the lamps to them at the entrance and they gave them to us. Now with the lamps in our hands it was a different story and a different experience. What we had walked up until that point was only an nth part of the labyrinth. We found a map on the wall and got a better vision of where we were and the path we wanted to follow. Suddenly, about halfway into our journey it started to smell like a cellar and wine, a light was coming out of a room and you could hear a stream of something coming out of that same room. As we walked towards the light the smell of wine became stronger and the sound of classical music emerged. The lit room had sort of a fountain from where red wine was pouring instead of water. I felt like when a character of a Nintento, X-Box or Play Station game defeats all the monsters and overcomes all the obstacles along his/her way and reaches the end of the game by entering a room where a reward awaits him/her. Of course I couldn´t contain myself and I had to taste the wine and drink from the fountain as if it were a water fountain. There were no glasses available!! But was it really wine?? It smelled like wine, it looked like wine and it tasted like wine so I´m telling myself it was wine.

Inside the labyrinth

The Wine Fountain

On Sunday it was off to the Pest side of the city: the pedestrian zone close to the hotel for breakfast, the synagogue and the cathedral. In the afternoon we submerged ourselves in a reinvigorating thermal bath and finished the night with a delicious dinner on a restaurant on the Danube River (the restaurant is actually on a boat).

Fisherman´s Bastion

View of Buda from the Chain Bridge - View of Chain Bridge and Pest from Buda

On Monday Mare and her troop were off to their meeting and I had a plan: wake up early to go to the train station and purchase the train tickets for my next trip (Bulgaria), visit 2 nearby towns in the morning and early afternoon and come back to Budapest around 7pm to meet up with them. But nothing came out as planned. I woke up late (I don´t know why but each time it is becoming more and more difficult for me to wake up early in the morning. I don´t know what I´m going to do whenever I have to go back to work) and made it to the station around noon. At the station I had to wait close to an hour to be helped by the "efficient" teller only to find out that the journey south to Sofia took 17 hours and costed about 180USD. See, the web site for the Hungarian Railways is not very user friendly, specially the sections in English. It would never give me the price of the journey and trying to figure out the schedules was also cumbersome. I thought the journey was shorted and cheaper and I left the station somewhat disappointed and not knowing exactly what to do next. If I were to go south to Bulgaria I was still in need of coming back north to Croatia to spend there a couple of days and still be on time to catch the once a week ferry from Dubrovnik (Croatia) to Bari (Italy) where I was visiting some friends. At the end it became too late to go anywhere outside Budapest and I just stayed walking around the city.


ESZTERGOM

Esztergom Basilica

View of Esztergom (Slovakia is on the other side of the bridge)

On Tuesday I headed to the town of Esztergom, located about an hour to an hour and a half northwest of Budapest by train. Esztergom has around 30,000 inhabitants and in the 10th-13th centuries it was the capital of Hungary. Today it is the seat of the archbishop of Hungary and its basilica is the largest church in the country. The town lies next to the Danube River and it is connected to Slovakia via a bridge that crosses the river. I spent the whole day exploring the streets of Esztergom, climbing up the hill leading to some ruins and to a tiny church with a striking sculpture of Jesus on the cross. I also went to the Basilica and the very nice park that surrounds it and walked around the old part of town as well. I got back to Budapest sometime around 8 o´clock and picked up my bag from the hotel. Since Mare and her troop had already left that morning I had left my bag at the front desk at the hotel and checked myself into a hostel that night, one very close to the main train station. By then I had already made my mind. I was going to visit another couple of spots in Budapest on Wednesday and take the overnight train to Slovenia .

Poland

For some odd reason I cannot find the pictures from Poland. I believe that when I used Mare´s laptop in Budapest to download the pictures from my camera to the memory stick and thus have more space in the camera I deleted them inadvertently. But I´m not going to give myself any grief about that. I believe this could very well be the worst thing that has happened to me since I got here...and that is nothing. If this is the worst that will happen to me then I´m very happy to have lost the pictures!

I flew from Barcelona to Poland (a 3 hour flight) with no hostel reservation but I figured I could get the people at the Tourist Information (TI) office to help me book one. The Lonely Planet guide also had the addresses of a couple of places that I intended to use as my plan B. So after making the 1 hour long immigration line at the newly opened terminal of the Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw I found myself standing inside a tram towards the city center where I could not even understand the names of the stops, let alone what people were talking about. It did not go that bad. I got off on the right tram stop and walked towards the hostel the TI recommended. That afternoon I only walked to the train station to purchase my tickets for the following trips and walked back to the hostel. It was dark, I was tired, it was cold, it was raining and I did not feel like venturing out alone under those conditions. The following day, even though it continued to rain, I walked to the Old Town in the morning. The Old town in Warsaw is undergoing a lot of construction and renovations. Streets are being widened, boulevards and pedestrian zones are being paved, trees are being planted, the facades of many buildings are being painted and restored. Warsaw did not impress me that much. It is a big and commercial city with lots of people out on the streets and lots of shops and restaurants. However, everyone seems to be doing their own thing and the Polish people on the streets (at least the ones in Warsaw) did not strike me as very nice, friendly and polite. But don´t get me wrong... I enjoyed my time in Warsaw sitting at coffee shops watching people, visiting the coolest music store I´ve visited thus far (way better than the Virgin Mega Store of Champs Elysee in Paris) and going to supermarkets (I love to go a couple of supermarkets in the cities I visit and looking at the different types of products they offer).

On Friday morning I took a 2 hour train heading south to the city of Krakow. Krakow is probably the most visited city in Poland and even though it is very tailored for tourists it is worth visiting. I arrived there around noon, placed my belongings in a locker inside the train station and started walking towards the city center (about a 5 minute walk). Krakow has one of the biggest town squares in eastern Europe and it is surrounded by the cathedral and beautiful buildings. The square itself is home to a permanent arts and crafts fair where traditional Polish food is also sold. Besides the town square and the many little but very quaint streets leading to it, Krakow is also famous for its Wavel Castle: the royal castle located on top of Wavel hill which was home to the Polish royal family for about 500 years until the 16th century.

I walked back to the train station that night, walked a little bit around the very modern mall located next to it, had something to eat, picked up my belongings and hopped on the night train (13 hour journey) to Budapest.

Barcelona

View of Barcelona from Parc Montjuic

La Sagrada Familia, under construction

I flew from Madrid to Barcelona with one small carry on bag and a rather empty backpack . In Barcelona I stayed with my friend Lourdes, one of my classmates in the German course in Munich. The fact that Lourdes lives very close to the city center and that she has a scooter made it very easy to drive all over town. And that is exactly what we did as soon as I set foot in Barcelona: we drove to Parc Montjuic, a park located on top of a small hill with great views of the city and and the Mediterranean sea. This hill is also the place where the Olympics were held back in 1992. The weather in Barcelona was cold and windy but with a clear blue sky on most of the days. During my stay in Barcelona we visited all the "you must go there when you are there" places : Parc Montjuic, the beach of Barceloneta, Las Ramblas (a boulevard filled with street artists, restaurants and souvenir shops), Plaza Cataluña and Plaza España, La Sagrada Familia (the cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudi and which is still under construction with an expected completion date of 2020), Barcelona´s cathedral, the barrio gotigo, La pedrera (a house designed also by Gaudi) and of course a couple of tapas bars. I also had the chance to meet some of Lourdes´friends and go out with them for a drink and for some additional tapas.

Parc Montjuic -- Plaza España

La Sagrada familia, with Lourdes

During the one weekend I was there we decided to drive to the Sanctuary of our Lady of Lourdes in Lourdes, France. The sanctuary is located about 6 hours from Barcelona so we left on Friday night and completed our first half of the route. We found a hostel on the way to Lourdes but still on the Spanish side and spend the night there as it was going to be less expensive than spending the night in France. The next morning we woke up early to finish the drive to Lourdes. On the way over there we crossed the Aran Valley and were able to see the Pyrenees at a distance. We reached Lourdes sometime around noon and got to see most of the sanctuary that day: the churches, the grotto in which the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette, a coffee shop and of course some souvenir shops in town. There was even time to take a bath in the pools (they are called pools but they are more like bath tubs) that are filled with water coming from the grotto where the Virgin Many appeared (which by the way was freezing cold water). On Sunday morning we headed back to Barcelona stopping first at a couple of towns that were on the way: Baqueira (the ski town where the Spanish royal family skies), Veilla, and Arties.

Driving across the "Valle de Aran"

Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes -- Grotto

The Pyrenees - Viella

I also did a one day trip to the city of Tarragona on Monday. Located still on the coast of Cataluña and about 2 hours by bus from Barceolan, Tarragona is one of the most "roman" cities in Spain with its own roman amphitheater and city walls. The bus drive to Tarragona was somewhat folkloric and colorful. I believe I took the senior citizens special (no offense please) and was probably the only person under 65 in the entire bus. The poor lady sitting behind me was driving with her husband and she had just been robbed in the elevator at the bus station. Before the bus departed (and only 5 minutes after they had started boarding the bus) everyone knew what had happened to her. The information spread rapidly from passenger to passenger and before I could take out my ipod to start listening to some music everyone was giving her advices on what she should or shouldn´t do, giving their opinions about the "crooks" who stole her wallet and the terrible pick-pocketing situation in Spain and some were just trying to console her. Everyone of the lady´s sons, daugthers, and sons-in-law called (no, the crooks did not steal her cell phone) and she repeated the same story over and over again. To this day I could even recite it...."Ay...fulanita, es que tengo un disgusto. Manolo nos dejo en la estacion porque tenia que seguir para el trabajo..bla bla bla" (Ay, XYZ I´m so disappointed. Manolo dropped us off at the station because he had to go to work, etc etc etc). The conclusion I made of all of that situation: no wonder we Latins are so noisy and opinionated. We come from the Spanish and those are definitely some of the traits we inhereted from them and still share with them. I could only stop, think back a couple of months back and be very sure when I tell you that something like that would have never ever happened on a bus in Germany. A German would rather have a root canal done with no anesthesia before advising or giving an opinion to a complete stranger without this one asking for it and insisting on getting it. I smiled and concluded that these are for sure the things that give life and color to our .

Tarragona Cathedral -- Roman amphitheater (Tarragona)