Andalucia

From the 27th dec until 3rd Jan we were in Marbella. Or rather stayed in Costa Bella thanks to our friend Ralph. We flew from Berlin to Malaga, then rented a Fiat and drove to Costa Bella.
The first day was pretty much sleeping in and then visiting Marbella. Rainy as you can see.


The next day we decided to visit Sevilla. Wow! The traffic to get into the city!!! We lost probably 1 hr just there... Still raining but we don't give up. A nice city, we also saw some sculptures of A.Rodin which were spread around the city. We had some tapas, walked around, took pictures and then drove back to Marbella.



I didn't see any flamenco performance but the signs of that you can see around the city.




The third day was an attempt to go to Gibraltar.


Guess who didn't take the passport!!! Well we have completely ignored the fact that it is a British territory. Alex had at least his ID, I had my Swedish driver's license which works....in Schengen! Oh well...I got so angry that they didn't let us in that we never got back ;-) Anyway, it was cloudy and windy and grey so we went to Tarifa instead. And that was the greatest choice!!!
Tarifa is a beautiful small surfing town. So chilled and nice. And it was soooo sunny when we got there!!! The beach was great! Really windy - check out the sand movement on the last picture.




From the beach we went to the old part of town. So nice! Many small narrow streets, all houses white, so cozy and magic in a way.




The next day was the New Year's eve. We went to Malaga, walked around, had some coffee and then we met Ralph and his two friends who came to Marbella for New Year's eve party. After staying in Malaga until late evening, we went home, and were supposed to leave at 21.30 for a dinner, then to some clubs. If you see the time on the clock below you can see that things turned to be a bit different...We left home around 23. Got to one restaurant in Marbella's harbor and got our food right before midnight. Not bad! Then champagne and then some clubs around harbor. It was nice. But different than usual celebration.
Here you can see Alex and Ralph in one bar in Malaga. And getting ready at home.




On New Year's day I woke up the 1st one and went up on the terrace to lay down in the sun and read my book. Sunny day, +20 degrees, beautiful. Then Alex and I had a long walk on the beach. The beach was so crowded. I guess everybody wanted to cure the hangover with fresh air and the breeze from the sea.




Then we had a lunch at the terrace. Gregor (Ralph's friend) made a Bayerish breakfast. I think we all needed some calories after the previous night.

Then we walked with Ralph along the beach to a nearby restaurant to have some shrimps and later on to pick up our rental car which we left in Marbella.





The last day we went to Ronda. It is only ca 50 km from Marbella but you have to cross the mountains to get there. And the road made me sick. Well almost....but my stomach was turned upside down ;-) This town is famous for bull fighting, however we were not interested in that. The old part is nice, the entrance bridge majestic.



The trip was great and we enjoyed it a lot! Mosaics, narrow streets, white towns, beaches and the waves. Good food, good company, good wine ;-)
The "only" "problem" was when Alex's car didn't start on Sat. night when we got back to Berlin. But the battery problem is solved now and the car is now in HH.

Happy New Year!!! and a short update

Wish all of you all the best in the New Year!!! Hope it will be a good one with successes, fun and prosperity.

I'm back to HH after adventures. Despite no plans for my holidays exactly 1 month ago, this period turned to be great!
As I wrote last time, Filip and I went to Egypt.
Here are some pictures from that trip:

Our hotel (you cannot see the swimming pool but it was down there)


From the boat on a snorkling trip. Check out the name of the island - PARADISE! And there is only one palm tree.... Oh well...


Filip at the second snorkling spot (I was too cold at that time)


Our boat and the driver


Returning to Hurghada


Hurghada shopping mall. Amazing entrance with two Santas dancing to some Arab music. You could buy anything in there...


Filip and I in the new downtown of Hurghada


Our "survival" kit. Thanks to that bottle we never got any problems with stomachs.



We spent Christmas traditionally at my grandmom's place. It was nice to be there, we managed also to have one water pipe evening which turned out to be quite funny. Anyway I will put some pictures later on (they are on Alex' computer so far).

On the 27th Alex and I drove to Berlin to take off to Malaga. We spent 1 week in Marbella (thanks to Ralph we stayed at his place). The weather wasn't like in Egypt but it was also nice. We visited Sevilla, almost Gibraltar (guess who forgot the passport??? and why the Great Britain doesn't accept Swedish ID (driver's license that is)??), a beautiful Tarifa (bottoms up for that one, after the bitter mood after Gibraltar), Malaga, Marbella, Ronda. Good food, good wines, good company and an amazing weather on the 1st Jan!!!
Again you will have to wait for pictures though.
We had a little bit of problems when we got back to Berlin - Alex car didn't start so we had to rent a car and arrived to HH at 03.30 on Sat night...So Alex got a new battery and went to Berlin today and managed to start the car!! Puh...

Jalla Jalla.... and Merry Christmas

The trip to Egypt was great!! Well...ok, it was good. Nice, sun, warm, the sea, relaxing time. A bit short - 4,5 days but still worth it. Filip and I went to Hurghada. The town itself is not so exciting (there are kind of two downtowns - an old one with many shops, mess, dirt, huge traffic, people draging you into the shops. And the new one - fancy, clean, fresh, quiet, cool). Our hotel was kind of in between those two areas. Close to a small beach (pictures later). The majority of tourists in our hotel were Russians. Amazing - almost each Egyptian guy spoke Russian fluently!
We went on one boat trip to Giftun Island and then snorkling - beautiful!!!! I got a bit stuck in a coral reef but managed to get out of there. A bit scary though...
What more? Talking to some locals, playing beach volley, swimming, reading books.
Too bad the trip was so short. I promise to add some pictures after Xmas.

Yesterday we came to Gdynia. And tomorrow going to grandmom's place.
I wish all of you very Merry Christmas, relaxing time with your families and loved ones. Also party wild on New Year's Eve ;-)
And hope the new year 2009 will be good, prosperous, and full of new exciting challenges and adventures.

Xmas tree

I didn't manage to get a real one, and also a pity when all the needles fall down. So I got a little tree with soft needles. And bought some ribbon and an ornament. And here you can see the effect :-)



What more has happened?
Well, finally today I bought a trip to Egypt! I'll go with Filip on Sunday! Yuppi!! Ok, it will be only 5 days but better than nothing.
And since I was in the booking fever I also got tickets for flight for Xmas to Poland.

Yesterday Sandra and I went to the movies and saw Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona". It was a good one and with the great action city! :-)

Vacations

So I have started my vacations. Incredible. Since it seems that I'm not going to Göteborg this coming week, and I will stay in Hamburg I need to come up with some activities to do.
Gym and training of course. It may be nicer to do it during the day - not so many people and a better air quality ;-)
Then I plan to go to some museums - so far I've just been to the Art museum and it was also a long time ago...
I may also start a new painting, since the last one was I think more than 1 year ago. Shame!!
Of course I have some books to read.
And then I hope to meet some friends when they are done with work.

Yesterday we met with some friends at Altona Xmas market. We had some gluhwein and schmalzkuchen (so unhealthy and so good!). It was nice that almost everybody was there.

Enjoy the work week! ;-)

Xmas feber started...

The first Advent candle is lit. I cannot believe that we have December already...
After a crazy and tough week there was quite a relaxed weekend. Alex arrived on Friday evening, then he went to our neighbor to give him some birthday present (we were invited over but I didn't have the energy). On Saturday we decided to do some Xmas shopping. I guess 1 mln other people decided to do the same thing. There were so many people downtown!!! Anyway, we got most of the stuff and were home quite early.
Then we watched Kung fu Panda on DVD, ate something and gave each other Xmas presents :-)
Afterwards we went to one bar in Schanze to celebrate our Japanese colleague's birthday. Cyril managed to fix the present in a form of Autoliv F1 T-shirt. Kazuhiro was sooooo happy!!!
Here you can see the Xmas market in front of the Rathaus in Hamburg:


Here is the happy Latin population (left - Mexicans; right - Catalans: Raul and his wife):


Here the purchase-logistics-connection:
Jenny, Johan, Alex and Miguel ("dos")


Here: Dennis, happy Kazuhiro, Cyril, Karo, Mathias and his girlfriend in the back


And here also with Vengatesh (an Indian colleague who left the next day back to India). Plus you can see Kazu's Autoliv T-shirt :-)


Sunday was just a lazy day...When Alex left I went to the gym, then looked for some trips somewhere warm. Still no plans for the next weeks...Hope Filip will have some news this week and we can book a trip.

Oh yeah - some news: my Mac is "almost" ready now. Hope I can pick it up tomorrow and that everything will be working fine. After almost the whole month being "dead".

Crisis, winter, ages ago...

Sorry for not updating you with the stuff from here. But the thing is that my 1 year old MacBook died!!!! More than 2 weeks ago it just froze, some strange noise was coming from the loudspeaker (I swear it sounded like there were crickets inside) and then everything got blue. That's it. So after trying all possible options to get the laptop alive, I gave up and went to Mac store (or a store which sells Apple things). And then the problem started...Those guys never had such a case! They told me that the hard disk crashed (I'm lucky with the warranty). And now they laptio has been there for ca 10 days and my data is still being transferred from the crashed disk to some device in order to ne then transferred to the new HD. This is insane!!! Takes ages!!!

Beside the laptop problem, in the meantime I went to Poland to celebrate my grandmom's birthday. Filip came to HH and we flew together. Last Friday. We were supposed to pick up Alex from the airport in Poznan but his plane from Stuttgart never took off... There were no other flights to Poznan and the earliest he could arrive would be Saturday at 6PM...Great!!! So poor him, he had to stay in Niefern.
Grandmom was quite surprised to see us (we managed to tease her a bit that we wouldn't come). There were many relatives whom I have never met before so it was quite funny. Especially when we tried to figure out who was who. At the end I drew the Family Tree or rather a graph with all of them and other relatives so we all know in the future who is who :-)

It was really cold in Poland and snowing quite much. Usch! Winter is here... Now it is just few months and we have spring ;-)

Now I just have less than 2 weeks left at work and then I'm on holidays. Due to the car industry crisis, we have to use all our holidays until the end of the year. Too bad I don't really have plans for December. Filip, Dan and I are thinking of some trip to a warm country, or maybe Filip and I will go skiing. But it is all "maybe"..

This crisis is some kind of paranoia. But hopefully we will all survive. Somehow.