Friday, May 21, 2010

Spain

Went to Spain in the weekend and it just happend to be the biggest festival in 100 years.

This is what the main street of Madrid looks like covered in Blue carpet. Later that day there thousands of people watching the shows that were scattered all down the street. I really mean hundreds of thousands of people. The locals had never seen someone as tall as me either. Turns out being tall has a great advantage when in crowds.

On the extra day we got in Spain since the flight was cancelled back to Holland, we went to a small city just out of Madrid which is also a world heritage city. Well this is a stork bird. They make nests on top of churches and towers. The nest is the size of hay bails. Sometimes they even fall down. They even fly back with snakes in the beaks to eat.


What is interesting in Spain is the way people eat, which we joined in on. The food is more or less snack form and is eaten rather late. For most of our meals we would order a few little bite size snacks. After a few of these you would be good.
Crazy Spanish. Met these guys in a bar that we got told was our home by the bar tender. Anyway they were really call to hang out with and learn some Spanish from. There English wasn't very good but good enough for us to have fun. We were pretty much speaking Spanish after that night.

There are many busker's in Spain. I think it reflects the social economic of the country. They were sort of interesting from a distance. This guy didn't even own his own act. Some other greasy guy that was watching him from far owned his act and this guy only gets paid a commission. The greasy guy owned about four acts in the main square from what I could see.

So we did much more and saw so much in Madrid. It was such a great weekend. Very warm too, about 30 degrees. One high light was the Egyptian temple and seeing some real tombs.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

What a time

What a good time the past few weeks have been. Here is Paulien on the train heading for Utrecht. There we celebrated Queens day in the city center. Holland is full of crazy people and on these particular day the town closes the pubs open and everyone stands on the streets listening to the live bands all over the city.


This is the Giro Bike race which was on the 9th of May from Amsterdam to Utrecht. I was invited for lunch by work to watch the race. This was the front bunch that was 6 minutes infront of the group. There was one Dutch guy here who wanted to finish first but the others didn't want to help out so the pack ended up catching them.

Here is me at work. I put together and fix anything with bikes all types and sizes. Its a nice job to get me going and its a bit of fun too. I talk dutch to the customers and get to take home all the newest bikes to test them. At the moment I have a folding bike which you can take on the trains for free. I might buy it but still thinking about it. I even get hot chocolates brought to me at work by my boss.

Here is Queens day again. Also on this day is a free market, where anyone can sell anything. So the streets were filled with useless junk for sale.


Last week was Liberation day of Europe's greatest event. World War 2. We are watching the series Band of Brothers at the moment to remind us what this day means. I thinking about reading history books on this event so I can be in lightened a bit more of what happened. Then I will visit some of the places these big events took places.

Going to Spain this weekend. Woo Hoo.