David Grajal

After the harsh winter, I’m taking advantage of the first sunny, fresh days of the German spring to travel around south Germany. There are only a few cities left that I want to visit in the region. After that I will mark south Germany as done and I will start traveling to northern Germany and the closer countries.

One of the cities I recently visited is Bayreuth. This is a small, romantic city very well known because the important classical musical festival that is held on the city every year. All German cities look the same but each one has different peculiarities. Bayreuth is centered in the person of Wagner and I visited the Wagner house (where he is buried) and the Wagner opera house.

Walking aliens on Bayreuth

I went to Darmstadt to do my TOEFL examination. I’ve been in Darmstadt several times visiting my friend Clerigo and I know the city. After doing the exam, I went to Heildelberg for a Couchsurfing free hugs day event. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of interesting people.

I used for the first time the VRN ticket to return to Würzburg. This is a very cheap ticket that only allows you to take the slow S-bahn between cities in the country side. This has been my most beautiful train trip in Germany so far. The local train between Heildelberg and Ostenburken follows a river trough a small valley with tiny beautiful towns. This area is not on the travel guides because there is nothing specially really worth of visiting but the entire region is relaxing and plain beautiful.

Dinosaur in Bayreuth

When I say I was born in Spain lots of foreigners reply something like  “Hey dude! I’ve been in Barcelona last year. I really love Spain! “. Only occasionally I’ve met foreigners that visited mainland Spain, where the old Spain lifestyle is. Speaking with foreigners is a revelation. I’ve never felt the urge to visited Barcelona until I met passionate foreigners that loved the city. In fact until last month I had never been in Barcelona. We appreciate what is far away while we ignore the wonderful things we have right in the corner.

I flew to Barcelona because the World Mobile Congress and I stayed there for 4 days, time enough to get the work done, have fun with locals, explore the city and visit the Gothic quarter and the Gaudi monuments.

The entire city has a very special personality. This is not the introverted Spain I’m used to, but a international oriented city that sells itself as an European cultural and business center. Barcelona people mastered the touristic industry long time ago. It’s true that the city is beautiful, but similar touristic attractions are also in Castilla, forgotten, covered by thick layers of dust and on the verge of collapsing. Nevertheless Gaudi buildings are impressive. I really loved Casa Batlló and Park Güell. Hovewer I think Sagrada familia is overrated because it’s really small!

I met people trough Couchsurfing. We organized the first Couchsurfing meeting ever in the World Mobile Congress, probably one the few CS meetings where the people dress suits. I also went out for a picnic and partying on a packed club. Barcelona is a city that never sleeps, but not because the people is working late at night like in Seoul!

It was also my re-encounter with sunlight. One German winter is time enough to forget how bright the sun shrines in Spain. Barcelona is an amazing city, a cultural cross between Spain and New York full of interesting people proud to be living in one of the coolest urban environments in the world.

In the last years I lived in lots of places. I still remember the spacious, clear and lighted room and the humid, dark and tiny room in Madrid. I lived on a cool multinational house in Toronto but also with a family on a cellar. My last experience was on a tiny apartment in Seoul with Ann.

All of those places had in common one thing. I was living with other people. My apartment in Würzburg is my first place of my own.

Apartment in Würzburg

Now I have mats on the floors instead of massive amounts of dust. I have boxes filled with stuff instead of big piles of stuff. I have clear walls instead of circuit boards hanging from the wall. And I have stuff that has no other reason to be there than look nice.

It’s not a secret that I have no style. I’m a square headed male engineer and I have a pure analytical mind. I appreciate functionality over style. When I tried to decorate something the result is always a mess. I really like how the pictures look on decoration magazines, but I was not able to create nice spaces combining shapes and colors by my own.

This time I had the opportunity to take over Janette’s apartment. She worked for a decoration company on the last years and according to her, this place is her personal masterpiece. It really looks clean and nice. Zen. After taking out all her pink stuff , her princess palace become my apartment.

No Beijing visit would be complete without attending Chinese Opera and a Chinese acrobatic spectacles. It was not in the plan to go to both, but we finally did. We didn’t liked the Chinese Opera. It was very peculiar but simple, tedious and repetitive.

Beijing's opera and acrobatic show

On the other hand, the acrobatic spectacule was completely worth it. It involved several different acts, all of them amazing. The artists were perfectly coordinated children doing really crazy stuff.

Bargaining is a skill that you really need to master in order to get a decent price on Chinese markets. The key is to focus on an item and start bargaining with an unreasonable, absurdly low price. The people that work on the markets will yell, cry and they will even speak Spanish to make you feel you are making fun of them. Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter how low did you went, you will be still paying a lot more than what the locals pay for the same item.

Do you want a snack?

It’s crazy how cheap are in China things made in China. It’s even crazier the huge profit that companies make selling the same stuff with western prices in Europe.