David Grajal

When I woke up in Milan the entire city was white. It snowed during the entire night. And it didn’t stop. By the time I went to Pavia and I went for a walk it was snowing a lot. Another misconception… I thought Italy was as warm and hot as Spain!

Reading the Wikitravel (Using Oxigenguide, a must have in the cell phone for travelers) I realized that Milan does have nightlife but it is not in the Statione Centrale area. Well, maybe in another occasion I will be able to experience it. What I’ve already tried is the Italian aperitivo. Between 19h and 21h lots of bars in Northern Italy have a buffet with fast food, pasta, rice and small snacks.

You only need to have one drink to have access to the buffet and you can eat as much as you want. This is such a beautiful idea I don’t understand why it does not exist in Spain. Owners are happy because bars are full, customers are happy because they feel a great value for their money. I feel the idea is specially good for students because they can eat for cheap, something important in otherwise expensive Milan.

Jumping@Pavia

When I landed in Bergamo last evening and I was surprised because two reasons. First, it was freezing cold. As much as Germany. And second, the entire city looked dark and deserted. Where was the people? I was expecting lots of Italians having fun in the city center!

I was lucky because I had a couch in the city center. Giancarlo Rosso was my host, a really nice Italian guy that studied Arabic culture and language for pleasure. We had a long conversation till late at night speaking about the differences between northern and southern Italians and beautiful places he visited in northern Africa and middle east. He has traveled a lot in the area so it was quite a revelatory experience. I didn’t know the sand is pink in the Moroccan deserts and now I’m already planning to see them with my own eyes in the next weeks!

Couchsurfing in Milan

I visited this beautiful German city in June. Here in Leipzig there are no traditional houses made entirely of wood and even if the city have a river, it doesn’t have a castle. That’s a massive difference in comparation with Bayern. When I visited Leipzig, the city was specially colorful because taken for the biggest national Goth festival. It was really interesting to see the extremely elaborated clothes goth people use. There are complete goth families where everybody, including seniors and children wear goth clothes!

Jumping in Leipzig

In Leipzig I met  Carolin and together we practiced tightrope walking on a park. It was my first experience doing this stuff and I need to say that it was a lot of fun, but I still need to practice a lot more: I could barely stay longer than 2 seconds on the rope before falling!

First time doing tightrope walking

Goth girls

I didn’t visit Chennai when I first landed there at the beginning of my Indian adventure because we prefer to just rest and hung out for a few days. But on my last day in India I flew from Madurai to Chennai with time enough to explore the city before taking my flight to Europe. I arrived at lunch time and the flight to Frankfurt was in the late evening so I had time to visit the more important landmarks in the city. I met Dimitry in the airport and we explore together the city in a few hours. On the airport we took the best Autoricksack in India, new vehicle with a big pair of speakers and a subwoofer. No audio system, I guess the driver spent all the money on the speakers and he forgot to buy the radio

Driving the best Autorickshaw in the world

We saw the main monuments of the city, the beautiful beach were locals hung out and we went to a real Indian market to buy the same stuff this people buy. Chennai were my last hours in Indian soil. At that time I was so sick of South Indian food I just wanted to go to the airport and eat crappy Western food!

Rameshwaram is the eastern most tip of India. Rameshwaran is actually an island connected to the mainland by a 20 years old bridge over the Pamban channel and is less than 40 kilometers from the Jaffna Peninsula, Sri Lanka. It is considered to be one of the holiest places in India to Hindus. A lot of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees come to Rameshwaram on small boats sailing through the gulf of Mannar.

Monk?

Rameshwaran has one of the most important and oldest hindu temples in India. I really enjoyed going to Hindu temples because they are full of locals praying, while when you go to a temple in Europe it’s full of tourists! Hindu temples are really old, and are also special in the way they are built. Even the small ones seem very peaceful yet are still beautiful with the statues, the art, the paintings on the walls and ceilings and the flowers and colorful sarees on the statues.

Rameswaran

The most eastern tip of Rameshwaram is Danushkodi. The people who live here are fisherman who reside in straw houses in little villages. You can only go there on a an industrial truck since there are no roads, just sand. The whole area is a beach with the ocean on both sides. Danushkodi is full of remains, specially the big remain of a catholic church. Danushkodi it’s simple life at its best!

Danushkodi, close to the poing in which the finger of India try to touch sri lanka