Wednesday to Sunday. Five days in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, with Sabrina.
Conclusion:
Lisbon is nice but not as nice as I thought
Sintra is now officially one of my favourite places on earth
and I will probably not be able to climb so many stairs in just a few days ever again

We arrived by train in Lisbon. Trying to make these vacations as economic as possible we decided to discover the city (nearly) exclusively on foot. Lisbon itself already is quite hilly and then we also visited a lot of monuments and, as I love high places, of course we had to climb every single tower and every single wall so that by the end of the trip our legs were stronger and fitter than ever!
After finding our hostel (number 53 had somehow dissappeared...) we walked around town and tasted some of the innumerous cakes and custard slices. 
The Portuguese speak a perfect English but Sabrina could also find her way in Spanish. We had a lot of fun by replacing all the s's and c's with sh sounds, adding an "ao" at the end of the words and pretending we were speaking Portuguese :D Well, only when noone was listening, of course!

On Friday we went on a day trip to Sintra which is about 40 minutes from Lisbon. We had really bad luck with the weather but nevertheless I absolutely loved that place! It has surprisingly many palaces and castles and the foggy and rainy weather gave it a certain enchanted touch.
Walking from the train station to the center we passed some kind of sculpture avenue. I thing there is also a garden with artwork that belongs to it, but we didn't have time to visit it.

First we visited the old castle on one of the hills of Sintra. It dates back to the 10th century but is pretty well preserved. It has some wonderful walls that reminded me of the Chinese wall and the fog was just amazing and fitted very well to the overall atmosphere.

Next, we made for the Palace of Pena which is like a Portuguese "Neuschwanstein". A colourful fairytale palace from the 19th century. As Lisboa lies in the south of the Iberian Peninsula you can find a lot of moorish influences in the architecture, like tiles and round shapes. We did not have any view (normally you can see the castle and whole Sintra) but I still enjoyed the place. Especially the garden was wonderful. It seems like the queen spent a lot of time there and personalizd it after her fancy. What I really liked was that the gardens weren't as strictly laid out as many other palace gardens are. It had...secrets..if you know what I mean ;)

And at last, after warming up with a cup of creamy hot chocolate, we visited my favourite place. The Palace of Regaleira and...its magical garden
The palace seems to be taken directly from Rivendell and in the garden you can find a construction of the most astonishing kind. It is an unfinished well, built like a tower in the ground. Spiral stairs allow you to go to the bottom of the hole. I was absolutely blown away by this place. It felt so unreal, mystical and enchanted like dwarf and fairies coming to life.
The fotos can't capture it's magic but they might give you an impression. I also took a video which I unfortunatley cannot upload here. 
You can enter the well from above or from one of the tunnels. The first starts in the middle and leads to another unfinished well. The other one starts a little higher up and ends behind a waterfall. And then there are some smaller ones building a real systems of caves and tunnels. 
It was all so...unexpected! 

On Saturday we went to the cinema in the afternoon. There was an international animation film festival going on and we visited a presentation of super-shorts. Animated film clips of 2 or 3 minutes from all around the world. They were critical, funny or artistic. 80 minutes in total - I enjoyed it!
Sunday, before taking the train back to Galicia, we took the train to Cascais - a coastal town in the west of Lisbon to breath some fresh air and see the "Boca do Inferno", the Hell's Mouth. The rocks of the coast are arc shaped there and the waves entering and bursting out on the other side tend to make a demonic sound when the sea is rough - hence the name...

Right now I am preparing everything for my departure - giving last classes, finishing the bureaucracy, having dinner with friends...
I am really torn between wanting to go home and staying. 

The next post will be written in Germany and it will be the last one.

Until then, enjoy these fotos because it took me the hell of a time to uplaod them in the quality they deserve :D

Why is the weather the small talk topic number one? Why does everyone talk about the rain and the sun and the temperature? Well, because it affects us! Our mood is always at least partly influenced by the weather outside and this is why I am going to tell you about the lovely spring that is making the mimosa blossom and the fog vanish. Right after carnival some kind of thermic front hit Spain (and as it seems also the rest of Europe) and brought us warm sunlight and colourful flowers in the park.

However, now step by step.
First Sabrina and I held our "upcycling" workshop:

Then my mum and my sister went to Cáceres in the Extremadura and I quite spontaneously visited them for three nights, driving to the south with blablacar, which is an Europe-wide car sharing website. Unfortunately it was not as warm as I hoped it would be but nevertheless I enjoyed it a lot to see some more of the diverse landscapes of Spain.

On my way back on monday I spent a few hours in Salamanca. It is a beautiful city with an amazing old town. I can only imagine how nice it has to be to visit it in summer or study on that awesome campus which is situated right in the center in the old sandstone buildings.

On that same Monday then I went directly to a little Galician town called Xinzo de Limia to meet up with Sabrina, Flo and Luismi to celebrate the carnival. 
We decided to dress up as Alice in Wonderland characters. The Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat and...well...unfortunately we did not have our Alice as Gwen couldn't come. So we were not "Alice in Wonderland" but "The Madmen of Wonderland".
Carnival here in Spain is very similar to the carnival in Germany. There are some regions where it is a really big thing and in no way inferior to the carnival in Cologne or Mayence. Parades, music, everyone (but really everyone) in costumes! And then there are other places where you might...maybe...only with a lot of luck...spot someone with a clown's nose ;)
Of course there are some rituals or traditional costumes which differ from what yoz find in Germany but in Xinzo I sensed the same madness in the air as in Cologne.

Aaaaaaand our second Fimo workshop:

About two hours ago Gwen and Flo went home to France. So Sabrina and I are alone again. It was very nice to have some company here. It was quite obvious that two months are very little time to spend abroad. They just got used to everything and started to feel comfortable and then they had to leave. 
However, I will never forget these moments worthy a good old joke:
An Italian, a Frenchman and a German are sitting at a table having a conversation in Spanish...

Feliz Navidad - Bo Nadal - Merry Christmas
Originally there was no Santa Claus in Spain bringing presents on the 24th or 25th. In the Spanish culture the 6th of January is the important date where the three kings bring presents. However, the climbing Santas hanging from windows and balconies clearly indicate that the big white-bearded grandpa in his coca-cola-red costume has also found his way here. The streets are decorated with lights and in the shops glow and glitter the christmas trees. 
The date did not, as you might assume, change from the 6.1. to the 24.12. No. Spanish kids are lucky. They get presents TWICE. (Although the 6th remains more important)

Sabrina and I organised a Fimo workshop to craft little Christmas presents last week which was great fun and we will probably repeat it next year!

Yet, I won't experience Christmas and New Year's Eve first-hand as I'm going on vacation to Germany! Surely I considered staying in Ribadavia to take part in the festivities here, but I couldn't stand being alone on Christmas, because to me it is a family celebration. And as much as I enjoy my time here, it is always wonderful to come home. So this will be the last post of this year 2013 and I will continue reporting when I come back in January.
I wish you all a very merry Christmas and all the best for 2014!!!

I heard of a Spanish costum of New Year's Eve: By each gong of the church bells at midnight you have to eat a grape for good luck! These better are grapes without seeds...

After the seminar in Rascafría Sabrina, Jovana (a volunteer from Serbia who is doing her EVS in A Coruña) and I went for two nights to Madrid and visited Segovia on our way back. We stayed in the flat of a Swedish-Peruvian couple I met during the Couchsurfer meeting on the Cies Islands in June. 
Altough I've been slowed down by a pretty bad cold I gotta say that I (still) really love Madrid. It's a beautiful city and I could easily imagine living there for a while.
Miranda and Miguel warmly welcomed us and I was glad they made me feel at home as I felt so exhausted. 
There is a quite peculiar language story about the two them: They met in France so they usually speak French with eachother. Miranda knows Swedish of course and now, as she is living in Spain, also Spanish. They both speak a very good English and Miguel lived in Germany for a while as well, so he knows German as well...
French,
Spanish,
English,
Swedish,
German
...a clash of cultures!

Segovia is a Roman influenced town with an old city and Aqueduct that were declared World Heritage by UNESCO. It is sorrounded by mountains and definitely worth a visit. Especially at night the town is beautifully illuminated.

On our way back in train Sabrina and I were (as always) chatting in Spanish. After a while the person who sat in front of us asked why we were talking in Spanish. He probably noted our accents that additionally differ from one another. We were a little perplexed by this question and told him it simply was the language we both knew. 
Thinking about it, it might actually really seem strange listening to people who talk in a language that clearly is not their mothertongue. You expect them to speak either one of their languages or English.
Well, it made me smile :)

I am alive! (Just in case you worried because I haven't written for so long) 
As you might know I went on a mid-term seminar two weeks ago that is obligatory for every European volunteer and when I came back I needed to cure a bad bad...bad cold. But let's not get ahead of ourselves...

"Isabell, look! Our mid-term seminar will be in November!"
"And where? Hopefully somewhere in the south."
"I think it's gonna be in Madrid"
"Awesome! I love Madrid! And it`s at least more southern than Galicia, haha"
"No, hold on...it says NEAR Madrid."
"Oh."
"In Rascafría"
"Where?"
"No, wait...NEAR Rascafría..."
"Oh..."

And this is how we realized that our seminar was going to be in the middle of nowhere. Far from everything. NEAR a village NEAR Madrid with the beautiful name of "Rascafría". 
Literally: Rasca - iciness, fría/frío - cold

We met with all the other participants in Madrid where a coach waited to bring us to Icinesscold. The weather was rather nasty. Cold and wet. And yes, there on the mountain, a few hundred meters higher, there was snow!

We had the whole hostel for us. Over 60 young volunteers from 21 different European countries. This promised to be an exciting week. 
I will not bore you with all the details about the seminar, which in addition would fill pages because it had been some intensive 5 days! Let's see if I can cut it down to the most important....

We were splitted up in 4 groups. Each group jad a colour (Yellow Team! Go!) and a personal supervisor and mentor for the following days. In these groups we worked on different topics to evaluate our voluntary service so far using diverse techniques to find the best way of analysing the good and bad things about our EVS and how we could improve it. We evaluated all the different aspects in detail to become aware of what we give and what we receive, the best and the worst, the reasons, the possibilities. The staff was friendly and there for us if we had any doubts or questions. I think I was very lucky with my group (Yellow Team! Go!) because the atmosphere seemed to be confiding and supportive.

What I enjoyed the most about the seminar was the possibility to get in touch with so many different poeple from so many different countries. We did some activities all together, were in a group with these people, ate at the same table with those people and shared a room with some other people. 
I talked, discussed and laughed with guys from Italy, Portugal, Austria, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, France, Macedonia, Armenia, Germany, Czech Republik, Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Belgum... and I simply loved it. 

"The aim of the European Voluntary Service (EVS) is to develop solidarity and promote active citizenship and mutual understanding among young people." - http://www.europeanvoluntaryservice.com/what/purpose -

To be honest with you, to me this was more like an excuse for just having a great time abroad without spending a lot of money. However, now I have to say that there is a whole lot more to it. 
I really feel that meeting all these people from countries I wasn't really interested in before, I might have known the name of but actually not much more, from countries that didn't really have a "face" for me, where nobody was living in...meeting all these young people helped me to a whole new understanding of these countries a new view on people, internationality and Europe. It helped me to appreciate the luck of growing up in a safe and rich country and it rose my interest in getting to know all these other countries better. I feel that I grew a bit more during this seminar and I can only recommend to take all the opportunities they offer you and have experiences like I'm having here! You won't regret it!

We did an evening trip to Segovia to do an activity of visibility of the Youth in Action programme and to have dinner in a restaurant there. 




To get to this beautiful town we had to go over the mountains and we passed...Winterwonderland

What a beautiful autumn weather! I really enjoy the clear air, the amazing colors, the soft light when the sun goes down. The way the cold wind makes your nose numb so that you have to face the sun to melt the icicle. Unfortunately all this is only given if it's not rainy and foggy, like usually. However, the last few days have been wonderful. 
I've been out for some foto sessions. These are my facourite shots:

Yesterday we went with a friend of Sabrina on a trip to the monasteries in the area north east of Ourense. They all differed a lot from oneanother and I'm convinced the forest that sorrounds them is enchanted! 

NUMBER ONE:

NUMBER TWO:

NUMBER THREE:

NUMBER FOUR:

I have been thinking about my conversational skills. I can have a vivid conversation with people I know and people who are open and willing to talk to me. I understand jokes and can be funny myself. However, it is much harder to speak with someone who is not interested in talking to me. They often (probably unintentionally) make me feel ashamed for my accent and for the words that I don't know. As soon as I feel comfortable though, I can confidentally talk without any problems.
Sabrina and I talk in Spanish of course and we understand eachother perfectly. Altough we might be using words from time to time that nobody else has ever heard before ;)

The "Noite Meiga"! This is how they call their Halloween here. It is the Galician expression for "Witches' Night" and we celebrated it on the 2nd of November. There is no Trick or Treat but people dress up as corpses, ghosts, vampires and witches to crowd the Plaza Mayor, visit the tunnel of terror, watch the concert and dance in the pubs. Sabrina and I helped taking pictures of the people who came to the facepaint room to get...well...mostly severely injured! 

But, to be honest, we did not look very healthy ourselves:

There was this woman. She passed by, looked at us, put on a face of plain disgust and made this sound...pretty much like "Bouwah!". What more could you wish for?
The eyes are made of ping-pong balls. We found the aprons in the flat. Some old forks. Some old spoons. A little bit of flour and water. A little bit of red and black paint. And a lot of fun! 

There also was a competition of Jack O'Lanterns. I decided to participate and I wanted to create a very special pumpkin! So I bought an overpriced pumpkin and some cheap carving tools. 
And guess who won the competition! The award was a Noite Meiga bag, badge and shirt, a bottle of liqueur of herbs and a diploma.

I will probably never make an ordinary Jack O'Lantern again!

What a breathtaking view! One week with my dad hiking in the Picos de Europa right at the borderline of Asturia, Cantabria and Castilla y Leon. We met in Oviedo, rented a car and drove along the northern coast of Spain to a little submontane town called Potes. I went by train to Oviedo which is (compared to Germany) very cheap but a little more difficult to book, if you want to have the best price. And who doesn't? If you, for example, have to change trains and you've got less than an hour to do so they mark it with big red letters on the website. At home I sometimes haven't more than a few minutes to run from one platform to another. I enjoy discovering small differences between my home country and Spain like this one, for instance. I think it definitely tells something about a country and its people. The Spanish also have a special word for "getting up early" which is "madrugar". So getting up early might be (or might have been) something unpleasant and worth to be especially mentioned and therefore they have an own expression for that. However, these are only speculations! It would be interesting to know where this word comes from.
I guess the best way to tell you about my trip is showing you the pictures! So here we go:

These mountains are simply fantastic and we had a great time! Most of these wonderful pictures were taken by my dad :) If you would like to know some more details about the routes or something else, because you might be interested in going on vacation in the Picos de Europa, don't hesitate to contact me!

After the holiday with my dad I went directly to a village called Frómista in Castilla y Leon to visit some other volunteers. I tell you all about it in the next post!

One and a half weeks ago Ribadavia celebrated the "Festas Portal". It has been the last summer event and this means autumn is coming. BUT although people said that Galicia and the north of Spain, is a cold and humid place, I am still enjoying a hot long and wonderful summer! Not even at night the temperature drops under the 10°C mark and the midday sun still has the strength to heat up the air to 30°C. 

Do you see the smoke on the horizon? Yes. That's fire. In summer it is normal here to have bush fires from time to time. They are not as devastating as in the south of Spain, but still, they exist.

Let's get back to the "Festas Portal". Every village, town and city here has their own celebration which is closely connected to the saints. In Ribadavia we had a little fair with games for children, fireworks (the Spanish seem to really love them), some street theatre, music, a carpet of flowers and the traditional procession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

At the same weekend also my birthday took place. I had a little something for dinner the night before with some friends and the weekend after Sabrina and I cooked some delicious homemade food for some other friends who couldn't come the weekend before. 
It is a little strange to celebrate my birthday here and invite people. By now I indeed know a lot of people in Ribadavia but nearly nobody good enough to invite to a "birthday party". So Sabrina and I thought we might just keep it a little less "official" and invite them nevertheless. We spend two amusing nights :)
I also received much more letters and pakets from Germany as I expected and I got very excited about it! (So I'll abuse this blog now to send some thank you kisses home!!!) 
Here is an interesting thing about the local post in a small town. Most of the pakets have been sent to my address in the "tower". However, I am not at home in the morning and for some reason the postmen know that and also know that I work here in the Youth House and so they brought all my mail to the office! How great is that?

And to give you some summer feeling: a few pictures of a day in August we spent in Prexigueiro, a village not too far from here with a wonderful river and awesome hot therms we surely will visit a lot in winter. 

I always wanted to do that! Swinging with a rope into a lake I mean. And the rope did NOT snap! It's great fun!

On saturday I will meet up with my dad in Oviedo and we'll spend a week hiking in the Picos de Europa. After that I'm going to visit some friends I met during my preparation seminar in their little village. Vacation! Yeah! 
And when I come back in October Sabrina and I are going to restart the workshops and classes here in OMIX. See you then!

"Estoy vivo! Estoy vivo!" He hops out of the orange supermarket trolley he had been surfing and runs across the campsite. Grabbing a selfmade poster from a cardboard box which shows slightly obscene offers at low prices he repeatedly screams "I'm alive! I'm alive!" and jumps up and down like an overly excited boy. Then he raises the old piece of cardboard over his head and walks on as if nothing happened using the poster as a sun hat.

It's the day after. 

The day after the big medieval festival here in Ribadavia. I went to town around noon to check out the damages of the last night. The streets have already been cleaned, the market stands removed and on the campsite people where packing their belongings to leave. 
It has been a vibrant festival. People from all over Galicia filled the streets and made Ribadavia appear to be a different town. Over 40.000 visitors according to the newspapers.
It began on Friday with the market, food, some acts, a concert and a pyrotecnic show illuminating the old castle. 

Saturday then most of the visitors came. You could watch were the birds of prey, a tournament, archery, competitions, reenactments...more shows, more music and more food.

We helped out in the bank Saturday morning. They created a special currency for the festival and people needed to change their Euros to "Maravedis".
While the Maravedis coins remain the same, the notes are printed with a new design every year. With this new currency money for the implementation of the festival is gained if I understood it correctly. The entry is free of charge.

I made my costume out of stuff we had in the flat and clothes of my own. It was a very hot day and I was happy that I did't wear an armour like some others did!

For you to understand what I mean by "Ribadavia seemed to be a different town":

I enjoyed the weekend a lot! Since I did not get as drunk as many others I only needed the Sunday to recover. It's a shame that the festival only lasts one (okay, one and a half) days. I think, with all the effort they put in organising this they could easily expand it until Sunday. Although it would probably be a day for the kids...all the other visitors would still be dead from Saturday night ;)