I HAVE MOVED

As I now live in Spain, I am maintaining a Spanish blog on sustainability and efficiency...

You can now find me on

valedeoro

See you there...

Christmas

From the best husband ever.

Lisbon

Lisbon seems to be the city of tiles. There are beautyful tiles all over the place, inside, outside, wherever you look. And they are usually blue.


The house on the right is covered entirely with those tiles.
Water fountains also make nice places to put some more tiles.As do restaurants. And all kinds of places, in fact. Though I have to say they create a somehow cold ambiente. But we tackled that with loads of good food, wine and hot chocolate.

Fire!

How to get the room temperature from 17°C to 22°C in only 15 min?

The challenge: a table fire or a bio ethanol chimney.
The problem: the table fires sell for around 80,- a piece.
Chimneys start at 200 and the cheap ones are not recommended.
The solution: two do-it-yourself table fires to heat up the room.

I spend almost an hour fighting my way to the local "muy mucho" (a kind of local "nanu nana" for the Germans among you). There I got two big glass jars, white sand, rose and purple coloured stones and some purple paper grass for decoration. At home I assembled the decoration around a cut fanta can and a corn can within the two glass jars.
Put some alcohol (of 96 or 98 saturation) from the local farmacy inside the cans.
Light the fire.
Enjoy the room warming up.This is the big fire, with a corn can as the fuel container.

And this is the smaller one.
You will need between 300 and 500 ml to warm a 20sqm room by 5 degrees with these two fires ;-)
AND it looks good.
For safety: the fires consume quite some oxygen, so check that your windows are as inefficient as ours when it comes to keeping fresh air outside.

Relax relax relax

So, while at my parent's house I started cuddling up with the kitties. Then I earned loads of un-innovating books for the graduation. And my mom came to BCN with me. And then I come back from work... and there is just a book. Some emails. But no homework, no mandatory books. Sooo great.
I'll start thinking about a PhD.

Graduated

Monday I survived my last oral examination: the defense of the Master thesis.
The results.
International: A
Germany: 1,0
Denmark: 12
Spain: Sobresaliente

And I am happy happy happy.
And now I have to celebrate.
Cheers.

Catalan National Day

Today is about the most important day of the year in Catalunya: the celebration of national identity. Of course it is a holiday and of course everybody getting hands on a flag will put it outside. Besides this there are loads of political acts, demonstrations etc (Per os paisos catalans - la lluita continua).

Sogar die Busse werden mit kleinen katalanischen Flaggen ausgestattet. Alle!

Museum Night

Yesterday we finally went to the FC Barcelona museum. Usually it costs you about 12 Euros, but yesterday there was free entrance to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first Catalan-speaking public television (TV3). Most of Barcelona's museums were open, however the usual touristic places (casa Battlo, la pedrera) would have meant a 2-3 hour line before entering.
The FC Barca museum however was almost empty. Probably due to its location.

Of course Ric was more than happy to see the "campo", although this time without a game running.
So he just took advantage of the "quite-realistic looking paper mannequins" ;-)

Exchange experiences

I have been a host sister. I have been an exchange student.
Time to be a host mom.

So this is our 15 year old exchange daughter, passionately trying to explain something in Spanish. Or was it Catalan? Considering she has been here for two weeks now, she copes quite well with those three languages surrounding her (Portuguese is her third language now, coitadinha).
Pacco adores her.
She does long walks with him.

remembering the holidays

OK, this is kind of late, as these are still from our July vacation when my parents and my brother came over to Barcelona. However, some smily faces come in handy at any point in time.
So, the first one is us, flavouring the world-best ice cream from Amorino en Grácia.

And here, me and the sexiest man alive, who happens to be my husband ;-)
Me and my mom, probably discussing fellow tourists.

Me and my favourite dad.