Escape to the sin city, part 2: Hello Barcelona!

Early on Thursday morning I headed out for the airport in Sevilla with a… let’s say a good friend ;) By the way we missed the airport bus, had to take a taxi instead and pay 25 euros instead of 2,30€… Nice start, aye? :D Anyway, by noon we were already walking in the streets of Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, Spain!

I chose to go to Barcelona as a friend of mine lives there and she promised to be a guide for us! However, on Thursday she was still on a 9 hour journey back from Madrid so the first day was very typical tourist day. We just wandered around the main street “La Rambla” and wondered all the crazy stuff going on in the “sin city” of Spain (nickname that I gave, not in general use).

In the evening, around 10 or 11 pm we agreed that we’d meet this friend of mine and go for “one” beer… Well you know what happens when you’re going for “one” with a friend you haven’t seen for a while :D So we crawled back to the hostel around 3 or 4 in the night after seeing half a dozen of the coolest bars in the Barcelona city center, some prostitutes in the notorious area of El Raval and some pickpocketers around La Rambla (which the city is infested with)!

Next day, Friday, we got up pretty late (I wonder why) and started to plan our next moves for the day. The plan was to meet up with my friend and go see some of the famous buildings designed by Antonio Gaudi, who had influenced to the architecture in Barcelona a lot. Also generally, Barcelona is very nice city to visit because of its modernism in the architecture!

After that, later in the evening it was time for an international dinner! We had appetizers from Colombia (some fried sliced banana with salt and cheese), main course from Finland (kesäkeitto = summer soup, milk based soup with a lot of vegetables ;) and the dessert from Holland (some sort of chocolate jelly)! Also the dinner party was very international as we had people from Finland, Holland, Austria, Lithuania and Mexico!

Later in the evening, we went shortly to meet my travel mate’s cousin and her friends. This time I was the only European as there were people from all over South-America: Mexico, Venezuela and so on! I have to say that South-Americans, they’re laid back people! :)

Even later from that, we headed out for some SERIOUS PARTYING at the biggest club in Barcelona: Razzmatazz! Well actually it’s around 6 or 7 clubs in 3 floors in the same club made out of old factory building… It was unbelievable! You could change from one “room” to another to listen some other kind of music style and choose whatever room you’d prefer… How cool is that!?

More about the escape to Barcelona on part 3!

Tell you like it is with a kiss,
Baby when it drips from your lips.
Tell you like it is it’s like this,
Don’t be such a slave to your brother.


Baby get shaky after school,
Oooh ooh ohhh ohhh there you ooh there you, baby go crazy break the rules,
Oooh ooh ohhh ohhhh there you ooh there you go go go go go go go go ohoh ohhh there you go go go go, ohhh ohhh there you go!

The Ian Carey Project – Get Shaky

Escape to the sin city, part 1: Semana Santa

Allrighty then, now I’m gonna tell you guys about my great escape from the Semana Santa in Sevilla. I started the planning when I got to know about the stuff going on here in Sevilla during the week. There was gonna be some interesting (crazy!) stuff going on and maybe a “few” people (tens of thousands!) hanging out on the streets in the centre (where I live!).

You see, Andalucía is entitled to be the most “Spanish” area in Spain. Also, it is the most religious area in Spain. And also, Easter a.k.a. Semana Santa is maybe the biggest religious festival. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being religious and stuff, but I still had to get out of the city and next I’m gonna explain why...
 

Festival of Semana Santa basically lasts for the whole week and obviously when the end of the week is coming closer, stuff gets more and more intensive. Every day there are thousands of people on the streets watching these never-ending parades going through the streets.

The parades consist of bands playing religious march music and of these HUGE structures of Santa Maria (St. Mary) carried on by dozens of men. The scariest part, however, are the brotherhoods that are also part of the parades. Basically there are hundreds of these dudes carrying candles and wearing robes. And guess what they look like when wearing those robes? The KKK my friend, it’s pretty scary!

So I was here in Sevilla until Thursday morning and actually it was interesting to see the parades go by my house. They started probably in the afternoon and kept going on until very late in the night. This thing is huge here! The guys who carry the St. Mary structures - they train for this week only for the whole f*cking year! I could see them training with these hugely heavy structures in the streets in February for example.

Anyway, all this stuff was very interesting as we don’t have anything like that in our culture.. BUT besides the fact that I’m not that religious myself and not THAT interested, I also wasn’t very keen to watch AND listen to the parades going below my balcony all day, EVERY day of the week....So I had to get away..! :D

When did punk rock become so safe?
When did the scene become a joke?
The kids who used to live for beer and speed
Now want their fries and coke
Cursing and flipping birds are not allowed,
In fact let's keep noise levels down

Must separate the church and skate!

NOFX – The Separation of Church and Skate 


PS. Would you like to know more? Here's another blogpost about the Semana Santa written by another amazed foreigner and actually I had to borrow the picture from there as well!

From Portugal with love..

This weekend I attended to a trip to Portugal arranged by a local event management company here in Sevilla. The trip started at Saturday morning instead of Friday evening what I originally assumed. This caused also problems for me as the journey was going to last until Monday instead of Sunday. Anyway, as the bus started, I took a look at the company we were travelling with. As usual, Americans are majority in these kinds of trips as there are hundreds of them studying here in Sevilla. Well that wasn’t problem for me as I get along pretty good with them and it’s always nice to meet new people.

I had no idea what Portugal would be like and therefore had no expectations either, nor positive or negative. I kind of imagined it would be pretty much the same as Spain with similar cities, landscape, nature, language and people. How wrong can one be! It was incredible how the landscape suddenly changed when we crossed the border. I don’t know if there are some other reasons for this, but at least in Portugal there wasn’t nearly as much farmed land as there is in Andalucía and that made the landscape very different. Different but beautiful.

We were bit unlucky with the weather and it was raining more or less for the whole weekend. That meant that going to beach wasn’t an option which changed the plans a little bit. I didn’t mind though, as I am usually not so keen on lying on the beach for hours. Instead we headed out to explore the city centre of Albufeira. Even though the city is very touristic, I have to say it is also beautiful with its white marble-like houses, beach and nice architecture. In the evening we all headed out together for a bar tour in the club street of Albufeira which was also pretty much fun!

The next day we departed at 12 o’clock in the morning to Lagos and Sagres, where you can visit the south westernmost point in Europe. The place was pretty amazing, there were very, very high and steep cliffs on the shore and it looked really magnificent. Also, in Sagres I met couple Finnish people having vacation and visiting the place which was a nice surprise. I guess we’re everywhere! Even more amazing than the cliffs in Sagres was the beach in Lagos... Small beach surrounded by high, steep cliffs, pure sand and extremely clear water… So beautiful that I thought I had died and ended up in the paradise! Then I figured I wouldn’t end up there anyway, so all this must be real :D Real but just amazingly beautiful!

The next day it was time to check out from the hotel and head out to a beach. But again, the rain messed out our plans and instead of going to the beach we went to visit a nice little town called Tavira. There we had couple of hours of time to walk around the city and have some lunch. Really nice and beautiful little town. Altogether Portugal must be the most beautiful country in Europe and definitely by far the most beautiful country I’ve ever visited! Also, the cities and landscape are somehow sympathetic and something I really like. In addition to all that, people in Portugal are very nice, friendly and most of them speak English.

This weekend convinced me so totally that I want to say if you are ever going to visit southern Europe, you should definitely put Portugal first in your list!

Nossa, nossa
Assim você me mata
Ai se eu te pego
Ai ai se eu te pego

Delícia, delícia
Assim você me mata
Ai se eu te pego
Ai ai se eu te pego

Michael Telo - Ai Se Eu Te Pego

Every ending is a new beginning?

This time I’m writing a bit more serious. That’s because this week has been really, really controversial for me. There has been a lot of things going on. Things, that have gotten me really happy and then things that have gotten me really sad… It feels like every up is followed by down that is twice as hard. You feel like you’re on the top of the world and the next moment you feel like sh*t. Feels like whenever you get happy you get punished for that. And it really gets you. It makes you think about things. Think about what’s important in life and what is not. Think about the directions you’re going to take, decisions you’re going to make, think about the future, the past, the present… It all gets you!

Earlier this week we were having a home going party of one my best friends here in Spain. Of course, it was fun, but then these kind of happenings have also very sad aspect in them. Saying goodbye is never easy. And although you know it’s not probably the last time you see, you also know that things will never be same. It reminds you about how all this is here only for a while, temporarily. Of course you “know” that beforehand, but still you get surprised how it hits you. You meet so many new people, make so many new friends, have fun together, enjoy the time and the people… and then it’s all taken away and you have to go back to how it was… Except that nothing is how it was anymore.

 

"McAuto" :D I'm gonna miss you McFriend!

But with every ending, there’s a new beginning! Suddenly, at the very same home going party. I met someone new, maybe someone I had been looking for, maybe someone more than a friend! Maybe, just maybe someone who totally changes my direction! So, like I said, it has been really controversial week! The feelings go up and down all the time - in a blink of an eye.

When you think of it more, I think it’s like that with everything, when you are in here… or anywhere else away from “home”. The thing is, in here, you haven’t got anything stable, nothing familiar and so you have a “fresh start” (like I mentioned in my earliest posts). But in the same time, you have to build everything new: routines, relationships, everything. And just when you’ve done that, it’s all blown away! So nothing is certain, you can’t trust on anything. But at the same time you are still reliable on just the things that you have at that moment, just the people you have at that moment! It all makes you live on edge. All the time, all the time. I can tell you, mi amigos, it’s heavy!

But still, in the end, I guess that’s what this should be all about? Living in the moment. Carpe Diem!

See the mirror in your eyes
See the truth behind your lies
Your lies are haunting me
See the reason in your eyes
Giving answer to the why
Your eyes are haunting me!

Falling in & out of love
in love, in love
Falling in & out of love
your love, your love

Armin van Buuren ft. Sharon den Adel - In and Out of Love

Only in Spain!

I’m going to tell you guys about a festival here in Sevilla this weekend! During the week I heard that a local event management company is going to arrange a small festival here in Sevilla. The festival, Primavera Open Air, was advertised to be the “Spring Break Festival” with up to 8,000 participants! This was all thrilling: a festival in Spain should be pretty cool. I was going to go to the festival with a German girl I had met earlier. She was going there to take some pictures as a freelance photographer and she wanted some company. And by the way, she is the one to thank for all these pics as well... Thanks!

We decided to walk there. From the map, it didn’t look like the venue is far away… But it took us an hour to walk there! But still, the journey was pretty much fun: at one point, we thought we were close as we started to hear some very loud music… But when we got closer to the source, it turned out that there was just some guy at the parking lot with a car full of audio, playing really loud and about 100 people dancing around! Johnny, la gente esta muy loca, whatta f*ck? :D Back in Finland, police would end something like that immediately. But not in here, not in Spain, it’s so cool!

As we continued, we eventually got to the actual festival site. And this festival, I’ll tell you, was something really weird from the beginning to the end! First of all, in the entrance, the security guys were dressed up in uniforms, as if they were police or something! On the other hand, the guy taking the ticket was just an old guy smoking cigarette with just normal clothes :D And the 8,000 people? More like 800 people... Anyway, we got in and headed out to the stage where there was a band playing. The music was really good, really different from what I had heard! It was really weird but cool mixture of electro, funk, rock and house -music! Really good mixture!

The music was playing really loud, and all of a sudden, about a half of the sound disappeared! I thought: Did I lose part of my hearing? Or am I that drunk? What happened?! Then I saw these guys lifting up a fence that had fallen down (and probably unplugged some wires)… “OK, this doesn’t look good” I thought. But the band continued playing and the crowd didn’t mind… Then, after about ten or fifteen minutes, there was a big bang and all the electricity from the stage went off! I was thinking, “This is not happening, it’s not possible!” :D The band was confused, the organizers were going desperate and the crowd started singing football songs! Now this is Spain!

The show was pretty wild one... intentionally and unintentionally!

Eventually they got the music and lights back on and the show continued! The stage show performed by the band was really crazy, Loca! Lastly after all these happenings during the gig, a guy came on the stage… Dressed up in a full body costume of penis! :D AND he had rollerskates! I just can’t stop laughing when I think of all the things that happened and in the end there’s a huge penis spinning around the stage with rollerskates! Hahaha! Only in Spain can this happen!

I'm working, all week long,
I dream the days away,
I wanna... sing my song
so let the music play
I have to get my fix, and fly tonight
and when the clock strikes 6, on Fri-day Night
I need to blow it all away
 
I Can't wait.. for the weekend to begin...
Michael Gray - The Weekend

Travelling in Andalucía: Gibraltar

The second day of our travel started pretty early at Marbella. We headed southwest towards this huge rock known as Gibraltar. A small city in the south end of Spain… Except that it is not part of Spain, but the UK instead! While driving there the view was – again - more than nice and it got better all the time we were closing Gibraltar! When we were almost at the border, a huge queue of cars started to gather ahead of us: I guess it is popular for Spanish people to go shopping in Gibraltar as they have no VAT (ALV) at all in there! And so then we stood in the queue for an hour or so…

Gibraltar, here we come!

Finally, we reached the border and the Spanish customs officers who couldn’t care less changed into these very polite British “Bobbies”, which was funny and also a nice change at the same time! After the customs we encountered something interesting! You see, Gibraltar is a pretty small piece of land and most of it is covered with the “Upper rock” – a huge rock that you can’t build houses on – so there is not a lot of land to use in there. And so the weird thing was that when we were driving the road leading to the city we came across an airfield… Like literally: drove across a fully sized airfield! There’s not enough room otherwise, so they just made an intersection right in the middle of the field!

A road crossing the airfield? I would say that DON'T pass when the light is red!
Also, a pointer for the pilot when landing: do not break late! :D

After getting through the airfield we got our first look at the city of Gibraltar, home for some 30,000 British and also some Spanish (I think). Altogether, Gibraltar didn’t differ from the Spanish cities a lot. The streets were as narrow, there were as many scooters, people were driving on the “right” side of the road and architecture was pretty much the same. Anyway, it is still another country and for example all the signs were in English, the currency was pound and so on. By the way, the prices were the pretty much the same as in Finland, except that they were in pounds! So basically a beer was 4,50£ which is like 6 Euros!

So after having some f*cking expensive beer we decided to head up to the Upper rock! There are a lot of things to see up there! First of all, the view in there is amazing! You can see all over to Costa del Sol in the northeast, city of Alcerigas in the north and Morocco, Africa in the south!  Besides the views there are some cool caves on the rock, including some old British fortresses. And then of course the Makakis, the little monkeys! :D Those little fellas are really a fun to look at and even hold in your arms!

I will definately recommend anyone visiting Andalucía to also visit Gibraltar, it is quite amazing!

Sun is up
Move your body
I got moves and all the night I will not sit, yeah.
I came up
For this party
I wont stop till mr.dj stops the beat, yeah sun is up.

Inna - Sun Is Up

Travelling in Andalucía: Ronda and Costa del Sol

Two months in Spain has now passed and last week I got my first visitors here as my parents came to Sevilla to see the city. As they were visiting, we decided to travel a little bit here in Andalucía. So, when it comes to travelling, the public transportation is pretty good and not extremely expensive. However, if it’s possible, I personally recommend renting a car instead! Renting a car can be actually quite inexpensive if you get it for a few days at least. For instance, a small car for a weekend (3 days) can be only 70 euros + gas, which for example 3 people is not bad at all!  Also, renting a car gives you a lot of liberties when it comes to deciding where and when do you want to travel.

 Andalucían landscape... One picture is more than 1000 words!

So I rented a car for me and my parents for the weekend! This was actually the second time in a week that I made such a trip to the coast. Earlier I went to the Costa del Sol with a friend of mine to scout the area little bit… The scheduled travel plan for Friday was to drive from Sevilla to Ronda in the mountains and then continue to Marbella in Costa del Sol.  So, after a short adventure in the dense traffic of Sevilla we got to the highway leading to Cadiz and on our way to Ronda through the towns of Dos Hermanas and Villamartin. By the way, this road: 371 to Villamartin, is really nice! I wish I could someday come back here with a motor bike – the roads and views are just amazing!

Ronda is an old city from the Moorish times, located in the mountains between Sevilla and Costa del Sol. The town is built on a really steep and high cliff with an amazing valley in the middle of it. There are also huge bridges crossing the valley, uniting the two parts of the town. I had already visited Ronda earlier, but it was still as impressing as it was the first time. Definitely a place to see in Andalucía!

Unfortunately just when we arrived to the mountain town of Ronda it started raining. So after we left Ronda and headed to the mountains it was raining and we basically drove inside of a cloud (täysin pilvessä) and so the views were not that good :( However, when we got out of the cloud, we saw some magnificent views before we eventually arrived to the sunny coast aka Costa Del Sol.

Costa del Sol, some 350 kilometers slice of the Spanish southern coast from Tarifa to Almeria is very beautiful region of Andalucía with hundreds of beaches on the Mediterranean Sea. Also, it is the most touristic part of Spain together with the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Marbella is one the numerous tourist cities along the coast. The city comes alive especially in the summer when the weather is at its best and all the tourists come to the town. Marbella is also the place where the rich people of Spain want to spend their time. Such places like Nikki beach and Puerto Banus boast with the Jet Set life and some nicest hotels and casinos on the coast! In the end, in my opinion, Marbella is a nice little town to visit, but maybe not during the high tourist season. 

Vamos! A la playa!

Stay tuned for the next post where I’ll tell you about the rest of the travel: Gibraltar and Cadiz!

You know we go
where the feeling is right!
You know we go
where the groove is hot!
You know we go
when the feeling is right
feeling is right, feeling is right..

Vamos a la Playa
A mi me gusta bailar
el ritmo de la noche
Sounds of Fiesta!
Loona - Vamos a la playa