Amsterdam..!! Legally free!!!...

The day before going to Germany I spent a whole day walking around Amsterdam with my best friend the Hungarian. His family visited him in Belgium for like a week, so they decided to go up to Amsterdam for a day. They picked me up really early in the morning because we all wanted to have enough time to walk around the city and visit museums and interesting stuff that tourists always tend to do.

It took us like 2 to 3 hours to get to Amsterdam; it’s definitively not so far from Brussels. I was so happy to be in another country, especially in a famous city like Amsterdam, that I was just walking around with my friend smiling and making fun of everything. We took a tour in a bote that showed us the city and its surrounds; it was really interesting.

Then, later on instead of going to the museum of Vincent Van Gogh we went to the wax museum. I had already gone to the one in London before, but my friend, the Hungarian, insisted to go to the one there, so we all went to the wax museum for him. We had a great time, we took pictures all around with famous people such as the Queen Elizabeth, The Beatles, Bob Marley, etc. and we even ended up singing karaoke and everything in one part almost at the end of the museum. We have videos and photos of that moment; it was just wonderful.

We walked a lot around the city as well. We saw, of course, Marihuana all around us. In all the shapes and ways to consume it. Lollies of Marihuana, drinks with marihuana, normal cigarettes, brownies, etc. and of course the smell all around us was just MARIHUANA as well. It was really interesting, but at the end of the day I was having a horrible headache as a result of the Marihuana’ smell surround us, apparently I wasn’t the only one having it, because the mom of my friend and his dad were complaining about it as well. But anyway, we saw tulips in every colour ever thinkable; BEAUTIFUL all of those. My mom LOVEEEEES tulips, so I couldn’t stop thinking about her all the way walking around the markets and parks. I ended up buying a bag full of tulip’s seeds just for her, waiting for my return to Venezuela two month after.

We went back to Belgium around 8pm. I was really pleased with the time that I spent with my friend and his family in Amsterdam. Once in Brussels I met up straight away with the Venezuelan guy and the Colombian to go to sleep and get ready to our trip around Germany for 15days. Definitively my exchange student year was the best year EVER!!..

BERLIN, GERMANY!!! best city EVER!!...

I went to Germany in spring 2005 with two really REALLY good friends, one Venezuelan and another one Colombian. We found this big promotion with train tickets that we couldn’t let go, 9.95euros (to go and return) from Brussels to a little town in the frontier between Germany and Belgium.

We left the house really early; around 6am we were already catching the metro to go to central station in Brussels. Around 7am we were already boarding the train, completely exited, it was going to be the first time that we were going to have a ’backpacker’ experience, or kind of. From the little town in Germany, ‘Aachen’, to Berlin we did 18hrs of trip. The thing was that in Germany they have this ticket, that I’m pretty sure is called ‘Niedersachsen-Ticket’ that you can buy with another 5people that cost you 30euros and can take you to where ever you want to go in Germany, the only condition is that you can only use slow and old trains, not the fast and new ones.

We got to Berlin at 10pm, completely tired of changing trains all day long, and looking forward to go to sleep. Almost all my best friends, including my cousin, from Venezuela were doing their exchange student year in Germany, so they putted us in contact with a friend of them that lived in Berlin and that did an exchange student year in Venezuela. We called him and he, Manolis, explained us how to get to his place. He gave us some dinner and then we went to bed.

We spent 4days in Berlin, and I really have to say that I have traveled around many countries and I have seen many cities, but Berlin definitively is one of my favorites.

The contrast between the east and the west part of the city is amazing and at the same time ridiculous. The ‘Branderburger Tor’ was AWESOME, especially when you see all around postcards with old pictures of the city when they had all the Nazi problems and the wall, and you compare to what it is now there.

It is amazing the way Germany overcame all the problems that they had in the past in such a short time. It’s like if nothing ever happened, but at the same time you can find museums, concentration camps, part of the wall, monuments, etc. that remind us that even though everything seems to be perfect and beautiful now, it was hard for them to overcome the Nazi experience, and that they won’t try to forget it, they just seemed to have learned the consequences of it.

LUXEMBURG!! a PEACEFUL City!!

I went to Luxemburg 2years ago with my two best friends while I was living in Belgium.
My friends, one Hungarian and one Colombian, went to my house to sleep over and watch some DVDs, we woke up the they after around 8am. The weather was just BEAUTIFUL, it was spring, not to hot, not to cold. We were talking about going to Luxemburg and travel around during the weekends, but we never sat out a date and a specific time to do it. Not because we weren’t organized enough to do it, but because the weather in Belgium is COMPLETELY unpredictable, and as a result we never knew when was going to be raining or simply sunny.

That morning that we saw such a beautiful blue sky and the weather was so perfect that we only needed a sweater to leave the house, we took all our stuff and ran to the train station to catch a train to Brussels, and than change to another one that was going to take us straight away to Luxemburg the capital city.

When we first got there we wasn’t really sure if we were actually in Luxemburg, we could read the word ‘LUXEMBURG’ all around us, but when we left the train station the city seemed so quite and small that we actually thought that we were in a little town in Belgium that probably was called ‘Luxemburg’ and we didn’t know, you know, Capital cities always tend to be messy and noisy, and this one was just the opposite. But anyway, we were already there, so we took a map and started walking around, heading centre of the city.

We spent a whole day walking around, no museums or anything that tourists will normally do. We were just happy to be there, traveling and having fun between us. It was a completely relaxed and unusual day for us. We saw gardens full of Tulips, path and rivers that led us to beautiful parks, and bridges all around with magical views. We just walked, laughed and enjoy the time together in this peaceful city. We went back to Belgium a few hours later more relaxed, happy and calmed than ever.

WE WOOOON!!! GANAAAAAMOS!!!!...

We had this really important referendum last monday in Venezuela, the Government wanted to change the constitution and became a Socialist-Communist country, but the Venezuelan population said NO to the dictatorship and YES to democracy!!...

I just wish I was there to celebrate this weekend properly, with my friends and family over there, I really need to keep working to have enough money to go back there at least for holidays next year...

One friend told me today, after I told her almost crying how happy I was with the way we defeated the Venezuelan government, "it most feel awful to feel so happy and just see people all around normally walking without knowing anything about the Venezuelan situation", i just nod when she said it... what else could i have said??... it feels empty sometimes..!! But I was just so happy with our victory that I really didn't care about the people that didn't know and that still don't know about the situation back in my country, I was just happy enough to enjoy the victory from far away.

We deserved that victory, that defeated to Chavez and his government!!...