Sorry for everyone who cannot read Spanish, but I felt the urge to write something in this language, because during those cold winter days in Bulgaria I miss Spain a lot!
Ya ha casi llegado la Navidad y Sofia está cubierto de nieve. Aun así pienso mucho en Sevilla y Andalucía. Cuando cierro mis ojos, huelo de nuevo el olor de naranjas en los árboles y oigo los loros volando entre las palmeras de los Jardínes de los Alcazares.
Pienso en mis primeros días en Sevilla y la mágica que sentí cuando vi los alcazares y toda la arquitectura maura, el cielo que era más azurro que el cielo en Alemania y la gran variedad de flores en los parques. También sentí tristeza porque supe que después de unas semanas esta belleza se pusiere normalidad para mis ojos. Ahora, casi dos años después, deseo estar de nuevo en estos momentos mágicos. Quiero regresar a Sevilla para las vacaciones, pero no sé si va a ser lo mismo. ¿Sería una desilusión?
Sé que ya he olvidado mucho de mi español y me entristece tanto. Seguro que hay unos errores en este texto. Por favor, mi querido lector, si has encontrado algún error, avísame para que yo pueda elevar mi español al nivel que tuve cuando viví en España.
¡Feliz navidad y feliz año nuevo a todos!
Filed under: Spain
Today is the first real day of spring in Berlin and it reminds me of all the beautiful flowers I saw and photographed in Spain last year. Those are some of my favourites:
so many beautiful blossoms!
interesting angle
great colour!
with bug
Filed under: Spain | Tags: 2009, Alhambra, Andalucía, exams, Granada, mudejar, Sevilla
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Granada, exams and more
Hola my dear readers,
sorry for the delay. I was busy and yes, admittedly also a bit lazy to write 
But that means, I have a lot of new stories to tell. Here it comes:
A few weeks ago I went on a 2-day trip to the city of Granada together with a friend. I can already tell you, this was far better than my trip to Córdoba. Granada is the home of the “Alhambra”, a huuuuuge terrain with old buildings and very beautiful gardens all in the typical Mudejar-style of Andalucía, mixing oriental and occidental elements.
My friend and I travelled to Granada by train, it takes around 3 hours from Sevilla. We booked our ticket to access the Alhambra as well as a hostel room in advance via the internet. So once we arrived in Granada our first mission was to find the hostel. We knew which busline we had to take, but couldn’t really find the right bus stop! Luckily a friendly old men helped us out and we eventually made it to the hostel. It was located in a district called Albayzin, a very Arabic-looking district and very historical. We were really lucky to be there, as I would call this the most beautiful and interesting district of Granada. After having asked the hostel warden for the way to the Alhambra we went that direction with a little stop at a restaurant where we had lunch.
Then we made our way up to the hill where the Alhambra is built on. It can be called a “city within the city”, and in former times indeed in case of danger the inhabitants of Granada seeked shelter in the Alhambra. There are several palaces in different architectural styles and from different centuries, but all very beautiful. Furthermore there is an uncountable number of gardens with beautiful trees and flowers. Apart from that, from up there you have a great view over the city of Granada with all its white houses and on the Sierra Nevada, the mountains. The name Sierra Nevada could be translated “snowy mountains”, and indeed, even in summer there is snow on top! A stunning scenery! We spent 5 hours in the Alhambra and came out there highly impressed and kind of enchanted by the charms of these old buildings.
After a short rest in our hostel room we walked through the district of Albayzin, to a viewing platform with a great view of the Alhambra by night. We took some pictures there and then had dinner. Finally went to bed after an exciting day.
We didn’t have a real plan for the second day, but we got a tip from some other people in the hostel. On a hill almost outside of Granada you can visit the caves where the “gitanos”, the gypsies used to live. Unfortunately, despite having a map we didn’t get there and then decided to go to the city centre instead rather than losing more time. In the city centre we went into some Arabic shops (yay, I got a nice bracelet there!) and churches and had great fresh smoothie. In order not to miss the train again like in Córdoba, we went to the station very early and made it more than on time.
In summary, I can strongly recommend Granada. The Alhambra is not for nothing Europe’s second most frequented sight after Vatican City. If you’re in Andalucía some day, go there, but make sure you reserve your ticket online beforehand!
There’s more to tell. I think I haven’t written about my sports activities here in Sevilla yet. In the past three months I participated in a martial arts course, Taekwondo to be precise. I wasn’t surprised to be the only foreigner, but I did expect some more female participation haha. There was only one other girl, who didn’t come to the training so often. It was a challenge for me to learn all these movements and the fact that everything was in Spanish made it even harder. But everyone was very patient with me and explained me things as many times as it was necessary for me to understand 
Yesterday unfortunately was the last lesson… but we will have a goodbye-dinner soon where I hopefully see most of the people again.
The classes at university have also finished now and it’s exam time. I already had 2 exams, which I think went quite well. Now i have 2 written ones and 1 oral exam to go. I’m quite confident, but there’s still a lot of work for me. And I’m already scared of all the paperwork before I leave and that again it will take me ages to get signatures I need from people here. But we will see!
I booked my flight home for the 9th of July… Some conclusions I can already draw now are that Sevilla is a great and beautiful city, but that the university classes here didn’t add to much to what I already knew. I’m sad that I have to leave this city and I will miss the sun and the palmtrees and these wonderful parks and gardens. On the other hand, it is getting REALLY hot here now, so far up to 40°C, but it’s gonna be worse. That’s a bit too much for me, with 30°C I’m still fine, but any degree hotter isn’t really nice.
The plan for after the exams is a trip to Portugal with my friend and I also still want to travel to Tarifa, which is Spain’s most southern point, only a few kilometres from Africa. When it’s good weather you can see the African coast from there, I really would like that! It is also a paradise for (kyte) surfers and other water sports. I don’t practise any of them though haha, but I’m sure it’s nice to watch.
So long for now, I hope I will manage to write one more post before going back to Germany.
Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Karin
Friday, 15 May 2009
Córdoba
Hola everyone,
here’s my latest story about my trip to the city of Córdoba.
People say, when you’re in Andalucía it’s “obligatory” to visit Córdoba. The most famous thing about it is the Mezquita, a former mosque which is a cathedral now. In the Mezquita there are hundreds of columns painted in white an orange and it is the third biggest mosque building in the world. So, we were going to see that!
However, this wasn’t our lucky day. My friend and I wanted to meet at the train station in Sevilla about 20 minutes before the train left, so we could still buy our tickets. I arrived half an hour in advance and then saw the massive queue at the ticket office. So I decided to stand in the row already waiting for my friend. I kept looking out for her, but it was only when I was already buying our tickets that she found me, saying she had been standing in the row next to me. We had to hurry to catch the train. So far, so good.
When we arrived in Córdoba and walked through the city a bit, we were surprised how small it was. First we had a coffee and planned our next steps. The plan was to see the Mezquita first and then see some more of the city. But when we came there, it turned out that it would be closed until 3PM due to First Communion celebrations. Well, ok, so we walked around in the city, but got the impression that it only consisted of souvenir shops and restaurants. We came back to the Mezquita at 1.30PM because we feared there might be a queue for the tickets. And yes, there was one already, but it was still short. So we stood in the row and waited… and it started to rain. Definitely not our day! After ages of waiting the ticket counter opened and we could finally enter the Mezquita.
The colums are impressive, and it’s nice to see, but in my opinion this is not something you HAVE to see (and pay 8€ for!). It also turned out to be too dark to take any good pictures. So we were a bit disappointed by the Mezquita as well.
After we got out of there again, we decided to take a look at some of the souvenir shops and get ourselves something nice. About 40 minutes before the departure of our train back we decided to head towards the station. Unfortunately we underestimated the distance… we had to run, which wasn’t so easy for me wearing flip flops, and then the warm weather… Then we made a mistake reading the map and ran the wrong way up. So, we missed the train. The tickets you buy in Spain have the times of the journeys on them so we were afraid we had to buy a new ticket. Luckily the guy at the ticket office turned a blind eye and wrote a new time of departure on our tickets along with his signature. At the station we had to wait for 1.5 hours for the next train. We felt frustrated and exhausted from our little marathon.
But eventually we made it back to Sevilla. Next trip will be better!
Greetings,
Karin
Filed under: Spain | Tags: 2009, Andalucía, Andalusia, diary, landscape, Ronda, Sevilla
Monday, 20 April 2009
Trip to Ronda
Hello everybody,
here’s my latest news.
Yesterday I went on a trip to Ronda, which is located between Sevilla and Málaga, with a friend. Even though Ronda is only 120km from Sevilla the bus ride took almost 2.5 hours, because of the sinuous streets leading through the mountains. The busride was already spectacular with an amazing view of mountains and valleys of Andalucía. Unfortunately I’m a bit travel-sick, so I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I should have done.
When we had arrived in Ronda the bus driver explained us the way to the city centre. First we went to a viewing platform to have a look at the stunningly beautiful landscape (sorry if I keep repeating myself about the landscape, but it’s truly AMAZING!). After taking some pictures we went to the tourist information office where we got ourselves a city map. Both my friend and I were still feeling a bit travel-sick so we decided to have a coffee (or cappuccino in my case) and a chocolate croissant to soothe our poor stomachs and discuss what to do next. Feeling much better afterwards, we headed towards the “Puente Nuevo”, a very famous bridge linking two parts of Ronda. The city is built on rocks and there is a deep canyon seperating the two parts of the city.
Obviously we didn’t have a good view of the bridge whilst standing on it, so we decided to walk further and follow the trail down to the ground of the rock, from where we hoped to have a good view. My friend had read on the internet that there were 300 and something stairs leading down to the little river which flows through the canyon. During our descend we indeed got a fabulous view on the bridge. But soon there were no stairs anymore. There was one way left and one way right. The way left was a gravel path and the way right looked a bit more adventurous, so we decided to try that one. It was pretty narrow, but we saw more people there so we kept on walking. After a while it started to look like a little trail through a jungle, but we kept on walking and took many pictures of the beautiful landscape and the bridge. At some point we were alone and it seemed like we had left the typical touristic trail. The descend got a bit more difficult when the ground started to be slippery. After a few more minutes we came to a ruin. An old house with no roof and roots of trees coming down from there. It was mystic! The only way out of the house was to climb over two battens and we weren’t sure if we should return or climb over the battens and continue our way. In the end, we decided to continue and climb (there was some kind of cleft under it, but not too deep) only to find out that our little trail ended only a few metres away. So we went all the way back up, which was quite exhausting!
Afterwards we looked at some buildings and some more view platforms and then it was already time to go back to the bus station.
I had a great time in Ronda, especially with exploring non-touristic places, and after weeks in the hectic (but nevertheless beautiful!) Sevilla, Ronda was an oasis of silence and nature. Ronda is a nice destination for a sunday or public holiday, when all shops and many other attractions are closed, there is still so much to see there!
That’s it for today!
Filed under: Spain | Tags: picnic, real alcazar, Sevilla, Spain, Summer, sun
Friday, 13 March 2009
Summer feelings
Hola everybody,
time is flying here in Spain. It’s already Mid-March now. The weather is really nice these days, around 25°C during the day and lots of sun. No big news at uni. I’m getting a little closer to finally have all forms filled in and signed by the right persons. I need to go back to one office next week to pick something up again and then the worst part should be over. Incredible though that it takes so long to get things sorted out. That’s definitely a big minus of that faculty!
Last week I visited the “Real Alcazar” (A royal palace with gardens) and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen! The whole palace was in mudejar style (this mixture of oriental and occidental which is so typical for Seville) with ornaments, ponds, columns etc. The Spanish kings received people like Christopher Columbus or Americo Vespucio there, what a historic place! I’m really impressed. And the best thing is that it is only a few minutes walking from where I live and that I can enter for free with my student card.
For tomorrow (Saturday) a picnic with a friend in the park María Luísa is planned. I’ve had problems with my feet since I’m here. I’ve got three pairs of shoes, and all of them hurt my feet in one way or the other. In the shop they were so comfy… I’d love to explore some cities around Sevilla, but since I still have wounds on my feet from last week I will wait at least till next weekend before daring to undertake bigger hikes. But anyway, I haven’t been to this park yet and I look forward to meeting my friend and having a picnic!
So long!
Karin
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Relaxing
Hi everyone,
it’s already Saturday again! The plan for today was to go to a big shopping centre outside of Seville with a free bus shuttle. So I met up with a friend, but there was no bus! At first we thought it was just the usual Spanish attitude of being late, but after one hour we gave up waiting. Today is a public holiday here (Day of Andalucia), but on the internet it said that the shopping centre is open on holidays as well. Maybe it’s open, but there are no busses?! Anyway, no shopping for us today then. We had some yummy tapas and a walk through the city centre instead.
The week went OK, there are still some (bureaucratic) hurdles to take. The lessons were alright, especially the Spanish course which started this week was really nice. I’m in group 3 for advanced students. I think it will be challenging, but this is a good opportunity for me to learn some new grammar and improve my Spanish. I still haven’t found out where or how to buy the books I need. I went to the copy shop of the uni, because I heard that it’s possible to buy photocopies of the books there for little money, but they said they didn’t have the books I need. Probably it’s best to ask a Spanish student about it, since all foreign students are confused about the books.
I’ve made my decision now which subjects to take, but still need the OK from two people from my uni in Holland. One of them is on a business trip, I hope she’ll be able to answer my e-Mail quickly.
By now I have made some friends already which is really nice. Despite some problems at university I believe that I will have a great time here and I’m afraid that it will be over much too early!
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Greetings from Sevilla,
Karin
Filed under: Spain | Tags: 2009, beautiful, classes, communication, Sevilla, sunny, university
Saturday, 21 February 2009
Weekend!
After I managed to find out which classes I could attend I went to as many as I could (some I couldn’t attend because I had something at the same time already). In every class the teacher explained the content and method of evaluation and then left. Sometimes I felt like I had come to uni in vain, because it is still not much clearer to me now whether some classes are interesting or not. But I hope after next week I will know which classes I want to take and can design my final timetable.
As I already mentioned last time I need a signature from the international office of my faculty, but the office was always closed! I’ve been there every day in the last week, but the door has always been locked. I should’ve handed in the form last week already. But everything has a good and a bad side, and the good side of this matter is that I found a new friend. A German girl who I met in front of the door of the international office and who has been facing the same problem like me. That’s at least something! 
Yesterday I had a Spanish test at the language school. Every exchange student does the test and consequently will be put in a group with other students on the same level. I hope that they will put me in a good group, so I learn a lot.
Today (saturday) has been really quiet and relaxed so far, I only went to the supermarket and did the laundry. Tomorrow I want to see some more places in Sevilla which i haven’t seen yet. I’m also planning trips to other cities around (like Málaga or Granada). Andalucia is so beautiful and I hope I get to see a lot of it before the big tourist invasion.
Monday, 16 February 2009
First day of classes
I survived my first day at uni. It wasn’t great, but could have been worse too.
Since I didn’t know which courses would be suitable (as there was nobody there to answer my questions like you already know), I just went to the first class this morning at 8.30 AM. I was the only foreigner and the Spanish students all knew each other.
The teacher came in half an hour late and then discussed the exams and told the students their grades (most of them had failed). So I figured that this was a class taught throughout the entire year and I obviously wasn’t there for the first half. Ok, so that’s not a class I can take.
The same goes for the next class I attended. The teacher said I could still come to class and it wouldn’t matter so much that I’ve missed the first part because there will be a lot of group work, but I doubt that they will be able to figure out how many credits I get for that class then.
After that class about 35 of the 40 students went home, because the next class wasn’t compulsory. But it was finally a class that only starts this semester, so I can attend it! The teacher briefly explained the contents of the class and what kind of assignments we will have to hand in and then that class was over.
The last one for today was also a course that lasted for 2 semesters, so I won’t be able to do that one either. And here as well the teacher finished her class after 20 minutes (instead of 120).
I learned today that Spanish teachers as well as students like to be late for class, but finish earlier to compensate it Most of the time I knew what they were talking about, but didn’t understand everything in detail. It also depends on the kind of accent they have. I’m confident that I will manage to understand more soon though. And tomorrow the international office should be open (I don’t trust it too much though) so things will hopefully get clearer soon.
And that’s it for today!
Hasta pronto!
Friday, 13 February 2009
Getting there veeery slowly…
Hola!
The classes will start on monday and I’ve been trying to sort out everything, without a lot of success though.
On wednesday I met the Dutch girl from my uni, who is also here in Sevilla. I took her to the main building of the uni to sign her up there. She got the same forms to fill in like me, but they told her they had to be handed in by friday. They didn’t tell me that! The form is about which courses we are planning on taking and some personal data about us. It wasn’t clear to us how to pick the right courses, so we decided to go to the faculty of communication on the next day to ask there. The offices at uni are only open from 10 to 2 every day. We wouldn’t have made it to the faculty of communication anyway, because we didn’t even know which bus to take, but we did make it to the language school to sign up for a Spanish language course there. At least something.
On thursday we took the bus to the faculty of communication, it took half an hour or so. When we finally arrived there we had to learn that the international office there is only open on monday, wednesday and friday. Great! We had a walk through the building and then went back to the city centre.
So today (friday) we went back and learnt that today the office was closed because of exams. We asked at the reception if there was someone else we could talk to, because we also had some more questions. He sent us to another office, where the head of international relations is working. But she wasn’t there either. We decided to go back to the international office of the main building to explain that we couldn’t hand in the forms. The girl there knew already that the intnernational office of the faculty of communication was closed, so she said we could hand the forms in next week. She couldn’t help us with our questions about the courses though. I’m not sure what to do on monday when the courses start, I guess I will just go there and try to attend some classes and get some answers.
Apart from that I’m enjoying my time here! The sun is shining, it’s 21°C and Seville is so beautiful! For pictures, have a look at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11051899@N08/sets/
See you soon,
Karin
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
First week almost over
Hi everyone,
I’ve been in Seville for almost a week now. I already know the city a bit now and got used to my flat and the flatmates too. The weather is lovely, it’s 18°C and sunny today. I heard that it’s snowing in Germany. I’m so glad I’m not there now!
I went to the main building of the uni yesterday and got the paper stuff done. Next monday my courses will start. My final course list only needs to be ready in a couple of weeks, so I have enough time to attend different courses and then make my final decision which ones to take. It’s a bit confusing though; there is a course list online as well as a time table of when these courses take place. But there are more courses on the time table than on the list. Huh? Some of the courses on the time table seem really interesting to me, but there’s no further information about the contents and the credits that can be obtained. I guess I will go there anyway to find out more. It’ll be nice to go to uni, even though it’s great to explore the city the days can get very long when you haven’t got anything to do and no friends here (yet).
Sunny greetings from Seville,
Karin
