Life is a journey... enjoy the ride

New URL

2007-08-30T07:55:00.001-07:00

Por cuestiones de hacerme la vida mas facil, cambie el url de mi blog a este:

http://enjoy-t-ride.blogspot.com/

Algun dia les explicare el por que....

Saludos!!

Due to some unknown reason I changed the URL of my blog, so from now on i will publish everything on this url:

http://enjoy-t-ride.blogspot.com/

Saltando el Charco!!

2007-08-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Hello to everyone and here I am again, now actually on the floor of a Poland apartment having some time for myself maybe for the first time since I got here. This time I am going to write about my trip from Venezuela to Poland, actually I wrote it in a notepad while traveling, but I did it in Spanish because maybe somebody from my family will be interested in reading the details of this journey ;)

Maiquetia 07/08/07

09.15

Ok, esto me acaba de recordar que mi escritura a mano es horrible. Luego de un semi-tranquilo vuelo en una avioneta (cuasi avión) de Santa Barbara Airlines hasta Maiquetia y de una muy sentimental despedida de mi familia en Bqto, me encuentro sentado en el piso (como en la universidad) con unos 53Kg en maletas frente a mí. Estoy esperando que abran el check in de Lufthansa en aproximadamente 3 horas y esto esta solo, a excepción de un español que llego como media hora antes que yo.

Este es mi primer vuelo en unos 10 anos y primera vez que salgo del país. Algunos leerán esto y se preguntaran que se siente, otros ya lo habrán vivido antes, pero a todos les cuento que estoy tranquilo, las cosas están saliendo bien y de acuerdo al plan que ha dirigido mi vida los últimos 2 anos. Dentro de poco me sentare a crear un nuevo plan, pero por ahora me estoy disfrutando la etapa final de este. Saben? Ha sido una larga espera de sacrificios y disfrute, nuevas amistades y nuevos lugares, pero ha sido una nota y ahora es que falta!

En mi primer vuelo comencé a notar un poco de frialdad de la gente a pesar de ir Bqto-Ccs y estar en la cálida Venezuela, supongo que lo sentiré mas en el próximo vuelo Caracas-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Berlin y más aun en el tren que sigue entre Berlin y Varsovia, pero mi actitud durante este viaje será en resumidas palabras WTF, lo que en cristiano significa que no le parare mucho a lo que digan y les mostrare lo que es el calor venezolano.

En algún lugar de Polonia montado en un tren 08/08/07

16.30 (GMT+2)

Ok, aquí estoy escribiendo de nuevo, la última vez que escribí deje esto en Maiquetia, ahorita estoy en algún lugar desconocido de Polonia en el tren a camino a Varsovia.

Hoy a pasado de todo, un día muy interesante, mejor dicho, dos días muy interesantes y han pasado cosas buenas y malas. Paso cada minuto analizando este nuevo mundo, pero comencemos por lo que paso ayer, lo malo del viaje (justo como lo esperaba) ha sido la Guardia Nacional en Maiquetia, estando yo sentado en el avión y ya casi a punto de despegar, me llamaron por los speakers del avión para que saliera con mis maletas a la puerta. Obviamente me interrogaron y abrieron mi equipaje, al mismo tiempo hacían preguntas estúpidas como “Te sabes el himno nacional?, Quien es el gobernador del estado Lara?, cual es la dirección de tu casa?”, asumo que tengo cara de asesino en serie, narcotraficante, terrorista o quizá algo más peligroso aun: Ingeniero recién graduado con intenciones de conocer la realidad en otros países. Seguro nuestro presidente tiene miedo de eso, pero como no me quiero meter con la política mejor continuo con el viaje… luego de explicarles donde queda la urbanización donde vivo desde hace 24 anos y de notar que en vez de traer drogas en la maleta traia una camisa del Cardenales de Lara, pude regresar a mi puesto con una estúpida disculpa de parte del oficial y un muy mal sabor de boca para iniciar el viaje, y que, gracias a que pedi el puesto en la ventana, se disipo viendo los colores del Atlantico por primera vez.

Ahora lo bueno! Pues el solo hecho de poner un pie en el avión y ser recibido con un “Guten Morgen!” de parte de la muy rubia tripulación de Lufthansa comenzó a dibujarme la idea de lo que venía. El avión estaba lleno de gente de distintas razas, más que todo Alemanes de regreso a casa luego de aventurarse en Venezuela y Venezolanos visitando a sus hijos trabajando en Europa (al menos conocí dos familias camino a Noruega y Suecia).

Un pequeño paréntesis antes de que olvide esto: Alemania y Polonia son PLANAS con bo….!!! Ya entiendo porque nuestro amigo alemán (Ben) le gustan nuestros landskypes, al principio es bonito porque pareciera que hasta el terreno esta ordenado aquí (como todo lo demás), pero luego TODO es así y ya te provoca ver una montanita como las que se ven vía Caracas por Nirgua o San Felipe.

Volviendo al vuelo, estuvo tranquilo, atardece y amanece en menos de 9 horas, cena y desayuno igual en menos de 9 horas, que tal? Una azafata (la única no rubia) muy simpática, aun luego de 9 horas en ese avión y conservaba su sonrisa para todos. El único detalle, retraso de 1 hora en Maiquetia no se por qué, solo sé que hasta para salir del país tuvimos que hacer cola en la pista, pero más tarde pagaría caro por este retraso. Si ven la foto de abajo a la izquierda eran las 2.15 AM con tronco de sol jejeje y abajo a la derecha es uno de los TVs del avion que de vez en cuando nos mostraban la distancia, altura, temperatura afuera, velocidad, hora aqui, hora alla, tiempo por llegar, si hay vida en marte, que hacemos en la tierra, si existen aliens y demas informacion basica....

Higuerote 2007!!

2007-07-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

Before leaving the country i had to make one last trip to Caracas and with a little bit of my friends from Celeritech i had my first visit to the beach in more than five years!!

Here is part of the crew! On the left we have Karim from Peru and on the right we have Ben from Germany, so we had a kind of international trip, the rest of us Mariana, Niurka and me of course all "criollitos".

In Venezuela you can't make a road trip without eating some "arepas de carretera"

And of course Karim and Ben were enjoying our tradition...

Our gold here was to get to Higuerote, a famous beach less than 100Km to the east of Caracas. The trip would have been very boring if we were in another country, but here in Venezuela you have some challenges in the highway!

This time we had to stop a few minutes to decided if we wanted to destroy our cars in this trip or get back to the boring Caracas....

Of course we decided to destroy our cars here... but Stewie was up to the challenge as always! And if you are wondering, yes, this mountain was in the middle of the road not just one time but four times :S

After a couple of hours traveling, we putted some gas and bought more beers (way too much beers) we finally made it to the sea!

And there is always somebody sleeping in the wrong time and the wrong place... this time was Karim

Actually this trip was very good, in three days we went to the beach, Parque Nacional el Avila, Parque Botanico de Caracas, Monumento Los Proceres and finally on our way back we stopped at Campo Carabobo.

Monumento a Los Proceres, very impressive...

I lived 11 months in Caracas and passed by this monuments several times, i always wanted to go but there was always a reason not to go to this place, this time there were no reasons to stop us.

Now it was time to go to El Avila and our German friend was pretty happy to visit this place.

This place is always full of people and you can find different things to eat here, strawberries with cream, churros and a lot of stuff. If you have the chance you can skate in the ring for a few minutes and buy some souvenirs for your friends and family. At the end of the picture you can see the Humboldt Hotel, the day before there was a huge party on that place.

After less than two hours on the place we were on our way back to the city... nice view ;)

When you think about Caracas it never comes to your mind a tropical forest right? well the city has one right in the middle and it's a very very good park, it's called Parque Botanico de Caracas

And also a pretty cheap park...

Here we have our German friend doing his job

After this visit to the Parque Botanico we went home to watch two good movies, little miss sunshine and American history X (y) , the next day we went back to Barquisimeto my beautiful hometown but i couldn't resist the opportunity to visit Campo Carabobo near Valencia, the last time i went there i was 10 year old! Unfortunately Ben has all the pictures from this place, so i will put those one later in the week, that's it for now friends!

a Venezuelan Birthday!

2007-07-16T18:30:00.000-07:00

My sister's birthday my friends! she was born on august 14th so we celebrated with a party at our parents place as usual.

And here is the main attraction of the evening, my sister Paula! You can't have a party without Soleras and some fireworks on your cake :P

Of course my brother brought his
band to play all night long. He is the One playing
the drums!

Ok so the party ended at 3am, i love our parties because you have the chance to speak with your family and friends all at the same time. We always end up playing something like an "unplugged" in the backyard with a guitar and everyone in the party has to be involved and sing something, in my case i had to try some "ranchera" from Vicente Fernandez called "Mujeres divinas", i actually followed my brother because he knows all those songs :P

Here you can see my brother and my father singing together.

Tree's Day!! Ficu in Barquisimeto...

2007-07-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

So here is our (me and my girlfriend) new tradition, since our plan is to travel around the world, we wanted to leave something really important for us in each one of those places, so the idea is to seed a tree in each city of the world that get to visit, of course we started this tradition in our beautiful hometown Barquisimeto!

"El Cardenalito"

We decided to seed Ficu in "El Cardenalito", here you can see a view of Barquisimeto from the park, i really like this place, i usually go there to jog, to walk, to read, to eat, to have some beers. I called this place "the comfort zone", because it is really nice to do anything there.

If you are wondering, how can you seed a tree in Barquisimeto?, well here is there procedure, you just have to go to the park you prefer, you talk with the policemen, then with the gardener, then with park engineer, then with the park manager and then fiiiiiiiiiinally guess who? the gardener, yes the gardener, but everyone helped us a lot and they were really kind and very surprise that a young couple wanted to do this ;)

At the beginning we wanted to seed a tree from our region in danger of extinction, but it was impossible to find those ones, so we had to choose something else and we came out with a "Ficus Variegata", and maybe in a future our tree is going to look like the one below.

After we had the permissions, bought the tree and choosed a place in the park we were ready to dig the hole!

Actually the gardener wanted to dig the hole ( i suppose we don't look like experts in the subject :p), but we wanted to do it by ourself, come on! that's the best part of the tradition!

And after twenty minutes, a little bit of sweat in our forehead and dirty hands here is our new friend!

Ficu!!!

Obviously we had a little baptism for Ficu!

It felt really good to do this and i recommend it to everyone, if we can do this more often i am pretty sure we can have better places to live and to jog every day ;)

There is a possibility to get more trees from the ministry of the environment, so maybe we can do something bigger in this four weeks here in Barquisimeto before i leave, hopefully i will put that in this blog pretty soon...

... and to say good bye, a picture of mary and me after baptism :D

Moving day!

2007-06-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

So i have two weeks here in Barquisimeto, i came back to my hometown and has been pretty nice to spend time with my family, friends and girlfriend. I have been very busy every day and that is way i haven't updated this thing.

Ok so i woke up on saturday and putted all the things i have been using and wearing for almost a year inside two or three suitcases (it wasn't easy), i don't know what happened with my clothes, it seems like i have collected many stuff in Caracas.

I sat down and had a nice breakfast with my landlady (and her parrot Loretto) for the last time , Mrs Vicenta help me a lot while living (and surviving at the beginning) in this city, and was also a great company to chat about many things.

I wish her the best!

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end...

2007-06-14T18:11:00.001-07:00

Thursday night in my apartment's room, i am eating a sandwich an listening to Radiohead, if you wonder why am i writing, this is my last night here in my room conected to the web, tomorrow is my last day at my first job and that is why i choose the title of this entry, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end...

The idea behind this, is to put my thoughts in a place where i can read them in a future. I am not a writer and i don't expect to win a nobel for this, just to remember moments, places and persons.

This is the end of my stage here in Caracas and i am really happy that everything end up really well. Now i am leaving this city with a hat and a scarf from Venezuela's soccer team, a couple of new good friends and huge bag of memories.

Caracas is something different than what i tought, i came here with a vision about this place, the life style, the people and everything else and right now it is not the same, i met people in this part of the journey and shared many thing with them, to those ones thanks a lot. Hopefully we will see each other again in a future and my door will always be open, for you guys, in wherever the place that i'll be.

So it is time to say good bye...