Category: On the road

new car

Thursday night I invited the friends out for dinner, to celebrate the purchase of my new car.
We went to the Lebanese restaurant and the food was very good. We had chicken marinated in garlic and lemon, the meze and some desserts.
The place was nice, the people pleasant and everything was OK.

Except for the fact that I had no new car.

After a long wait, and having in my hands the car’s documentation and the photocopy of the owner’s ID with photo, I noticed that that man was not the same I had in front of me.
He said he was a representative, I could speak with his wife, I could visit his home.
Surprised for my surprise the man left to get hold of the owner.

They are not back, so far.

Woro Woro

woro woro is the yellow taxi.
It’s the collective one, goes on prefixed routes, claxoning all the time to attract passengers.
You pay among 150 and 250 CFA francs, not too much.
It is better than the orange taxi (the personal one), as you travel with other people and feel more inside the picture.
The other day the woro woro drivers organized a strike to protest against the police. Police (allegedly) take advantage of the check points and the verification of documentation to ask for money.

The fight among the bull and the donkey

Travelling through Spain you can’t avoid remarking the big black figures of bull disseminated along the road.

Starting as an advertisement for an alcohol company, the bull has become the symbol of a certain Spain, and you can find it stuck on the back of many cars (mainly red cars).

Then the donkey came, spreading out from Catalunya in order to propose an alternative identification of Spanish soul.

As shown below, the outline is not dissimilar, the bull’s horns matching the donkey’s ears, but the message is rather inconsistent.

We opted for the donkey (our car is gray).

Riferimenti: Catalan donkey web-site

HAITI

I am at Paris Orly waiting for my flight to Port au Prince.
Haiti has never been my preferred destination, but let’s wait to know something more.
I wear a striped shirt and heavy boots, ready to adventure.
Bye bye

Home exchange

Our apartment in Barcelona is not very large and not very central. But there are two bedrooms and a living room and the metro station is only 300 meters away. The Ramblas, Port Olimpic and the Barrio Gotico are only 10-15 minutes away. There is a sea view from one of the windows and we have an old bicycle you can use to get around.

From May to September our neighbourhood will be the very centre of the town, as we are just 500 meters from the Forum 2004 (Forum Universal de las Culturas) where are scheduled concerts (Sting, BB King,Cheb Kaled, Bob Dylan, Cesaria Evora) Expositions (the Chinese Xi’an warriors, “world voices”), debates (on peace, development, globalization, cultural diversity) and all sorts of activities.
For the programme go to http://www.barcelona2004.org.

We would like to do a house exchange for 1 to 3 weeks, anywhere in Europe, during the summer season.

Riferimenti: Home exchange

Travelling through La Mancha

During the Easter holidays we went to Manzanares, at the hearth of the Mancha region, to call on the family.

We visited the mills, bought the cheese, ate any kind of traditional Easter cakes.

The space is huge and boundless, well cultivated, everywhere fields, green or brown, olive trees, vineyards, plough tracks.

We went to Ciudad Real and Toledo, beautiful but wrapped up in pointless shops, and many little pueblos.

We followed the processions, observing the masked cofradias, the crucifix and the sacred images carried on people’s back.

Allusion to Mexico and America, amplitude and traditions, colours and loneliness.