Photos
There was a little bit of snow today (okay, more than I've seen in any place I've lived before) and Barcelona isn't really one of those cities which is ready for snow. Even so, when I found out they were evacuating the UAB because of the snow I thought it was a going a bit far, anywhere here are some photos from the "evacuation".
While I was in the UK after New Years working I spent the weekend in Cardiff, I'd not been to Wales before and figured it'd be nice to get out of London for a couple of days.
So I saw the church where Roald Dahl was christened, the very impressive keep at Cardiff castle and Pepe saw his first proper snow. I even made sure I got a photo of me in there to prove I was actually present.
I spent New Years with Johannes and some of his friends who came from Germany. Along with Eva, we had dinner at home and then headed to Marianne's place for midnight where there were - yep, you guessed it - more Germans.
I got a couple of christmas celebrations this year. Firstly, I spent the 24th with Alvaro and Zeynep as well as a group of other "christmas orphans" in a bar called Olavjoe, owned by a Portuguese guy named Jose. Everyone brought a dish and we all ate until we couldn't any more, then danced and drank until I finally gave up at about 4am and headed home, knowing I had to do the same thing the next day. Almost everyone else was still there.
On the 25th I had lunch with Lu, Koldo and their respective families. So we had pasta (Lu's Italian) and paella (Koldo's from the Basque Country here in Spain) and more cheese and meats than you can poke a stick at. I brought the Christmas cake which Lu and I had decorated a few days earlier with a "traditional" Catalan christmas scene - christmas tree and Caga Tió. The day was beautiful and we sat outside on the terrace at Lu's place for lunch, just like an Australian Christmas.
We had our department Christmas dinner ("la navidad caótica") at the same place as last year, although this year I did manage to get a few photos. Here in Spain Kris Kringle (or Secret Santa) is called Amigo Invisible (invisible friend), and I figured I'd whip up a scarf for whoever got my present (turns out it was Leonardo), they were handed out randomly.
Went out for dinner at La Paradeta (fantastic seafood restaurant) for Claudia's birthday followed by a few drinks at El Born before heading up to Gràcia for a big party at Guido's place. Well, that's the abridged version that's safe for the internet.
Decided that this year it'd be fun to host a Halloween party, lots of people seemed interested and in the end we had the party at Eva's place. The vast majority of the people who showed up were the CAOS crowd, at least until we were invaded by Michele and his hoard of Italians.
Pepe had never seen the sites of London before, so we did a little tour of some typical tourist traps in London last Saturday before heading back home.
Pepe gets outsourced to Bangaluru
Pepe has been outsourced to India! He spent a week in a nice hotel just outside of Bangaluru (Bangalore), where he had a whole bed to himself. Saw the sites of the city by taxi, motor rickshaw and anothing (slightly) crowded taxi - yes you can fit eight people and a lemur in a six person cab.
I'm bad at taking photos in general, I tend to forget. When I'm travelling alone it's even worse, I mean who really cares about a bunch of photos of famous places, you'll find better versions on tourism web sites. So, in an attempt to solve both problems I take Pepe the Lemur travelling with me.
So here are photos of Pepe's adventures in Madrid and our day in Toledo.
Here a few photos of the decorations in Carrer Progrés (my street) for the Festa de Gràcia. For the festivities a number of streets in Gràcia put up decorations, usually using at least some recycled materials. The theme for Progrés this year seems to be mythology.
I went camping in Andorra with Tim and Angela, which was great, except there was a big thunder storm (howling wind, lightning every 30 seconds, lots of rain, that kind of thing) the night we were there and the tents we had weren't exactly waterproof.
We had planned to go mountain biking, but that fell through (it's really expensive), it was just nice to get out into some fresh air though.
A few of us went out to one of the nights of the Cerka'l Festival out in the middle of the Barcelona suburbs. The plan was get there around 22h drink and dance the night away and catch the first train back in the morning, which is pretty much what happened.
In attendance were Joe, Jamie, Joolie, Rusy (who's actual name is James), as well as Amanda and myself... seriously lacking in Js. I was there, honestly, I just don't have any more photos of me.
