Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Exploring Spain: La Caseria

Hello. A few days ago, my host family told me we were going to a vacation home for a week. I was expecting a normal house just on a beach, but oh was I mistaken. We were driving up and then they start pointing and saying "There it is!" and I look and I see this:



This looks like a small castle but it is officially called a fortified house. It was built in the early to mid sixteenth century on top of another structure. They have found Roman artifacts and parts of the foundation dating back to the second century. It has been used throughout history as an extension of an estate, barracks, animal and farm tool storage, and then was abandoned. It was redone throughout a period of 10 years by a couple, a lawyer from England and an artist. It won an award from Europa Nostra in 2009, which selects the best buildings that were restored. Inside the house, they had pictures of what it was like before, and it was literally in ruins. All of the roofs were caved in, the walls were in really bad shape, and everything had fallen apart. If you look at the picture of the church below, there was absolutley no roof, it was really just walls that were half as tall as they were supposed to be.

This is what it looks like inside (some of the rooms and the walled-in part)






I tried to find more pictures of the inside online, but I couldn´t. I´m going to keep on searching though. 

I also found this plant while I was walking around. It was literally in the middle of nowhere in a dried up fountain.

Another picture that has no educational value: I found real grass!



Sunday, August 24, 2014

Bathrooms (The Stalls)

There is a large difference in bathrooms between the United States and the parts of Europe I've been to. (Slovakia, Germany, Spain, Vienna (Austria) and also Japan. There are two main differences: the bathroom stalls themselves, and the toilets. First up, the stalls. Comment which stall style is in your country.

        The stalls in the United States (and maybe other countries I haven't been to) you can pretty much see everything that is happening inside the stall by looking through the crack between the stall door and the divider part.

I know it does not look like much of a problem, but it soon becomes one. As you walk by, even if you don't want to, you get an angle view of what is going on. It ruins your privacy. On top of that, the bottom and top part of the door are cut off, leaving you with a foot, (30cm) of sight of your feet and at times the top of your head when you stand up. So if anything embarrassing drops on the floor we all see it. Thank you public and school bathroom stalls.

                                   

http://www.robertbrooke.com/images/Public-Restroom-Partitions-Parts-and-Accessories.jpg

        Now the ones in the countries I mentioned are a luxury of privacy compared to these. Most of 
the time they completely shut with this nice rubber seal, so no one can see through the crack, and they also usually skim the bottom of the floor, so no one can see your pants and embarrassing underwear. 


http://ciee.typepad.com/.a/6a010536fa9ded970b017d3cfb4651970c-pi

I'm sorry about the blurriness, but this was one of the best ones on Google that shows what I'm trying to say. Also I couldn't take a picture of a bathroom because it would be very awkward for the people inside. 




Friday, August 22, 2014

Granada

I traveled to the city of Granada in Spain. It is a tourist hotspot because of its rich history dating back to the 8th century. It was originally inhabited by the Iberians but was then conquered by the moors, which is the more renowned part of their history. They have many buildings one of which is the Alhambra. It is also famous for being the last Arabic city to surrender to the Christians during the reconquista of Spain. Just a little fun fact, Washington Irving did a lot of his writing there.

Photos of the Alhambra:



http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/13/19/5a/the-alhambra.jpg


                                       


http://patternity.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/PATTERNITY_GW4_GranadaThe-Alhambra.jpg



http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/91/5a/23/the-alhambra.jpg






Friday, August 1, 2014

Spain trip!

Hi! I just flew to Spain two days ago and am currently with my host family. The trip was long but I love plane flights where I just sit and watch movies. The food was fine although they had some type of squid salad that made me feel a little weird. Now having my first impression of southern Spain, here are some aspects I have observed.

1. They go to bed late and wake up late. To put it in perspective, they stay up until 2, and them wake up around 11-12:30.

2. With the time a bit diferent, so are the meals. Breakfast is at around 12 in the afternoon, lunch is around 3, and dinner is at around 10:30.

3. They don't have air conditioning. Instead they have a lot of open windows and areas so as to give air flow. But no air conditioning.

4. In the area where I am it is 90% there to being a complete desert, which means fake grass, because real grass is too hard to grow.

5. They are more relaxed about clothing, especially on beaches.

6. The common thing to do when saying hello and goodbye is to give one air kiss on one cheek and then one on the other, and this applies to everyone including strangers you may have just been introduced to 5 seconds ago. (Personal experience) Here's a picture if my explanation didn't make a lot of sense.






Monday, June 30, 2014

On chain/fast food restaurants in foreign countries

                When I went to a foreign country (Japan) for a short amount of time, many people told me to avoid eating at Mcdonald's, or the Japanese KFC. This was so that I could experience the local food more. But I have my own view. First off as my rule for around the world (off of Japan now), YES eat at foreign restaurants and cafes. It is very beneficial in learning about the culture and also in the eating customs as every country usually eats a little differently. Generally the differences center around utensils and table manners.

               On the other hand, you can also learn just as much from fast food or chain restaurants. If the food tastes significantly less salty, then you know they don't eat that much salt in their food in general. Another major difference to be observed is the portion sizes. If you see that the small for a drink is drastically smaller then the one from your home country, an important fact becomes apparent about their culture. They may avoid over-indulging at most meals and probably value health because of the small sizes of soft drinks, which I found to be in Japan (and through research Australia) compared to the United States.


            950ml : 650ml             675ml : 500ml            500ml : 300ml           375ml

https://www.flickr.com/photos/okinawa-soba/6004485662/
                   
                If the portion sizes are smaller in general then you know you may need to keep a stash of snacks if you are usually very hungry. If people make a group by the cash register or if they make tidy lines this can help with boarding trains or subways or anything in the future that has to do with organization or ways of doing general activities. In  other words, orderly society vs. chaotic society.

                 By noticing the way people eat their food (but not in a creepy way), you can learn the basics of what is appropriate and what isn't such as burping, blowing your nose, or other basic manners which are still observed in fast food restaurants. So if you know those, you won't make those mistakes that can be considered very rude and even worse if done in a formal restaurant, and that a foreigner should learn to avoid before going there (but many do not.) Along with having a crash course in another countries' culture and eating habits, it is also fun to just try the food and compare it to the food from your home country.

                 In conclusion, most of the time, go to local restaurants because you can also experience the culture, the best food, and have a much more friendly language-learning  environment. Don't just shove fast food aside, make it a scarce occurrence, but it can be a very helpful introduction to a foreign society.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Exploring Berlin: Day 1

I went to Berlin for three days and visited a lot of WWII areas, and also a lot of government buildings. One of the buildings was the Reichstag, and now also known Bundestag which is the building where parliament meets. It was damaged by a fire in 1933 and not fully restored and used again as a meeting place until 1999.



This is how it looks on the inside, lots of mirrors, and if you look hard at the bottom you can see the parliament meeting room. The mirrors are in an upside down cone shape because at the top there so that water gathers but I tried to research and could not find specifically what the gathered water does. 

An interesting thing I experienced while I was there in the ceiling was the tour. If you've ever gone to
 museums such as in Washington D.C. or in other big cities all around the world, they may give you a little box and earbuds or headphones so you can easily listen to the tour guide who may be far ahead of you.  Or there are also prerecorded tours, which once again use an mp3-like device but there is not a live tour guide there with you. What this one was, was that it was pre-recorded, but there were sensors in the carpet on the ramp around the mirrors, that whenever you stepped or walked over them it would start the next part of the tour, and say," Now if you look to your left at the left-corner of the building you will see...." If you didn't keep on walking it would stop and the next part wouldn't start until you reach that point. I walked on a metal border of the bottom of the railing to see if I could skip over the sensor, and it was successful. 



(sorry about the kind of off-angle)


Here is the central park of Berlin called Tiergarten. It was originally a hunting ground established in the 1830's. The white building is the Haus Der Kulturen Der Welt which translates to "house of world cultures."





This is the Brandenburg Tur or the Brandenburg gate, and during WWII it was part of a dividing sector dividing Germany into parts, and the area after was kind of no man's land, but it was not a good idea to go through the gate. 
                                         
                                         http://images.travelpod.com/users/patngrace/1.1216241100.1-pat-and-grace-at-brandenburg-gate.jpg


For dinner I went to a little pizza place right next to our five star hotel( if only) Holiday Inn Express, which had good pizza. Not the best because the crust was a little hard to cut through, but it was still pretty tasty. Their omelettes are also very good. 

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Germany Food Post #2 (I'm sorry about the 3 boats, it's not letting me remove them)

When I was in Hamburg, Barghteheide, and later on in Berlin, there was one food that striked me as the most interesting and delicious foods I encountered there. It is called the pomm döner. It is based on a gyro but instead of pita bread, they replaced it with french fries and stuff it in a cone or a box. (If you don't know what a gyro is, it is shaved meat with tomatoes and onions and tzatziki sauce served on pita bread, and is of Greek descent.) Pomm is short for pommes, which is french fries in German. The döner is actually of Turkish descent and it means "turn", and is a variation of the gyro. It can also be served with creamy spicy sauce. If you ever go to Germany this is a must have (try it with the french fries!) and it is very filling.

http://www.xo-forum.de/showthread.php/10072-Neues-Fastfood-der-Pommd%C3%B6nner-erobert-Deutschland

Trip to Hamburg


I went to Hamburg, about a 45 minute train ride, and spent a day shopping. Also I saw the Queen Mary II. It is the world's largest passenger ship, and it actually is a cruise ship. Just to give a perspective, the Queen Mary II is twice as long as the Washington monument is tall. 

Just so you can see the size comparison:
courtesy of http://www.titanic-titanic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2568&start=90




This is the picture I took: (It couldn't fit in the whole camera frame)

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Bargteheide



courtesy of
 https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSUmg_xlqc47-2hF1ZVaXsBcynlGpRAgDfCrhxYuI7QwU5vdUwV

While I was there I didn't actually take any pictures of the town so this is the train station at least. Anyway, the houses there aren't necessarily small but they are more cramped next to each other with a lot smaller backyards compared to the United States.

I love pizza, and here was the first German pizza I had. It was delicious. (Sorry about the blurriness, it was raining when I took the picture.)

I am going to begin with my trip to Germany! I lived with my aunt, uncle, and two cousins for about 4 and 1/2 months in a small city called Barghteheide. I took frequent visits to Hamburg (a large-ish city about 45 minutes out by train) and went once to Berlin. This happened about 2 years ago in the beginning of eight grade before I started this blog so it will not be as recent.