:: @ Choepie’s ::

Can’t stay home anymore, I don’t know what’s wrong but I have to go out…. wednesday, after a whole day working from home, I really needed disconnecting so I called up Gareth to grab some beers in Capitan, came home around half past 1 I guess.
Then there was this story about the owner of ‘Cafeeke’, a Belgian bar in the center of Madrid, telling me that every last thursday of the month, a group of Belgians living in Madrid meet up in her bar.. so yesterday it was the first time I remembered this and I felt like checking things out. Ana was enthousiastic about it in the beginning, but realised than that we, most likely switch soon to talking flemish too each other and switched her plan to go out with Noa and Marga.
So off I went to Cafeeke, nobody there, and I started reading last weeks’ Humo on a bar with lights on/off/on/off/on/off… appearantly something wrong with the electricity because without any reason the lights swapped on an off all the time, a bit of a hastle when you try to read something. 2 Duvels later 3 belgians wandered into the bar and no more than 7 minutes later, we were on the chat and decided to go sit on the terras where a queue of big pints and Duvel and a good chat completed the night. Around 1 o’clock I head home with ‘el presidente’, a bit of the organisator of the meetings, he lives in my neighbourhood and grows weed in this flat.
Looks like a plan this last-thursday-of-the-month drinking.
Tonight Lutz is playing in Oui bar and there’s a party of one of Ana’s friends. And tomorrow Paul and Charlotte are visiting me from Belgium. Plans enough. I must invite myself to an 8hours nightsleep somewhere in November or I won’t make it to newyear.

Damned… more Coaching session are planned but not for me … feel a bit shit about it. I really enjoyed Krakow and even when it was a pretty though job (almost no single minute rest on a day) I did enjoy the job. Unfortunately there’s little chance I go back.

Grabed the last pictures of Gareth from his site to post them over here… only our company’s internal site had them, now they’re public. I kept the pictures rather smal just to keep my diskspace a bit available. Bigger versions available on request.
Right, I’m still programming from home now. AND : already 42hours without a cigaret !!! ha, up to the 50 and then the 100 and so on… babysteps at the time. Hope it works this time. So… again, same location for some more pics of krakow
By the way… I found the bar where I ended last week saturday… I remembered there was ‘black’ in the name… so here it is : ‘Black Gallery‘, everything was there… lots of Wodka shots included….

I’m back in Madrid since yesterday afternoon… and I’m sick. I must have catched a cold on one of the last nights in Krakow. Anyway, better that than on the first night. I had a great time over there but any longer would have killed me. Krakow is a beautifull city, the people are nice and friendly, the food is good, the party is great, nothing wrong with it. It is a much cleaner place than Madrid.
Due to the fact that ‘Wawel’, a beautifull castle on a hill south of the city just on the river, was a Gestapo HQ during the war, no bombs felt on Krakow and therefore, unlike Warshaw, the city maintained all of the beautifull buildings. Me was told that more then 400 bars were around the main square, Rynek Glówny (it’s not really an ‘l’ over there..) and about 70% you will never be able to find because there are all hidden into caves and small alleys.

As I didn’t really felt like staying home alone all day (Ana is in Valencia ) I called in Jon to go for dinner and maybe 1 beer afterwards. Jon had a bit of a hangover since he went with Gareth to La Galleria on fridaynight and therefor a ‘quite’ night out sounded good for him to.
We went for an Indian curry in the center and met up with Marta and some of her friends in ‘La latina, on the roof terras of ‘El viajero’.
One beer became 3 beers and 2 Ballentines Cola, and I had to search more than an hour to find me a taxi to bring me home. There is world championship cycling in my neighbourhood so there are a lot of Belgians around. I tried to have some chats with a few of them, but had to realise that that selection of the Belgian population must be one of the most small minded in this world… it’s a shame.
By the way, I posted all my Krakow pictures now, see them here.

Sundaymorning 12o’clock. I don’t know why but I’m already up and running. I had a long night out actually. Yesterday, after doing the mapped walking tours in Krakow in the pouring rain, I went for a short siesta in the hotel and for a decent steak in the Grill restaurant in the center. A jazzband played over there and I ate in the garden (with heating), after that I searched for some bars and clubs I pointed on my map earlier and decided to go for a beer where we had the last night out with Gareth. There was an enterence fee and nobody in around half past nine, but the dj recognised me and we had a good chat. Once the music had the people moving I chatted with almost everybody in the bar, and around 3 o’clock at night I switched to Wodka because the beer was getting my stomach to big. I ended up talking to a group of 2 married couples but with a good english. Once the bar closed, they asked me if I would like to join for an afterparty… I tought everything ended at 4 or 5 in the morning, but not in Krakow… we went to another bar, out of the center, and there they started ordering some kind of blue shots.. ‘kamikaze’ it’s called. That’s an understatement. A bit later there was a fight starting in the bar and 2 really big guys where trying to kill each other I guess, nobody dared to come between them, and at a certain moment everybody had to look for cover because one of them got after the bar and began to throw bottles at the other one, pieces of glass and whole bottles of mainly wodka were flying through the air and the biggest guy ran out… we didn’t felt that this was over yet, I had the impression that the one that ran out, was about to come back with some backup and we started joining the group to go out. Once on the door a car stopped with screaming tires on the street and a group of gorillas jumped out, joining the 4 or 5 that were already on the door. It must be a private security team, one was even masked as you could see on the Guardia Civil in spain when doing an Eta interaction. It was just after 8 in the morning and excellent time to get my map out and find my way to the hotel… I happend to be in the other side of the city and it toke me a kebab and a long walk home. I kind of had to sneak into the hotel, because the average age over here was already on breakfast and I felt a little bit embarrased when I walked into the lobby…

After 4 nights in a horrible appartment, Gareth and me moved to the Sheraton in Krakow… great hotel, Gareth had a nice room, but mine was above all level… great view over the Wawel, the river and the whole southern part of the city ! I made it a ‘lazy’ day today, missed breakfast and a long shower, decent shave, emptied my suitcase (after 3 nights in the hotel !) and went for a walk through the city. It’s raining the whole day now, and I got a bit tired of it. We had a SUPERB night out yesterday, Gareth left this morning back to Madrid but with regrets… he would have liked to stay over here. The people are so nice, the bars just great… I LOVE this city ! I’m crossing the 20 words of Polish I already know… I got myself a book, called ‘Polish in 4 weeks’, that must be an error…. it will take years to know this language !
Some photos here (most of the time I simply forget my camera…)

2nd day in Krakow now, the job is though but the beers afterwards are great ! I don’t understand a single word of what people say so that is quite embarrasing, I’m looking for an English / Polish phrasebook for at least a few ways to communicate. Its definetly a great city and I would love to come back again…

Great movie : Sin City. I was very surpriced about this one. The black & White techniques used where state of the art. Straight out of comics and very entertaining. Rourke played amazing. You should go and watch this.
Both Ana and me decided that it’s about time to stop smoking now. In 3 hours I’m leaving for Krakow for 2 weeks, with a bit of luck the Polish people aren’t that heavy smokers as the Spaniards are and that might make it a lot easiers to deal with it. As soon as I’m entering the airport, I’m done with smoking and when I return we are already 2 weeks far. I must do this seriously now because I’m entering the level of industrial amounts of sigarets a day… weekends can go up to 2 packs a day and that is far beyond what’s acceptable. I’m an ‘everything-or-nothing’ person, so nothing is my only option… fingers crossed.

Thursdaynight we had a great dinner at our place, Ana surpriced again with a great pastel (Specially for me, she told me afterwards), some very spicy thailand schrimps, empanadillas with spinach and a lot more stuff. Andy and Espe came over, Jon was there and also Noa and Alma. Noa was exhausted from the start, she’s right back from a nice trip from Peru and had 300 pictures with her. Andy, right back from Mongolia had around 1200 pictures with him… digital world, so we showed most of it on the Television and everybody was left with a sensation of…. what am I doing here… need to travel !!!
Anyway, great night, Alma was feeling a lot better then the last times we saw here and it was the first time she came over, but I guess she felt really at home and relax… it’s the holy goal of Ana to make it comfortable for everybody in our place and she never failed up untill now.
Yesterday night, friday night so a good night out again, together with Jon we joined Andy who had his sister and her husband over and head of for Katmandu. The DJ at the wedding of last week, is a resident of Katmandu and therefor we remembered the place. We used to frequent it a lot the first year we were in Madrid, but then lateron we never returned, so the time was right. The Wodka was too good and I guess around 4 o’clock Ana’s and my lights went out so time for a taxi.
Today, most of the time will be spend in preparing things for my trip to Cracow. I’m flying out on sunday noon for 2 weeks of ‘mentoring’ in one of our partnerdepartments over there… I’m really looking forward to it.

Ha, Andy is back in Madrid… he went with his 18 year old mini from London to Ulaan Baatar, capital of Mongolia…. good 14.000km in almost 5 weeks….you DEFINITELY should check out his story and photo’s at mongolmini.com !
Here everything falls back to the routine, I have a Microsoft 2003 training the whole week. Mister pink is behaving bad again and I needed to return my Dianese shoes to the shop… I bought them 5 months ago, and after the summer heat in spain i tried them on again this morning but the whole inside tip was deformed completely… as the Spanish shops are so ‘customer-friendly’ it will take them probably weeks to send them to Italy and decide whether this is under garanty or not…
In meantime it is raining in Spain ! Thank God… this week a decision would have been made to limit waterconsumption if the rain kept away because the water reservoirs are below their limits.
So again not fair… there are too much countries with too much water and too much without…