Barcelona

It was my first visit to Barcelona and my first trip to Spain since I was 5 years old. So you can imagine how excited I was to spend some time in one of the most famous cities on earth!
After a 4 hour delay at the Vienna Airport, we arrived late in Barcelona and due to the trip back from Croatia the day before, we were really tired and went just for a quick bite close to the hotel. Our hotel was quite in a good position for our desired beach vacation and a city trip. We just had 200m to “la Rambla” and around 1 km to the beach. So it was perfect for sightseeing and relaxing.

City & Beach

Overall, we knew that the city is great and the historic buildings and parks are great, especially Parc Guell and la Sagrada Familia, but as you can imagine, in middle of summer the city was packed with tourists and so we skipped entering buildings. As Barca is a big city, there was no doubt, that the beach would be more crowded than the Croatian coves, but anyway, better a crowded beach as a boring public swimming center in Burgenland.

Food

Usually I always find the right places to get good, but cheap food, but this time we were not that lucky. First, we took some tapas at a restaurant on la Rambla, where we thought that the plates will costs just 2 instead of 5,-, what changed price for the small lunch snack by 20,-, and still starving! Further, a lot of recommended food places were closed because of renovation. Then we tried out a highly recommended restaurant, where we should eat the best Paella in town. It was not bad, but not worth the money we paid. The last night in Barca, Nadine had the desire for a big meat – really, it was Nadine’s idea – but got disappointed by an Entrecote with a lot of fat strips in it. But in the end, we found our greatest place at one of the beach bars, where we had our daily cocktails of the day.

Greatest Place

Was definitely the beach bar, where we had great food, music and drinks. Especially, when a waiter started to speak Austrian: “schleichti oida”. He was a Mexican, who had a girlfriend from Graz. Was quiet funny to hear such words in such bar.
On the way home, we had again a delay, which made up for the arrival delay, because we knew in advance that our plane will leave later to Bratislava instead of Vienna. So, we didn’t have any disadvantages of that change.

Resume

It was a great trip with Schnucki and the right place to end summer 2009!

Back to blogging

Quiet a long time ago, but during my hard time writing for my last hurdle of my degree. I rather spent my time where I didn’t read or write without typing. So now, as I still have some pages to accomplish, I am back with some News. Even better, I am going to try to recap what happened last few months.

First, Nadine and I spent some days in Croatia on the isle Rab, where I had been in May already. Nothing changed to my good opinion towards Rab and its wonderful coves! This time we even had a big experience by a big rubber tube! Nadine’s father pulled us by boat through the Adriatic Sea. Unfortunately, we had to leave Croatia after few days, because we had to catch our pre-booked flight to Barcelona operated by Sky Europe. It was one of the last flights, which took off from Vienna – just with a 4 hour delay, but still took off. But our flight back arrived in Bratislava, which wasn’t a big problem, because Nadine’s father picked us up at the Slovakian airport and by car it was just a 20 min delay, because it just takes 5 min from landing to leaving the airport.

After the vacations, I was back on track to write some pages for my final thesis, but there was not much time, because next event was close. I decided to work at the INFORM for dieBank as a Barkeeper, which was very exhausting on one side, but made a lot of fun on the other side.

By first of September I replaced Tina in the Gunners office, because she went on maternity leave. 20 hours a week didn’t sound that much, but ending up working almost twice as agreed, took me completely out of my writing rhythm. Anyway, it made a lot of fun to work for the club, where I helped out already in summer 2006. Knowing what things have to be done and being familiar with the structure and the workflows, I could integrate myself really easy.

Since November I am doing an internship at the Deutsche Bank in the Global Markets Department. My contract will last until End of February and I am desperate to stay in this sector for my future career. Beside the job I am trying to help out the club concerning administration. So still quite busy all the time, but who cares about watching TV and a lot of sleep. The only thing what I would like to do is working myself out, but there is no time for it, yet.

At the moment, I finished 71 pages of my 85-page final thesis. So now I am entering the last curve in a long a... run.

In my next few reports I will do a more detailed recap.

Regards

Hannes