The Road to Portugal

My trip to Portugal was rather eventful. I decided to go by car, eventhough by plane it would be ten times cheaper. I am going to spend year and a half in the western Europe and wanted to have the car by my side. You are curious about the prices? 60 € for a trip with Ryanair, 600 € for the gas and highway tolls. Especially French highways will pull the last penny of your pocket.

The journey started in Slovakia. I crossed Austria, Germany and got to the Switzerland relatively according to my timeplan. I wanted to avoid driving by night. Because of my recent laser operation I still have problems seeing well at dark. In Germany, I took a hitchhiker. He had Polish ancestry, lived in Germany, studying in Switzerland. In the beginning I let him speak Polish and try to pick up words, but then we just switched to German. He was fun, not unpleasant, but one thing that I don't like about hitchhikers is that they take it for granted that they go like this for free, not even buying you something symbolic, like a chocolate at the gas station.

My hitchhiking colleague in front of one of the Swiss lakes

And then I came to Zug, Switzerland where my friend Gabi with her husband Andrei are now living. I got to exercise Romanian, eventhough it was weird for her, since we always spoke in English before. But she kept to Romanian. They took me around the city and after a good sleep I continued my way. Thanks for the breakfast Gabi! :)

Gabi and Andrei in Zug

France has a system of highways that is well taken care of and... empty. The prices of the tolls combined with good quality of the parallel roads gave me the opportunity to have a three-lane highway just for myself. I would have been successful with my plan to come to Bordeaux before dark, had it not been for the failiure of my alternator. I stopped at a rest stop and with the help of the big portion of gesticulation, the crew of the bar there understood what my problem was and called a car mechanic. Luckily, the supervisor at the bar spoke a bit English.

So the car mechanic grabbed my car, loaded it on a truck and took me to their garage. Hannes, a friend from Austria that I met in Hamburg and who spoke French, helped me with the translation over the phone (Thank you!), when dealing with the guys from the garage. I did not feel like going in a hotel there, so I asked if I can sleep in the car and he did not have a problem with that. That probably made impression on them, making them think I am rather poor, because later I discovered that they found some older, still functional alternator and gave me a discount. I was happy that I could continue and that it was not as expensive. In the end I payed some 370 € for the towing and for the alternator replacement.

The beauties of la France

Clio cut open. On the rigt side the old alternator

And then, off I went. Bordeaux. I am going to skip this part and write about it in the next post, so that this one is not eternally long. I spent one whole wonderful day there.

Passing through the Basque ragion was magical. The humid forests of the Pyrenees. Beautiful stuff. I was turning my head around like kid in a candyshop. Then came Castile and León and the road became drier, flatter and monotonous. One could see only hills with dry grass on them. The Sun was setting when I came to Galicia and the nature was getting greener again. I crossed the borders to Portugal and had some one and half an hour to Porto.

Pyrenees

Passing through the Basque region

Dry Spain

I was tired, but the road got then so beautiful that I forgot all my tiredness. I caught a Portuguese radio station. I asked at the gas station about the tolls and I understood! Such a refreshing feeling of being able to communicate, after the France and the Spain. There was a dark blue sky with first stars above me and an orange strip on the west towards which I was driving. There were thousand lights on the hills around me, from the lanterns of the mountain villages. The air smelled beautifuly. I had kind of a feeling of coming home. And it was even reinforced by the warm welcome from my flatmates.

Already chillin' in Porto

3 000 kilometres. But worth it :)

My home for the autumn 2013 - O Porto

Porto, sweet Porto. I expected it to be pretty, but one has no other option, just to stare with an open mouth, when the sun sets over the river Douro. Damn, they could just make car commercials with this in the background. But I am sure they have.

Ponte Luís I

After four days of travelling and one day spent in Bordeaux, I finally came here. And it just all seems perfect. There is bamboo growing behind the house. Palm trees all around the city and peacocks strolling in the parks. I got cool flatmates—Anna from Germany, Dessislava from Bulgaria and my landlords—Patrícia and Rui—are from Porto. Anna cooks and I had to vehemently insist when I wanted to do it once too and Dessi speaks nice Portuguese, so I can always ask her what some word means. So I just feel like a sucker that is just enjoying life.

My place

Bamboo!

Oh, I did not tell you: My parking place is just next to the appartment. And I already managed to swim in the Atlantic, see the centre with the famous iron bridge and drink three bottles of Portugal wine (those of you who know my relationship to wine know it's a big thing).

Oceano Atlântico

But hey, the language mission. I am going to live here until Christmas and in November/December I will go for the C1 language exam. I can already speak, because I had one semester of Portuguese back in Brno and the whole summer I was studying at home. People have to slow down considerably when speaking and I don't know all the words. But I am already able to enjoy a movie dubbed in portuguese or read a magazine. From now, it can get only better.

And I am going to definitely enjoy this autumn. I already am :)

River Douro with me as a foreground

Promenada close the mouth of Douro

Sunset over the Ponte da Arrábida

Portuguese Mission: Tomorrow We Ride, Till the Planets Colide!

Hi guys. I know, it took a bit longer, but here it is: My next mission. It will take place in Portugal and the target language will be European Portuguese. Wait for details, for now, just enjoy the music and the flow. Now I am going to bed, 4 hours of sleep is better than none and a long journey awaits me. See you soon!

P.S.: I fell in love with this song at the age of 14, when I fell in love with one blond, two-year older girl on a school skitrip. It is from the Armaggedon OST.

End of my German Mission and the C2 Certificate

Six months passed since October, when I commited myself to reach C2 in German. The time I wanted to devote to it was four months. Eventually I had some 20 days more, mostly because there was no closer examination date. From the beginning, I was willing to fail. And... I did. Today I opened my results from the C2 exam in Mannheim. I passed in reading, listening, writing and failed in speaking. Minimal number of points for passing was 60 and my results were the following:

Writing	68/100
Listening	79/100
Reading	86/100
Speaking	53/100

It is interesting that the results roughly correspond with how much pleasure I got from those activities. I knew that I had the biggest reserves in speaking and eventhough I was trying to talk to anybody and anything that would respond in German, at the end of the day I would still look forward for the moment with the book "Die Stadt und die Sterne" by A. C. Clark.

I must admit that I am really proud about this failure. I reached for the Moon. Did not get right to it, but I ended up among the stars. Now I am quite relaxed when using my German, my comfort zone was expanded by three European countries and I worked in the language (not using English) and managed so well that my employees want to keep me. Moreover I explored one of the biggest cities of Europe, I met very interesting people and learnt, that some things can be done differently. A big win.

And if you think this lowered my expectations from myself, you could be not more wrong. I am indestructible. I am even hungrier for the next mission. I will let you know about it soon. ;)

Similarities Between Certain German and Czech Expressions

Snowy Hamburg was replaced by rainy Mannheim. And they have trams here! And it looks generally much more like Brno. I have behind me the writing and listening modules of the exam, I will let you know the results after I get them.

Short stop at Göttingen

View from my room in Mannheim

Rhine River

In between I would like to talk about something else. During learning the German vocabulary, I noticed similarity of some expressions to Czech expressions and namely I speak about expressions whose meaning is not easily derivable from the structure.

An example of what I am talking about: "auskommen" means "to get by". "aus" = "out", "kommen" = "to come". The verb "vyjít" in Czech means the same thing and also its structure is similar: "vy" = "out", "jít" = "to go". Although when constructing a new artificial language, I would never connect the meaning of "getting by with money" with "going out". However, this connection somehow works both in German and Czech.

I tried to make a list of these Czech/German expressions. Here it is:

• auskommen - vyjít s penězy (to get by)
• Das wird uns teuer stehen - To nás bude stát draho (That will cost us)
• durchfallen - přepadnout (to repeat a class)
• sich etwas vorstellen - představit si něco (to imagine something)
• Darauf kannst du Gift nehmen! - Na to můžeš vzít jed! (That's for sure!)
• jemandem einen Korb geben - dát někomu košem (to leave a boyfriend/girlfriend)
• bringen sich über etwas - přenést se přes něco (to put up with something)
• in einer Prüfung bestehen - obstát ve zkoušce (to pass the exam)
• schwerfällig - těžkopádný (cumbersome)
• durchsetzen - prosadit (to accomplish in the face of the unwillingness of the others)
• anwerfen - nahodit (to actuate)
• die Aufgeblasenheit - nafoukanost (pompousness, conceit)
• auf Achse (literally: "on the shoulders", the meaning "on the move" ) - there is a Czech expression "vzít nohy na ramena", literally "to take the feet on the shoulders", used in the meaning: "to run away"
• auffällig - nápadný (noticeable)
• erhalten - obdržet (to obtain)
• die Angelegenheit - záležitost (issue)

What interests me: Is the similarity of the expressions just a pure coincidence, or did one language get inspired from the other one? Czech has been for long centuries under the influence of German, so the second explanation sounds more plausible. However, if you have another one, I will be happy to hear it.

Aaand... Goodbye Hamburg!

So the day came. After almost five months I am leaving Hamburg behind. Tomorrow, I will say goodbye to my Egyptian flatmate and set off for Heidelberg, where I will sit for the exam. I am leaving behind strong memories, good and bad too, but all of them worth it all the way.

Hamburg from the tower of St. Petri Kirche

My German employers liked me so much that they offered me the possibility to work for them through the Internet. Hell yeah! And in my last day, I got a package as a way to say: "It was really nice having you around". On Saturday I spoke after a long time some Slovak, as I was showing Hamburg to one friend that studies in Göttingen. After spending the whole day and night walking the streets of the city and then drinking with my colleague whiskey in a student bar for supermarket prices I needed the whole Sunday to recover, but worth it again.

The package from my boss

See you people!

Hold the fingers for me guys, 21th, 22th and 25th of March. See you soon, Hamburg!

P.S.: I will miss the duckies...

Déjà-vus

It is interesting to watch yourself go through Déjà-vus. But not those that last only 5 seconds. Here I mean very similar life situations that repeat themselves. One of them was when I found work in the water park in Constanța. Several years ago, I had a very similar summer job in USA. And now another déjà-vu crossed my path.

To make the story short, after a series of conflicts with my landlord, I was kicked out in one evening. When I came to Elmshorn, I found my things on a heap. I will just never understand some people. After two nights spent in a hostel I found a place for two weeks in student dormitories. And it is so nice and peaceful here, it is unbelievable. What's more, my flatmate actually uses heating :) How is this a déjà-vu  Some time ago, in Brno, I also went through a similar experience. After living with really horrible flatmates, I found peace at, for me, probably the nicest room of the world at Vinařská dorms.

To make the situation even more interesting, from all the possible houses in Hamburg, in which its 2 million inhabitants live, I am living in the one, in which I spent my first two nights at my couchsurfer host Caren. Life is funny sometimes.