It’s late december, winter and I am sitting on the terrace only with a sweater on and it’s already getting to hot for the sweater and this at only 11:00. If this is not enough to call it paradise then it’s view, after each hill a new stunning view of the wonderful region is waiting to be seen. Just the view from the terrace is enough to make me consider this place as a place I would like to live. But let’s not forget the food, the excellent food you find in this region. Great cheese, ham, wine, olives in each size, shape and color, lot’s of great seafood and much much more. What else is so fascinating about this region? The oriental influence in houses, food, tradition. It is a wonderful combination of europe and orient, the fascinating little shops in the small streets in Granda where you can find heaps of nice things to buy without everyone jumping on you trying to drag you in to their shop or bugging you with other things like a tour trough the city, as it happened in Morocco but a separate review on our short travel to Morocco will follow. All in all … in these 9 days we where here (3 days to go till our holiday is over) one thing is clear, we will come again, 12 days are not enough to discover all of the beauty Andalusia has to offer. Now it’s almost noon, and it’s now so hot that I have to sit outside in a T-Shirt. What are you wearing now outside, in Romania, Austria?

O veste proasta pentru toti care sau bucurat de zborurile ieftine Timisoara – Viena – Timisoara. Acu cateva zile am primit mail de la Skyeurope ca biletele mele, incepand din 19. Decembrie, au fost toate anulate. Mailu care mi la trimis Skyeurope nu zice nimica despre motivele. Dupa putine discutii prin mail am putut doar sa aflu ca Skyeurope nu va mai zbura spre Timisoara din 23. Decembrie. Dece mi-au anulat si biletu de pe Data de 19. Decembrie inca nu mia raspuns nimeni. Pacat … “It was fun while it lasted”. Se pare ca iara trebe sa bag kilometri cu masina

So, finally, my first flight to Timisoara with Sky Europe. I didn’t expect everything to work out perfect but today was very chaotic day. At work a lot of stress, I left work as planed at 13:30 so I can get home, leave my car and that my colleague drives me to the airport. Oh well, here the first bad news, due to some troubles at work, he could come so I called a friend in the last moment and he picked me up quite late, but I made it to the airport, checked in got the boarding pass and the lady told me “Boarding at 16:30″ … ok … hmm… wait a second … should I arrive at 16:30 ? and Takeof should be at 15:30 ? What’s going on? A short look up on the display answered this question “Delay: 17:10″ oh … fuck .. Well, now I have enough time to sit back, drink a beer and relax a bit, calm down from all the stress and frustration I had in the past weeks. 2 hours to go till liftoff. My first half beer is finished. I think I will also need something to eat. If I knew that the plane is leaving late, I would have gone to the irish pub instead of this coffee shop.

Finally after a long long time, Skyeurope is flying to Timisoara for only 0,01 Euro! (exkl. Taxes) This means 60 Euro for a round trip! That is a bit cheaper then the fuel I need to get to Timisoara and back. If you add road taxes and the time you waste … I just bought tickets for every weekend in November and December

Finally we are back in Shanghai. We left Beijing yesterday, again with the night train. The only problem we had this time was finding the train. The taxidriver didn’t speak a word in english but we managed to tell him that we want to get to the train station and arrived pretty quick. Now it was time to enter the station, there are 3 doors open and about 10 dozens of people pushing and trying to get in. After the security check, which from my point of view is useless since I entered with a small bag without putting it trough the X-Ray, we where in the main hall. Huge panels showing all trains and of course everything in chinese. But we saw Z13, the name of the train, and 2 … oh yes, the titles where written in english also, so 2 was for the waiting hall. Here the problems started, there was a waiting hall 2 just right near the entrance and one, also number 2, on the upper floor. I asked someone and she told me the one I have to go to is right above the one near the entrance, so we went up, in to the waiting hall where again I asked, and got a completely different answer and finally at the information counter I got again a different answer. I started looking myself and found the correct platform and none of the answers I got from the people working there where correct. Train was leaving at 19:38 and the doors for the platform was opened at 19:00. There are two doors, one on the left, one on the right. One would think it could be quite useful to open both since there where so many people, but don’t forget … you are in China! so let the people wait at both and then open just one and look at them fight, could be some weird hobby of the people working at the train station. How can I explain these few minutes it took to pass the door, let’s say there is a bomb in the train station and everyone just HAS to squeeze trough this door to survive the explosion, this is exactly the same thing while passing the doors to get to the platform. There was enough time to get twice as many people in and out again without pushing and fighting, but once again don’t forget you are in China! All these little things make you wish to get back home and tomorrow, finally, it’s bye bye China, hello Austria … There is no place like 127.0.0.1 … Anyway … back to the trip. The Z trains are one if not even THE best trains I have ever been on. There are so silent, you feel nothing when the train leaves, except Chinese people spitting, so this is from my point of view the most comfortable way to travel. The beds are indeed a bit hard but we could sleep very very good …. Ok enough of that, time to go shopping and finish our stuff for tomorrow.

Today morning we arrived in Beijing. We left the Beijing Railway Station at about 07:30 and it already had 25deg. Celsius. The first thing we noticed was the small sun, but I will come back later to this. The train ride was quite smooth, the only small problem we had was that our tickets where in different compartments, but this was solved quite fast after the lady in one compartment moved to the other one. So if you plan to go with the Z class train from Shanghai to Beijing, ask extra if you want to be in the same compartment. There are 4 beds in each compartment and they are numbered from one upwards (Compartment 1: 1,2,3,4; Compartment 2: 5,6,7,8 and so on).

Since I didn’t want to go to Romania to easter, because of the heavy traffic, I decided to go one week later. One of the few occasions when I went to Romania without my car, I went with my friend Razvan. This was also a good occasion to test my one HUI in the car and I must say it worked great! I was online, reading the VWclub forum, my email and using instant messenger even after the Austrian border, at least for some km. Once arrived, all of us starving, we tried to get something to eat at “Dracula” but unfortunately it was full and we chose plan B, “Casa Romaneasca” which was a very very good decision. The food was excellent! I just got hungry again only by thinking of that wonderful food, or maybe it’s just because I didn’t eat anything today. Anyway, Casa Romaneasca in Timisoara … anytime again. Saturday, party time at The Note, to packed so we left quite early and went for some beer and tequila sunrise in cafe colt. Sunday was grill day together with some members of VWforum.ro we had a great grill session, with great weather and also some crazy drivers and a frog concert in the background. For the next grill session it would be nice if one of us really takes a blanket with them or something else to seat on and not only hope that one of the others took something with them, but we can eat and drink also when sitting on the grass. Oh, I almost forgot, photos and Romanian shops don’t really seem to be a good combination. For some reason in no big shopping center it is allowed to make photos, not even in the parking lot. For example Metro … while we, or better said Rilu and Vlady, did the shopping, I took some photos and the security guy was very fast present to tell me not to make any further photos. Exaggeration? Paranoia? who knows … And what would easter be without presents? I got a wonderful invitation to Buena Vista Social Club.