Oktober fest with insiders - NOT FOR TOURISTS

Servus!

Two weeks ago I went to Munich, for the Oktoberfest. Before I give you my impressions of this one, I have to say that exactely 12 years ago I went to the same Oktoberfest with 2 Brazilian friends. We arrived at about 4pm, convinced an Italian security guy to let us in, met another bunch of Brazilians inside and drank bier until 11pm, when they turned the lights off and kicked us out.

This time, with insiders, it was completely different... The steps are described below.

- They woke me up at 6:30 am on Saturday. Of course I protested, but they were 6 against me...

- We took the train to the pavillons at 7:30, and arrived there at around 8:00am.

- Then we had to wait in a line until 9:00, when they open the doors and start serving the one liter beer glasses. NOTE: we were not the first ones in the queue, and there is nothing else or smaller to drink...

- At sharp 9:00 we got our first beer. At 12:00 I had already 4 normal beer liters. I fell asleep at the table...

- At 2:00pm I woke up again, and for my relief my friends were still there, drunker than when I fell asleep. Very nice, the world is not so bad at all ;)

- 6:00 pm, no mention to go home again. No extra beer for me, and every now and then I had to stand on the banks with everybody "enjoying" the sound of "rum ta ta, rum ta ta".

- At 8:00pm finally someone decided to go home, and I was more than happy to join the group going home. After many wrong curves and S ways, we got home sweet home again, and started planning the next day agenda.

My position was clear: I AM NOT GOING TO WAKE UP AT 6 AGAIN!!!! At the end all agreed, and we woke up at the human normal sunday time 10 am, got dressed and went to the pavillon again. The sunday was nice and pleasant, apart of the whole drunk train on the way back to Vienna.

I'm still recovering from it, and don't talk to me about beer for now...

Quiz about Albania...

Who will pay the electricity bill at the end of the month???

Football - who understands?

Hi,

some weeks ago, when I was walking around Vienna, getting to know the city, I saw a very interesting scenario. In front of the Vienna Opera there were hundreds of policemen, a lot of those big cars to take the nasty protesters arrested, and so one. When I got off the subway station, I saw some football fans walking around, and thought immediately that this was the reason. There should be fans from the two main teams in Vienna saying bad things to one another.

Having a closer look, I realized that only fans from one team were around, and they were not more than 50, peacefully waiting for something in front of the opera. I really didn't understand why those hundreds of policemen were needed to protect the city from peacefull football fans.

Or maybe they were protecting them from the nasty tourists around!!! :))) That sounds more real!

The week after I went to Albania to make a customer presentation. Look at their national stadion :))) So cute!

Good Bye Chile

Well, two years passed since I moved to Chile and had my first impressions (see first blog)... I had very exciting experiences, as skiing almost all weekends, and I even bought my own ski set.

I also met interesting people, most of them wanted to merry me urgently with someone, didn't matter whom. The important thing was that I couldn't be single for their standards. (hahaha)

I also met very nice people, who invited me often to eat "Choripan" at the weekend in their beach house :) Everyone who travels to Chile MUST try it, it is just great!

The same for the Torta Tres Leches. A must in Santiago!

Another good point is that I didn't turn to be Wine addict, although I miss it in the evenings accompaning my salad. If I start to tremble I will call for help, no worries ;)

But it was time to move on again, and now I'm in the process to settle down in Vienna. I'm looking for an appartment, in a nice neighbourhood where I can host my friends properly. This is not a very easy task, but it is also not the most difficult one I ever had :))))

As a good fareweel present, I went with some friends to ski on my birthday, just to close this phase with a golden key. What nobody told me is that skiing is not for old people, and just in my birthday I fell so much as never before, even in my first ski class more than 10 years ago.

I'm glad I survived to see the trip back to Santiago, one of the most beautifull I had. We had good music, great company in the car and a wonderfull landscape. And apart of many big blue marks in my body, and many aching bones, nothing was broke, and today I can walk and sit normally again!

Thanks to Oskar for lending the phone to take the picture. And unfortunatelly I missed the condors flying around...

Kisses,

Lu.

On The Road Again...

Hi,

as many of you already know, I'm moving again. This time I'm heading back to Europe, more especifically Vienna. I'm still in the same company, doing the same job, this time just changing the home city (country) and the customers ;)

As usual, I went to Vienna for a pre visit, to check the city, the new colleagues, boss, etc, and it happened that I was there on the Final Euro Cup game weekend. It was very nice, the whole week the city as crowded with fans from Russia, Germany, Spain and Turquey. Of course the loudest ones were the spanians, I wonder why... ;)

It was very interesting to see in the final game, Germany x Spain, that the whole city was coloured with the Spain colours Red and Yellow. All Austrian were wearing their Austrian T-Shirts and had yellow-red stripes painted in their faces. Almost all 70.000 people in the Fan Zone were yelling Spaña during the whole day :))


I had to be very polite everytime someone asked me which team I was supporting... ;)

Kisses,

Lu.

Tip for the weekend in Belo Horizonte

Hello friends!

If you are in Belo Horizonte for some days, or if you live there and don't know what to do, a must for nature fans is the Fazenda Vale Verde, just in the border of the city.

I was there one sunday with my boyfriend Frank, Renata and Cesar. Actually we were going to the Inhotim, also a good optioin, but we got out late and decided to stop on the way. They have different birds, a park and excellent food. And the best of all, there is a tour around the cachaça making process, a cachaça museum, and free cachaça tasting :)))

The star of the trip was our red friend below.

We had a very nice and relaxing sunday there. More pictures will be posted soon.

Kisses,

Lu.

Colchagua Valley

Hi,

first of all, sorry for not writing for sooo long. It has been already almost 2 years since I moved to Chile. This is a very beautifull country, with a lot of nature to be seen. Unfortunately I haven't seen half of the Chilean beauties.

Nevertheless, last holidays, 1st of may, I had one of my greatest friends Dani coming to visit me, and then I thought it was time to move my butt and get to see something new. We went to the Colchagua Valley, a valley full of great wineries, and with a lot of good wine probes too :)) We visit some spectacular wineries, like Emiliana, a branch of the famous Concha y Toro winery, which produces some great organic wines, and also Montes, which produces one of the best wines in Chile. If you are planning a visit to Chile, please consider also visiting those wineries:

Emiliana (also in the Casablanca Valley): http://www.emiliana.cl/
Montes: http://www.monteswines.com/

The Emiliana Winery has my favorite wine, the Novas Syrah-Mouvedre. Fantastic. The Montes Winery offers a trekking tour of approx. 3-4 hours, and from the top of the mountain you have a beautifull view of the whole Colchagua Valley. It is worth the effort.

Below some pictures of our trip. Enjoy it. The complete set of pictures can be found in: http://www.pixum.de/viewalbum/?id=2941575

Kisses,

Lu.

I am still alive

Hi people,

sorry it has been a long long time since I last wrote. The thing is that nothing funny have been happening lately.

I spent carnaval in Chile this year, with my father and mother in law visiting. It was a very relaxing visit, also because there was no holidays here, so we couldn't do much.

I spent the Eastern holiday in Germany, half in Munich half in Düsseldorf. It was also very relaxing, I basically ate, slept, slept again, then I tried jogging one day and had to turn back after 200m because I was freezing, literally, ate again, slept, and so on. Frank took very good care of me :))

For the ones expecting gipsy moves again, relax. The air is quite still at the moment, but be aware that I'm feeling some windy days will come soon ;)

Soon I will post some nice Colchagua Valley pictures here, as soon as the 1st of may is through. This sounds like holidays :))

Kisses,

Lu.

E as férias acabaram...

Hola chicos!

I'm back in Santiago (actually in Lima right now, waiting to get in the plane back home again). Busy life already started, and I flew almost directly from my vacations to Lima.

But I'm still with my thoughts in Fort Collins, CO. The last week was really interesting there. We wen Snowshoeing twice. The first time I heard about it I thought we would walk calmly and happily in the snow. My understanding of Snowshoeing was "kind" of wrong. First, I was advised that I should wear my complete ski gear. I had to unpack everything again!!! Damn! I did a complex logistic work to pack everything in the bag...

Good, we got ready and went. Then they gave me something similar a tennis racket, and I had to bind it to my feet. Good so far. Then we had to walk in the snow, and I had snow to my knee! Amazing! We had the great company of two funny dogs, who enjoyed the trip more than us :D

When we got back home there was an invitation from my sister friends to do it again on Wednesday. The snow was not so fluffy anymore, but this was really great fun! We were 7 ladies, and my syster 5 frieds were all over 70. The trip went more or less like this:

- walk, walk, walk in line. "Bla bla bla"... :) :) :) "Bla bla bla"

- stop, lets discuss where to go. "Bla bla bla" .... "Bla bla bla"

- walk, walk, walk in line. "Bla bla bla"

- Stop! (by me this time). Me: this place is good to leave my angel shadow. Let's do it:

- Me again: Ok, I'm fine, let's get up:

This is what was left of my beautiful angel:

- walk, walk, walk, walk in line. "Bla bla bla".

- break for lunch. Great! I was already starving!

- walk, walk, walk back. "Bla bla bla"

- meet some new friends on the way. "Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla"

- We made it! We found the car back, no snow storm took it away (it was looking like so, at least for my brazilian eyes).

- Stop for a hot chocolate with mint. GREAT!

I must say this day was really funny. I laughed a lot. I was impressed how fit those ladies were. It's a pitty most countries of the world do not offer our elder people the possibilities to do whatever they want and deserve after so many years of hard work.

I will stop to talk now, enough of "Bla bla bla" for today. ;) Have fun with the white pictures!

http://www.pixum.de/viewalbum/?id=2830760

Kisses,

Lu.

Christmas in Fort Collins, CO

Hi again!

Now I'm enjoying my well deserved holidays :))))))

It was planned since long ago that I would come to the states to visit my little sister, who is living here with her husband. Christmas was great, specially because we spent the 25th eating chocolate fondue, without having the 'obligation' to get out of the house ;)

On the 27th we went to Keystone, a sky resort close to here. The idea was to ski everyday, but with temperatures around -33F it was a bit too cold for 3 Brazilians lost in Colorado. This is not a joke, see the picture! It was difficult even to go from the car to the shops and back... But we were brave and skied for 3 days, and survived! :)

We did our best not to freeze, so I could continue my holidays healthy and happy. Next sports activities planned are snowwalking, apart of walking from shop to shop in the outlets. Pictures are going to be available soon in the web.

Kisses,

Lu.