Spain

Tschüssie!

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Today I shut my door of my Berliner flat for the last time. It marks a great point of my life, turning the page and moving on elsewhere. I have started working in Málaga, Andalucía and will stay there for the foreseeable future. Hence, this blog will go to sleep… until I feel like writing about Berlin again.

I am very grateful for the five years I have spent in this exciting place. I have grown as a person, I have experienced all the faces of the city and lived my life to the fullest, as if I knew my time here has a validity date.

I have returned to Berlin for a flying visit to wrap a few things up and today I am walking around the city, somewhat still feeling at home, but a stranger again. For now, I miss it from time to time, but I acknowledged I moved on and found my new happy place almost 3000 km South. Still working in tech, still surrounded by incredible internationals and locals, but being healthier, happier and starting off new passions, such as sailing. There is a great green field and momentum for this part of the world I would like to take place, including cultural and tech scene.

I will keep coming back to Berlin, as I left a great piece of my heart and soul, and friendly faces too. I hope if you read it, you will receive an invitation to come back here, reflect on the great moments I’ve lived and maybe my experience can be useful for someone lost in the web.

At the same time, I will keep running lusofonetica.com as I plan to re-visit Portuguese-speaking countries more often now, since I am closer. I aim to reduce air travel though, trying to find alternatives for the transportation and one day, hopefully, sail around the world.

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin, I know we will meet not once, not twice and who knows when our paths will cross again, and who will we be then.

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BL/CN – Berlin / Barcelona connection

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I am back in Berlin after taking some time off to re-discover, re-thing and re-charge, which in my case meant: enjoying the last weeks of summer travelling, sometimes even without moving. This week I have just started a new role and I am super excited about what is about to come. Looking back though, I would like to focus on my connection to Barcelona, a city where I spend around 4 years in total, before relocating to Berlin.

I call Barcelona yet ‘another home’ on this planet and you can put either #2 or #3 or #4 to it, depending on the mood and proximity I share with this place at the given moment. Fortunately, it is quite easy to travel these days between Berlin and Barcelona, so I rarely get to feel very much ‘home sick’ in this sense. For some reason though, coming back this week from this beautiful city made me feel incredibly heart-broken. It was just a little bit confusing to feel so much at home again.

Autumn is one of my favourite periods to travel to Barcelona, given that I can’t stand millions of visitors during the summertime, which partially was a reason for me to move out back in a day. Still, the weather is great: warm and balmy, and occasional rain only ads to the beauty of the city. Autumn 3 years ago was also the time when I took the decision of relocating to Berlin: not an easy, but nevertheless a good one, after seeing what I had achieved and lived.

These days, it is incredibly interesting to me to come back and see the changes: the changing state of affairs, the economy, the improvement in quality of life, and at the same time – horrific gentrification, which is probably another topic for a long entry. In many ways I feel that the processes are similar both in Berlin and in Barcelona, given their focus on innovative tech industry, attracting well-paid professionals from whichever part of the world, causing imbalance with the existing community. Often, leaving the community behind without offering any reasonable solutions or including them in the change.

It is also quite amusing to see how Berlin and Barcelona inspire each other in trendsetting: although they are cities situated in a totally different part of Europe, they are still the coolest kids of the continent, competing within the range varying from the breakfast clubs, gin & tonic bars, terrace parties to music or art events. I would probably say that competing is a wrong word, since both cities are priviledged in a different way; I would rather say, they are complementing each other. I would not look for Berghain in Barcelona or Gaudi’s architecture in Berlin.

In essence, Berlin and Barcelona are two hedonist cities that are attracting people who live to the fullest in a creative and loving way to the world. I can’t live without any of them and I am caught in between the love for both. Thank you my friends in Barcelona for staying here and letting me come back anytime and for those in Berlin to make me feel here so much at home, even when the days become gloomier and darker.

Travelogue edition 2016: 13 countries in 12 months

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What a year it was. In many ways, it came with negative happenings and sad surprises. Life seems very unpredictable and one has to find way to cope with the current crises. On the other hand, personally it was one of the best year I’ve had: professionally, and personally. My major highlights stay around the experiences I’ve lived, not only in Berlin, but also travelling. In order to get my head around these reflections, I would like to dedicate my last post of 2016 to shortcountdown of the countries I’ve visited and their depictions. I did not included countries like Hungary, Finland and France which have been my stopover locations.

  1. Portugal – I actually started 2016 on Lisbon’s Praca do Comercio with my family and friends, newly arrived from Cabo Verde. We were all very hopeful of what the year will bring and cheering with the crowd below amazing fireworks. I managed to come back to Portugal once again in September: revisiting beautiful city of Porto and having fun at Lisb:On Festival: Jardim Sonoro. I bet I’ll be back in 2017, possibly discovering more of the magical Azores archipelago.
    Christmas illuminations on Lisbon’s Praca do Comercio.
    New Year’s fireworks in Lisbon.
    And a donkey – equally important animal around this region.
    Gaviotas – Portuguese seagulls occupying Praia da Caparica.
    Lisboa – Santos district.
    1974 – this mural near one of the ‘bica’ elevators – referring to the Portuguese revolution.
    Gaviotas – Portuguese seagulls occupying Praia da Caparica.
    O Galo – the Portuguese historic symbol.
    Porto centre.
    Decorations around Mouraria district.
    Decorations around Mouraria district.
    Gaviotas – Portuguese seagulls occupying Praia da Caparica.
    Porto centre.
    Saudade dog in Porto.
    Bridge on the Douro river, Porto.
    Decorations in Alfama.
    Praia do Matosinhos, Porto.
    Porto.
    Lisb:On Jardim Sonoro Festival: Dixon.
    New Year’s fireworks in Lisbon.
  2. Poland – It almost doesn’t feel like a proper travel, but I always get excited either coming home, or visiting friends and family in different cities. I spent here my 30th birthday, even if suffering from a disease I brought from the previous journey, I had a blast in the freezing January temperatures. One thing I want to make sure is to come back as often as I can to cycle in the picturesque lakesides, Baltic Sea coastline and visit my nearest and dearest, especially in these turbulent times.
  3. Spain – My second home. I escaped to Barcelona already in February to visit my friend’s awesome flat-warming party. Only to encourage him to apply for a job in Berlin and seeing him leaving his precious hometown behind in 3 months of time (and the flat anyway). Coming back to Barcelona is almost like coming to Poznań – here are my dearest friends who are always there for me and things don’t change even as time passes by. Apart from that I escaped to Mallorca (like a proper German!) around summer – and it was blissful too, revisiting one of my favourite archipelago even if for 48 hours weekend. To top it up, I’ll spend my Christmas in Andalucia, ole!
  4. Greece – To be honest, I have a big backlog when it comes to Greece and during Easter time, I decided to visit Thessaloniki. What a heavenly tresure!
  5. Latvia – Speaking of Baltic countries, I’ve visited both Estonia and Lithuania earlier, and never been to Latvia before. So it was pretty much spontaneous to pack myself for an early spring break to visit friends in Riga and hike around the gorgeous Sigulga and Jurmala.
  6. Malta – This Mediterranean smallest country is perfect for a week-long getaway to search for the sun, historic treasures, hiking and island-hopping.
  7. Croatia – I was invited for a conference in Dubrovnik, and this sounded like a perfect opportunity to explore at least the Southern part of this island-abundant country. I’ve got to know the North of the country already in the 90s, and it was amazing to see how it developed during the last 20 years. The historic sites in Split and Dubrovnik are breath-taking, but so is the nature and its islands like Bol with the ‘Golden Triangle’ beach.
  8. Bosnia and Herzegovina – I only visited some part of the Herzegovina: around the multicultural city of Mostar, destroyed heavily during the civil war and currently being the symbol of fragile peace and unification. The landscapes in this country and its unique culture amazed me so much that I promised to return to its central and northern part soon.
  9. Montenegro – South of Croatia, there is a small country of Montenegro, known for its beach resorts and stunning hiking sites. I’ve only had a chance to discover the bay of Kotor and it was simply precious.
  10. Romania – Invited for a very special wedding, I had a chance to explore the city of Oradea, near the neighbouring Hungary. Enough saying that the wedding was a blast, I got to know the local cuisine, customs alongside with celebrating my friend’s happiness with a very international crowd.
  11. Japan – The ‘long’ trip of 2016. I have no words to describe how enriching these 15 days were. Travelling all the way from Tokyo to Kyushu (and beyond, to spectacular islands like Gunkanjima), I balanced my time among big cities, hiking and sanctuary places. It will probably take me some time to describe all I’ve seen, but sit tight, at some point I will publish more about this amazing trip.
  12. The Netherlands – In November I spoke at the European Women in Technology in Amsterdam and visited this lovely city when free. Even if it was short, it’s always good to remind oneself how sweet the Dutch capital is.
  13. Hong-Kong – so this will be a final destination in 2016: I will celebrate the ending and the beginning of 2017 with my Brazilian friends in this incredible place!

What will 2017 bring? I can only reveal that I will keep visiting the places that are or used to be my home (Poland, Portugal and Spain), I will discover more of the Nordics (Faroe Islands) and follow my Arctic obsession all the way to Greenland. I decided to see Taiwan while in Hong-Kong. And in the meantime…well, the time will tell!