Y esto es sólo una muestra más de lo poco que “cuida” este organismo a sus becarios. Las quejas sobre el comportamiento del ICEX referidas a multitud de temas han sido una constante en esta promoción de becarios. Desde el comportamiento dictatorial de los consejeros en muchas oficinas hasta la injusticia del tratamiento fiscal pasando por los ridículos 8 días de vacaciones al año. La experiencia de vivir fuera puede ser estupenda pero aquel que se lance a ella mediante las becas ICEX que sepa lo que hay.

Situación en Luanda 

Hemos conseguido también que el asunto tenga repercusión en el diario 20 minutos:

ICEX en 20 minutos

The plan for the night was to seriously go out. Here it was when a group of people who would end up messing the situation was formed. Tel Aviv, Moscow, Bucharest and me got one of the apartments and started to drink the rum we had brought. Paris and Warsaw were lost with a friend of the second one and the girls were having a more relaxed plan so it was our obligation to get the night wild. Very serious drinking time we had, we ended up walking the center of Istambul with a huge bottle full of rum. The night had many anecdotes to tell about, but probably they are only funny if you were there to live them. Like the communication problems we had when I was trying to use Javi´s phone, that moment when I kicked mine directly towards the knee of a poor Turkish girl who was passing by or Moscow´s impressive ability to take pictures been drunk We got together in a nice Turkish place and the night happened to be very very funny :-)Great picture, the night punishers team almost complete, just Prague is missing

All pictures from New Year´s Eve in Istambul are here!

But Saturday´s though night had a high price: there was no way to get up on time for a cruise through the Bosforous we had planned. Regreteable, since I was left with the feeling that Istanbul has a lot to offer and I missed it. We spent the day doing nothing, smoking pipes, getting confused when meeting each other and with hangover. Absolutely nothing to remark about the day. For the night year´s eve Julia had arranged a very good plan, a typical Turkish restaurant had been booked and the idea was to eat some grapes in the house at 12 (Spanish tradition). But and this point things started to get wrong, the Tel Aviv – Moscow – Bucharest - Stockholm connexion had a messy result. While the rest of the people was heading for the restaurant, in which we had to arrive early, these four assholes decided to stay home for having the last drink. But this was not enough and, at a certain point, we had the nasty idea of forgetting about the dinner and just join them for the dessert. So we left the house very late and very drunk and here is when the mess started. Among with other ethylic state we had every kind of problems. Offline phones, confusion when finding the places to meet… A real mess, we pretty fucked up Julia´s dinner and ended up, the four of use, disconnected from the others. Eventually and seen it was impossible to get in touch with the others, we assumed we should spend the night at our own and, to be honest, in the end it happened to be very funny. We met three very friendly Turkish girls (hello Figen!) with whom we celebrated the entering of the new year with flares (apparently the typical thing to do in Turkey). They took us to the best places and the truth is that we had a very very funny night. As there is one hour time difference between Turkey and Spain we celebrated two times. We ended up in a very cool Turkish club where the lights went off for a while. The place had a few floor and there was a music band playing. One of the highest moments of the night occurred when I climbed to the stage and almost stole the microphone from the singer to offer my particular version of “Para bailar la bamba”. There is a video of this that I will only show to people willing to pay big money. By the time it was 12 pm Spanish time we were desperately asking the waiter for drinks that we needed in 2 minutes. No grapes, no nothing, this new year started with a drink on my hands. 2006 has definitely been an original year when talking of special dates: apart from the Turkish New Year´s Eve I just told you, I spent my birthday alone in Bangkok and Christmas night in San Francisco surrounded by globetrotters. But, thinking now, and even though the night happened to be very funny, I am very sorry we could not meet with the others. Besides, Nuria had a very bad time cause she needed to catch a flight early in the morning and we had the keys of the apartment and were unreachable. A little messy but luckily we reunited in the flat on time and, after the well deserved scolding, we could restore the good ICEX vibrations (at least I think so). As can be seen in the pictures we slept very close to each other

The fantastic 4

Javi fell in love

Hats

Turkish girls!

Before finishing the post, I have to speak about the turkish bath, better known as Hamman. Pretty curious thing, first you lay down in a huge and hot stone, like if you were a steak on the grill. Then this guy comes, puts soap all over your body and rub you with an special sponge to open your skin and all that stuff, at the same time he is massaging your body. The truth is that, once you manage to ignore that fact that the one touching you all over is a big guy with moustache, the experience happens to be very relaxing. In the end you get a shower and they take you to another room where you lay in a bed and you get another massage. It would even say I liked it more than the thai massage, I mean the “normal” thai massage, I didn’t try the “other” one So I ended up very “exfoliated” and clean.

The next stop of our trip could not be more cinematographic: Los Angeles, capital of the cinema and one of the most worldwide known cities. Once you pass the cliffs I was talking about in the previous post, the road 1 continues through the wine region of California, most of the wine produced in the States comes from this place. Which actually we did not really care about since we didn’t stop here but in Santa Barbara, a place I guess you all heard about. This is the funny thing about the american supremacy in cinema, you come here and all the time you see names that sounds familiar. In any case, we hang around for a while there, nice city with a beautiful beach which must be great in summer. But it was not summer and the weather wasn’t good enough to take a bath so we just visit a couple of historical Spanish buildings.

Patriotic moment

What the fuck he was talking about?

One hour after that we hit LA. The first impression you get about the city is pretty negative, the neibourghoods in the outskirts are very ugly, lot of homeless walking around and pollution everywhere. The city is huge and you don’t know where to head. But, an ICEX guy always has resources for this kind of situations, before we started this trip I got in touch with one of the interns in the commercial office of the Spanish embassy in LA, María, who happened to be a very friendly girl who told us the route we should follow. So we called her asking for advice on finding accommodation in LA and she recommended us to go to the Santa Monica area. Hotels there are pretty expensive so we ended up in a youth hostel, not very luxury but close to the beach. The ICEX help did not stop there, they were so nice to take us out that night. Around 10 pm the plan was already organized, they picked up us in the hostel and it didn’t matter we were six in a car. We had dinner in a Chinese place and then we head to a club they knew. The place was really cool already from the beginning when these two huge black bouncers asked us for passports. When they saw we were Spanish they did some jokes. Same as the Swedish ones eh? So, the night passed very happily inside there, chatting and laughing with all the LA ICEX interns and another visitor, a very funny guy coming from New York. We even managed to socialize a bit with the locals. However, at 2 o clock the place closed down and then they took us to a libian place, opened till very late, to smoke pipes. Kind of weird place, it was not the total party but ok for been there smoking and chatting. When we felt too tired we took a taxi back to the hostel. Thanks a lot to Montse, Juan Andrés and cia, very welcoming people!

I just realized I dint speak about the jetlag yet. There is a 9 hours time difference between the USA West Coast and Stockholm and you can feel it. Is a funny effect, you can´t sleep longer than 7-8am which is actually great for doing tourism so we were on the road pretty soon. However, at 6 pm you are totally fucked up. So we spent this first week having to sleep a 1-2 hours nap every day.

Anyway, let´s continue with LA. After the great night it was the time to get to know the city. As we only had one day we decided to hire one of these tours you get into a bus and they show you around, the driver explaining about the city. He was, of course, a very friendly guy (working for his tip) and was saying funny stuff at the same time he was describing the different places. We started in Sunset Boulevard where the rich guys and the cinema stars live. We saw Spielberg´s house, Kurt Russel´s and a few more whose owner I don’t remember. We ended this first part of the trip in Beverlly Hills were poor people go shopping. Everything very touristic. During the trip the guide was saying interesting stuff, for example “that corner over there is where Hugh Grant got a blowjob” or “this is where Michael Jackson got arrested”. Very instructive. No, we didn’t see any famous people but we did see some guys going to the shops by limousine. Exactly the same that I do when I get down to my local supermarket to get some frozen pizzas… After that the bus left the city and started to drive up to a hill and… opps there it was, the very famous Hollywood sign. The view over the city from there is pretty impressive too, you can see how big it is.

After the hill, the bus stopped in the Universal Studios where I could not resist the temptation of getting a couple of stupid pictures. You may be wondering why usually I am the one to show up in the pictures, well Giorgos does not like it too much and I thought so many lonely landscapes and monuments would end up been boring. Therefore I fool around as soon as I got any chance. We did not get into the studios cause it was very expensive and we didn’t have time either but I don’t think we missed much. Instead, we got down the city to the very famous “Walk of Fame”, yes where you find the starts with famous names on it all over the floor. Drinking all the rum in the world is not enough for getting a start there, you are required to have a certain amount of success and also, of course, to send a very big check to the LA city hall. There was plenty of people dressed like Elvis, Donald Duck and stuff like that hanging around over there, trying to get some dollars. So, the typical place, compulsory to visit, you get the pictures, hang around for a while and leave.

Of course, Captain Flint´s legend made it this far

The visit ended in LA downtown, that means, the bunch of skycrappers in the centre of the city, nothing new here, once you have seen one you have seen all. I like more a small street with Mexicans shops close by. I was about to buy a very cool poster with all the mafia guys of the american cinema until I understood there wouldn’t be any way to get it into the plane. In the meantime I was chatting with a couple of local Mexicans, funny thing, they were switching from Spanish to English all the time without realizing themselves. Here they started to scare me about our next destination: Tijuana, “be careful there”, “don’t get drunk”, “stay with more people”. I had already heard it was the most dangerous city in Mexico and these guys seemed to agree. We would see…

The first impression I got from Warsav was pretty possitive. I guess that, unconsciously, the idea many of us have about the East Europe countrie is kinda decadent. We expect to find something sad and grey when in fact there is not a big difference between them and what we have in the rest of Europe. I dont know about the rest of the country but Warsaw is a proper city, a big financial centre with plenty of open spaces and skycrappers wellcomes the traveller coming from the aiport. In the middle of all this there is an impressive building called “Culture Palace”, a present from the soviets to the city.

By the way, this place was pretty funny, there was an exposition about the media in which one could do things like introducing the TV news or become a radio professional for a second. I dont know if this was supposed to be used by the visitor but, as Spanish people that we are, we had to try it…

After leaving the financial centre, you get into the old city. Warsaw was almost destroyed in the Second World War so all the centre had to be rebuild. For doing this, they used the few still standing pieces of building as models for the new stuff as well as the paints of the city which survived the war. The result is nice, a quiet place to walk arround, with houses painted in different colours, city walls, churches… Unfortunately I do not have to many pictures of these. Here you have a couple of ones with the real “steel partners”, a monument to the polish soldiers dead during the war and one of the churches…

Eating arround was also a must do and we did it in excess, affordable prices and very nice food. They say polish waittres are the slowest in the world, I dont think it was that bad. This place is specially advisible. One of the best restaurants I ever tried, hugh dishes and delicous beer. Next to Guerri´s place, if I was him I would eat there every day.

Not much else to say about the city, more information available here, let´s move to the party issue. This was mainly done in the spagethi´s house. First day we organized a very serious drinking party, for some of us this started at 5 pm and for almost everybody it ended very very late. A great night, I had a lot of fun. Plenty of pictures here, the best ones just below..

The three magic kings together again

And the second night … same thing. This time with some polish participation, steel partners joining against the polish vodka. A new member of the Captain Flint club (Tino), lot of fun in a night I ended up in a weird bar, opened till very late and sorrounded by polish people. In the end I slept in a huge house, property of a Spanish guy I just had met, he even had a jacuzzi! Sunday we were close to go out again but, just once and maybe motivated by the chezq experience, we chosen the quiet plan. We just went to the train station to say goodbye to the “chezq” friends and then for dinner to a french restaurant. This place happened to be the opposite to the one I mentioned before. Very sophisticaded but small dishes, you ordered a big piece of meat and you got a salad. French people..

Tino becoming Flint

Icex meeting

Bye bye…

Amazing the ICEX IT people meeting in my spanish favourite city. I wont tell you how it was, you can check this out (if you read Spanish ) at Marta´s blog (day 1, day 2, day 2 night, day 3) and Guatemala´s blog. What I want to say here is that actually having fun is a pretty simple thing. It is not about get drunk and party very hard, someting we already did of course, in fact you enjoy more and remember better all these moments of jokes and conversations. From the beginning, when Pekin was trying to park his car, until the end, those last conversations before leaving the apartments. In the middle, all kind of stuff, Marta and Shangai spicy talk, those tapas lunches, talks over a Cachimba. Finally, what I really matter is the people you get together. The place is not so important althouth in this case it could not have been better. The truth is that I was pretty pissed off when I knew I had to spend month and a half attending a boring trainning in Madrid but now I am very happy I did it. Because of so many people I got to know, most of them with my same interests and way of seeing life, because of all the stuff we did and all the stuff we will do, because know I can have a look at a map of the world knowing that I have a friend in most of the places. Anyway, I dont wanna get boring with this, I already talked a lot about this issue. I will just leave you with Dubai´s video and soon I will uplodad some pictures. A big hug for all the ICEX 2006 IT promotion which soon will be spread all over the world!

I think I already talked more than one time about how funny my time in Madrid was, with that bunch of great people forming the 2006/2007 ICEX IT promotion. As some of you may know, I am going to Stockholm in October thanks to this entity internship program. Like me, there are another 70 people going to different cities all over the world. You also have to add a handful of sustitutes that participated in the Madrid trainning with us. That was already more than a month ago but the spirit is still alive. We already organized a meeting in Granada in September and it is very promising to think about travelling next year with so many nice people distributed all over the world. See this video, courtesy of the great Dubai, to understand what I am talking about…

Then we went to Malasña…

Martuky and Dublin

Meeting Elenita (hello Pons ) who was arround with a friend…

And finally closing last Malasaña´s club…

Dubai, Beirut, Estocolmo, Tokio y Jesús

All pictures here

As I said in a previous post, before I leave for my new job in Sweden I have to spend a month and a half in Madrid, doing some training together with the other 71 guys (and some substitutes) who got the positions. Actually this training is been exactly as it had been described to me by the people from previous years: fucking boring, appart from a few exceptions, the contents are not interesting at all and I dont think they will be useful to me. However, the environment there could not be better. This was also quite expectable, put 71 guys together for a month and a half, most of them ex Erasmus and more interested in partying and travelling than in the “exciting” job to be done in the ICEX offices and the thing will definitely get wild… As it is quite complicated to remember the names of so many people we ended up calling each other using the destinations i.e. my name is now “Estocolmo”.

So the first demostration of what this period in Madrid is going to be about came the second Thursday, when most of us decided to go out to “Palacio de Gaviria”, one of the most popular discos for foreign people in Madrid and where I have some connections thanks to a friend from university who is working there.

We first drunk at the Orion apartments, it seems that this place is going to be the main ICEX place to meet before going out. Thanks to Guatemala, Pekín and Sideny for their hospitality. An old Erasmus friend of me, Sergio, who was back in Madrid after a year teaching Spanish in San Diego joined us.

friki picture: computer guys drinking..

From there we went straight to the Palacio, David managed to do what it seemed impossible (thanks dude) and arround 30 ICEX computer guys got inside the place for free. The party did not dissapoint..

Therean, Varsovia, Taipei, Ryhad, HoChiMin, Estocolmo, Sergio…

Washington, the crack

As we had lectures next morning people was leaving during the night so at the end just a few of us stayed until the place closed…

Last ones standing (plus México): Miami, Pekín and Estocolmo

It was already early morning and we had to be in just in an hour so the night ended eating some “churros” (spanish meal) and going home for a few minutes rest…

All pictures here