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And the jazz pianist who improvised in the Jazz Café we went to on thursday. It was an awesome day!

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One last from the choir concert

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A choir piece from thursday.

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A part of another song we played.

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Second part of the second song we played. Sadly my guitar was a bit out of tune..

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Some cookies I made when Adele and Oliver were here. The second one is from one of the main streets of Granada. I took the pic while riding home, cause it really gave me christmas vibes.

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Random Rambling (12.13)

I truly have no idea if anybody is still reading this, and I have also been a bit lazy in the past 2 weeks to write, but here I am again. This is probably gonna be a bit different compared to previous posts, because there were just boring days that doesn’t worth mentioning and also there were days when a lot of interesting things happened.

Last tuesday for example Oliver and Adele came over, we listened to christmas music and all three of us made different type of christmas cookies. Oh yeah, we also may or may not drank some glühwein. It was awesome, finally had the christmas vibe even though during the day it is still sunny and about 14 degrees outside..

Since exam period is getting closer I am spending less and less time on things like riding my bike or climbing (usually I do them once a week), I started looking up what happened during the semester at my courses at home..Seems a bit scary at this point but I think I can deal with all of it, already making some progress which feels nice.

Also, I talked this american dude, called Jeremy, into playing some songs on the open mic together, so we started practicing at the beginning of last week. The first meeting led to an interesting conversation as I found out that he’s a programmer who’s writing in swift (the programming language for apple softwares), and I told him about my master thesis idea (mtb route planner app) and he seemed pretty interested. I also told him about my struggles that I don’t really know where or how to start etc. Long story short, we made a deal that since he’s out of job and I need some help he’s helping me to do the framework for my application. Already met him 3 times if I am correct, we made some good progress, I am getting to understand how it all supposed to work..Been stressing about this since September, now I can sleep much better, not freaking out about it every second day..

Random fun fact, december 6th and 9th are both bank holidays here, they celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Virgin Mary. This meant I didn’t have school on friday nor on monday.

On tuesday there was the last open mic of the year, I personally did not like it as much as the previous ones because it felt a bit like the general level of it got a bit worse, but it wasn’t terrible or something. Played two songs with Jeremy, will upload some videos. Jeremy had an ankle surgery a few weeks ago so he’s using crutches. Helped him to carry his guitars to the club where the open mic was. (Oh yeah, he brought his electric guitar from the US, and he was kind enough and let me use it. It’s a Gibson Les Paul..never played on a Gibson before, felt great! besides the fact that I had to do some adjustments on the neck cause it went out of tune after every bending)

On thursday I went to listen to Sara, who’s singing in the choir of her faculty (of science), and let me tell you it was amazing! (also, there’ll be some videos about it). It was yeah, really I cannot find the words, of course they were singing some christmas songs and it just hit me hard with it’s vibe and everything. We decided to get a hot chocolate after, and ended up at this jazz café, that somebody recommended to her. The place already looked nice, there were a lot of bookshelves, different old instruments everywhere (trumpet, flute, guitar, pianos [3 of them!!!] some jazz music was coming from the speakers, the menu also had a really cool style from the 1930-40′s US..Ugh, I love that era so I was amazed by all of it. Yeah, the hot chocolate was also great. But the cherry on the top came later. A random guy came, about 50-55 years old, and started improvising instrumental jazz on the piano...which accidentally was right next to us...see the video. It was the most random thing ever, and this is the kind of thing I know I will always remember, it all came together so great...(see the video. which is dark but still, the sound is the important part!)..

I think that’s all folks!

P.s.: I won’t have much time during next week, travelling to the UK to spend christmas with my sister and brother in law (can’t wait to see you guuuyz!)

#erasmus #jazz #christmas #spain #granada

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I think the video speaks for itself

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Sunset ride on (friday? I think)

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Some more pics from the hike, and I just got this awesome christmas/advent decoration, had to share it! If you don’t recognize the star wars symbols..shame on you!

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Pic from the before/after hairdresser, from one of the rides, and the hike from yesterday! More to follow!

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I tried to capture the sliding “on 4ss” part..I don’t know how much of it is visible.

#gopro #sierranevada #erasmus

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Brighter days (weatherwise. It’s also a cool song from a hungarian metal band. 12.01)

Having some problems picking up the story where I left it last time, but I will try..

Oh yeah, on monday went to the economics class, and the british professor has been replaced by a local spanish teacher called Lola. Sadly she has a really, really strong spanish accent that I barely understand what she’s talking about, and of course since it’s not her native language she also has a problem with expressing herself, so the class was pretty boring...Which actually makes me sad, since the other professor was so good and I was paying attention in class and enjoyed it etc etc...

The big plan for the week was to get a haircut cause I was looking like a hobo..I mean of course at home it’s not a big deal, I call my hairdresser, get an appointment, take the bus, get from the easternmost part of the city to the westernmost part of the city. Easy beasy, only takes like 2,5 hours in total. Well here, it only took about 40 min. I knew a few places close to my flat but I had no idea about prices, nor if they speak english (was pretty sceptical about this part). So on tuesday I went to a place that looked less fancy (price should hopefully be lower). There was only an arabic guy there, about my age, he did not speak any english so I showed him my phone with the text translated from google translater. He got the message, and did a pretty brilliant job. (see the picture. No gel anymore, I didn’t like that part). It was all very clean and neat, even though I haven’t been to any country in the Middle East, I heard a lot of stories how people are generous and nice there are, this guy was the typical example for that. I payed 7 EUR for the haircut which is still an average price at home I think. Also, I went for a ride, which turned out to be amazing, people seem to be building new features on this one trail and oh my, it’s just getting better and better. Conditions were also prime, dirt was freakin perfect, got so much grip..Oh yeah, and I also studied some more for the IO exam! (I was sh1t scared at this point already).

On wednesday I spent the whole day just studying for the test. Topic was the structure of the UN, organs, their tasks and responsibilities..

Thursday. Test day. Felt much more prepared than last time, even when I got my hands on the questions and read them I felt like I can actually answer some of them..Uplifting feeling let me tell you that..Still, there was this little annoying voice in my head that kept telling me “you should’ve read the materials just one more time”...

In the evening I went to the hippy place again, this time with Oliver, Sara, and Davide guy (he’s an italian dude from the erasmusicians group). Even played some songs this time with Davide guy, (famous Oasis songs, crowd was singing along). And also, had some nice conversations with a looot of people there, germans, italians, spaniards, etc. Had some great food, humus, tortilla de patata, it was just great!

On friday, Oliver texted me in the morning (10:30 am. Yep, that’s still morning here!) if I wanted him to film me while jumping some stairs by bike close to my place. (Background story, I asked him to do this a long time ago, but we just weren’t able to arrange it.) So, yeah, we did that, luckily I didn’t break any bones, aaand of course had to go for another wicked ride after this (awesome again! 15+ degrees, sunshine, happiness, shorts, shirt, definitely did not feel like the end of November..)

Saturday! Went for a snowy hike to Sierra Nevada with Sara. We took a bus at 10 am, got there around 11:15 or so, and headed straight up (literally straight up, wasn’t my brightest idea, killed the tendons in my right knee). The goal was to get from the Ski Resort up to Pico de Veleta (where I’ve been by bike back in late September). Ski season is already on so we had to walk up on some ski slopes. We even started the hike only wearing a shirt but as we reached a “ridge” (the road which was leading up to the top) wind got strong so had to get dressed immediately. The other thing that made things dificult was ice. Walking in snow is okay, walking in/on snow/ice is not okay. Especially when you cannot see it, we both fell a few times, nothing serious, but still, ice slowed us down quite a lot. Hence we could not make it to the top, we were still about an hour and a half from the top when we sat down at the upper end of a ski lift, had “lunch” and headed back. Sara had a great idea to ask the operators of the ski lift if we can go down with it, but they turned out to be pretty strict about it...Shame. Yeah, it was really that icy that we both got a bit scared about how the heck are we gonna get down without skis...(uuugh..skiing..I had a bittersweet feeling, walking around ski slopes and watching people having fun..) On the way down we found a closed slope that was so icy we were actually able to slide with boots on. It was scary and really fun at the same time (see the video[s]!) In general the weather was good besides the wind, sunny all day long, around 5-10 degrees. We got back to the village around 17:30, got a(n actually not so overpriced as expected) hot chocolate! It was a great day, but I think hiking without snow is much more fun. Call me old fashioned but snow is for skiing.

Sadly I pretty much destroyed my right knee during the hike, but I already agreed on climbing on sunday I had to go. It was pretty good, went there with Filip and Davide guy, the only annoying part was the ride there, apparently riding the bike is also not a good thing for the knee with these conditions. Whatevs, climbed some pink routes (if anybody happens to know the difficulties). Made some horrible chewy, not salty enough chicken and potato for lunch..Oh yeah, and I failed the IO test. Got the results from Filip while climbing. It was close though, if I had had one more correct answer I would have passed. 6 is the minimum needed to pass, I got 5,77....Dammit.

Advent started, which I am happy about, but thinking about the fact that I am leaving Spain in a few weeks (3. For a few weeks) makes me sad...

That’s all folks!

#erasmus #spain #granada #hike #snow #november

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Gergő in da house! part 2 (11.26)

On wednesday we wanted to go to Sierra Nevada but we weren’t willing to get up at 8 am to catch the bus at 9 so we just went for a short hike in the area where I usually ride my bike. It was still good, weather was rainy again, felt like the UK...Had a chill evening, cooked some shrimp again (it’s weird cause this was my third time making it and it gradually got worse a bit each time, first one was the best...)

Thursday was Gergő’s last day in Granada. He was going to Malaga on friday and flew home on saturday morning. Since I had class again, (was amazing as always) he stayed in my flat to practice some GIS for his upcoming test. During my evening class he went out for a last walk alone. Earlier that week Oliver suggested that we should go to this “hippy place” as he called it, where there is music, and food, and drinks, and it’s just very alternative. Thought why not, talked Gergő into going there. Well, of course rain was pouring that night so we got totally soaked by the time we got there (the place was in the muslim district, Albajzin, and my faculty is in the center so it was a great walk. Nope.) The place was really hippyish. It’s a flat/house where somebody actually lives but it’s also like a community house or something..The owner made some food, put out some beer, and there were jars to donate money. It’s pretty hard to describe the whole thing, I uploaded some pictures, videos yesterday check them out. We had some fun talks with an italian dude (who seemed a tiny bit stoned..) and an incredibly enthusiastic vietnamese dude who has been to Hungary with erasmus! He just told us some hungarian sentences he learned, it was just hilarious (things like “megcsókolhatlak?” etc.) He also told us how good experiences he has with hungarian people, how open-minded we are...Welllll I have a different opinion about that but I am happy he thinks that. We also met a hungarian girl who is volunteering here in Granada, it was fun to speak hungarian with somebody besides my friend, but it was really hard to change the languages so fast...

On friday Gergő headed to Malaga and I went to class. Besides going to climbing on saturday with an italian dude (Davide) from the erasmusicians group, nothing extraordinary happened, started studying for the test that I going to have on thursday on the International Organizations course. I am a tiny bit scared...Wish me luck! thanks.

That’s all folks!

#Erasmus #granada #spain #hippystyle

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And this is from the hippy place (that i’ll write about tomorrow)

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Ummm I may have focused a bit too much on Óscar. He was just funny. LoL.

Hope everybody recognizes the song..Dan has an awesome voice

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“Carry on my wayward son” part 2 (from the open mic)