Edinburgh

In October 2018, I had the chance to attend the Automated Testing Summit and the Embedded Linux Conference in Edinburgh thanks to a sponsorship by the Linux Foundation. I spent most of my time working, attending meetings and discussing projects.

I used the little free time I had to explore the streets of Edinburgh. I was impressed by the city's architecture, and I loved the cobblestone paths and old-style buildings.

In particular, the Edinburgh castle, which is on top of a hill in the middle of the city, was astonishing. The Linux foundation organised a sweet party inside the castle, and even a better one in the National Museum of Scotland, another must-see.

After my hiking trips in Snowdonia and the Black Mountains in Wales, as well as my trip to the Lake District in North West England, I had always wanted to hike in Scotland. I didn't have time for a long route, but luckily Edinburgh has a hill called Arthur's Seat within walking distance.

Cambridge I and II

At the end of the post of my last trip to London I mentioned a night coach to Cambridge where I was going to meet my friend Simon. I only spent that night and the next morning in Cam but it was still very nice to meet him once again after our adventures in Bieszczady - Poland. Although Cambridge and Oxford (check out my posts here and here) have a lot of things in common like the colleges or the punting, I saw Cambridge from a totally different point of view compared to my stay in Oxford. I went to Oxford in Summer which means that most of regular students are gone and the town has become a touristic attraction full of students of English. On the other hand, I saw Cambridge from the point of view of the college students (Simon is doing his PhD in Cam and he lives in Magdalene college).

Although I don't have pictures from my first trip to Cambridge, two months later Simon, Maria, Magda (also friends from the trip to Bieszczady) and me met again in Cambridge and we took a lot of pics.

I was the first one meeting Simon and we went to this nice pub. I took a coke and he had a juice. He couldn't drink alcohol because the next day he had to row (which is very typical both in Cambridge and in Oxford). I like British pubs, they all look so cozy and local.

In the morning I learned to prepare Porridge, a typical British breakfast that looked like vomit haha (joking).

Of course, we did punting and saw the major Cambridge colleges (King's, Trinity, Saint Johns, Magdelene, etc). I get off the boat once to take a photo from a bridge. They told me it was private land and I couldn't do it, but I showed them that not being allowed is not the same as not being able to haha. Of course, one minute later a guy with an angry face told me off!

A College is the place where students live, eat and socialise (in the second pic above, I'm sitting in a room where we played scrabble that looked like in the Sherlock Holmes stories). It is also the place where they receive small group teaching sessions, known as supervisions. They have libraries (for example, in Magdalene they had the pepys library (pronnounced "peeps" :D) and all the facilities for a student to be integrated and make the most of his time in Cambridge.

And if you can't find something in the library you still have this great bookshop called Borders where they had loads of books. I couldn't resist to buy a book on Japanese literature. In Borders you could pick up a book, go to the cafe upstairs and read it for free while you had a coffee! I drew a bit while I was in the cafes as well :)

One evening we attended a service in St Johns cathedral. It was interesting although I said I was bored as hell to annoy Simon hehe.

There are very nice markets in Cambridge. In the pic above Simon is buying cheese in the general market (in Market Square). We also went to the Sunday Arts & Crafts and local produce market where Maria bought a stamp with the shape of a fairy.

My trip back to Spain was close to the Odyssey. I took the wrong train from Cambridge and instead of Stansted I ended up in King's Cross. I still tried to make it by taking the underground to Liverpool street and then the Stansted Express train which is the fastest way to go, but I arrived at the gate in the last minute and they didn't let me board. So I had to go back to the departures lounge and find a way to go back to Spain. Planes to Santander were fully booked and so were Easyjet planes to Bilbao so I ended up buying a plane to Asturias for 200 euros (sic). Then back to Cambridge for a little break.

Thanks to my friends I didn't get that sad and we enjoyed the night with a fantastic dinner in a Japanese restaurant where I had sake sushi and a delicious bowl of Ramen!! :D

The next day I went back to the airport, this time with Maria and Magda who were going back to Poland. There were protests.. their flights got cancelled.. lots of queuing.. costa cafe.. I said goodbye and took my flight to Asturias, then a coach to Oviedo, then a coach to Santander.. and FINALLY GOT HOME! ^_^U

Visiting Debz and Yvon in London

A few weeks ago I went to England (once again) and made a visit to some friends. The first night I slept over at a quite centric hostel where I had already been to in the past: Picadilly Backpackers. My bedroom was called "the pod room" because its beds slightly resembled the well-known Japanese pod beds. Obviously as it was just a cheap youth hostel any comparative about quality or cleanliness is not appropriate. I shared the room with two Irish girls who were really nice, an Italian guy and two Brazilian sisters. Apart from being cheap (it costed me 22 pounds), the good thing of this hostel is that it is well located in the center of London (in Picadilly circus).

このあいだ、私は英国へ（再び）友達に会いに行きました。最初の夜、行ったことがあった中心のホステルに寝ました (Picadilly Backpackers)。私の寝室は”ポッドルーム”と言いました。日本のポッドホテル見たかった。しじゃし、とても安いユースホステルでしたから少しきたなかった。私の寝室でいろいろな人と共有した。人達はアイルランドやイタリアやブラジルから来ました。安いホテルでしたが（22ポンドぐらい）ロンドンの中心部にあるからとてもべんりでした。

The next day, after having a capuccino, two bananas and some biscuits for breakfast, I went to north west London to meet my friend Debbie (Nusense). We went shopping to a department store in Harrow-on-the-Hill where I bought a cool jumper that looked like I was wearing it inside out. I also loved an electronics shop called maplin where we spent some time looking at gadgets and kits to build your own inventions.

次の日はカプチーノを飲んだりバナナを二つとビスケットも食べた後で、私はロンドンの北西へDebbie (Nusense)に会いに行きました。私たちはHarrow-on-the-Hillのデパートで買いものしました。私はいいジャンパーを買いました。そのジャンパーは少しおかし見たかった。それに家電店でいろいろな品物を見てから家へ帰りました。


At lunch time, we went to the west end, met my friend Yvon at Oxford street (a famous shopping avenue in London's west end) and went for a burger :). After that, we went to two comics shops (Orbital and Forbidden Planet) and a second-hand DVD shop. We found a book containing an illustration by Castelló at Forbidden Planet and decided to take some photos holding it. Debz also bought a t-shirt of her favourite movie "the lost boys". When we came out of Forbidden Planet, we passed by a sex-shop in the Soho and decided to enter :D. Actually, the first floor was a normal bookshop and you had to go downstairs to the basement to find the sex-shop. I though it was a funny trick so clients could pretend to be entering to a normal bookshop.

昼食時には、ウエストエンドへ行ってオックスフォード通りで（有名なショッピング通り）私の友人に会って、ハンバーガーを食べました。その後で、私たちはマンがの店(orbitalとforbidden planetも）へ行きました。友達が書いた本を見付けました。ですから、写真を取ったことが決めました。そしてDebzさんはロストボイスのシャツを買いました。マンがの店の後でセックスショップを入りました。おもしろかったです。一階はつうじょうの本じゃでしたが，地下室はセックスショップがありました。

In the evening, Debz and I watched one of the horror movies (she is fan of them) that she had bought at the second-hand DVD shop: the film "Pumpkinhead IV". I had never seen one of those movies about Pumpkinhead but she explained me the basics so I could understand the story (most of them have almost the same layout). I also wanted to watch "The toxic avenger", but we didn't have time.

At night, we went out and hanged out in a place called Rowans (near Finsbury park) for some time. Debz was wearing a t-shirt that she had bought in Orbital which had the Joker's face and the phrase "why so serious" on it. Then Debbie's friend Lee picked us up and drove us to a club in Islington called Elbow Room were we stayed until late at night. The club's music and atmosphere was mainly hip-hop. In the middle of the place, there were like two circles of people. In one of them breakdancers were showing their moves in turns while in the other one, there were mainly streetdancers.

The following day was Sunday so Debbie took me to see the Wembley market which is the largest Sunday market in England. Lots of stands filled the parking in front of the beautiful Wembley stadium. I especially loved one of the stands (basically a big van) where a guy was selling at auction many electronic devices and other kind of stuff. He would start with a high price and then set it lower until someone bought the item. After bargaining with a seller, Debz bought a tracksuit for her. Most of the clothes there had famous brands (Nike and so on) but I think they were fake.

In the afternoon, we went to visit her French grandmother because it was her birthday. I made a portrait of her based on a photo that Debz gave to me and it made her really happy. In the past, Debz's grandparents used to have a business (a cafe called Berta) in south Spain (Torremolinos, near Málaga). But after the Spanish civil war they had to run away from Franco and the Guardia Civil (I suppose that the fact that they were Jewish didn't help at the time). I had to tell them that those guys with the black hats (Guardia Civil) still exist.

At night I said goodbye to Debz (thanks!!) and took a National Express coach to Cambridge where I was going to meet my friend Simon. It will be continued... ;)

Bieszczady - Poland - AEGEE Inspiring SU 2008

After my adventures in the Black Mountains (Wales), I took a Ryanair plane from London Stansted airport to Rzeszów (south east Poland), which is a great gateway to the Bieszczady mountains. I was going to spend two weeks in that region of Poland taking part into an AEGEE (the European student organization) event: the so-called Summer Universities (SU). My SU had the special codename of Inspiring SU, which was related to the activities that we were going to do (hiking, yoga, meditation). This is a google earth file with the main places and mountains I visited in the Bieszczady region: Bieszczady google Earth.

I met Santa at the airport and took a bus with her to the center of Rzeszow. She was coming from Latvia (with a change in Warszawa) and had told me to wait for her. In Rzeszow we met Simon, from England, who had came in the same plane as me but didn't know who I was. Then, we took a coach to Sanok where we would meet Maria and Aniko and then changed to another one going to Wetlina, in the heart of the Bieszczady mountains.

In general, my first impression about that part of Poland was very good. People, cars, streets.. everything was as modern as in Spain. The only but were the coaches, sort of old, and that it was a bit hard to find people speaking English (however I think that's a good thing as it means that we went to a place where foreigners don't go so often).


At Wetlina I met the rest of participants and organizers and we had a very nice dinner of dumplings (Pierogi). Then we played some games to get to know each other and remember our names. We were going to sleep in two beautiful huts by a river during the next week and my roommate was going to be Simon :).


Summing up, I had an amazing week in Wetlina: hiking mountains like Polonina Wetlinska, Tarnica, Kremenaros... practicing meditation with Ewa, the Olimpics games (major Pain!) where we had to compete in teams and we painted our faces, the sex-change party, the karaoke night, the European night where I prepared a Spanish omelet (tortilla de patatas), delicious lunches and dinner (very good food in Poland!!), watching the stars at night (I saw some shooting stars!!), having a early bath in the river every morning (one day I saw a deer!), the trips with the funny bus driver who used to take us near the base of the mountain in an overcrowded bus, playing my harmonica in the top of the mountain, exchanging secret messages in the secret messages panel and especially spending the night talking to Maria, Magda and Simon in our "pyjamas" sessions.

From Wetlina we went to Kalnica another village in the Bieszczady area. Some of the participants (including me) decided to go there through the mountains. It was a really hard hiking day because we had to carry out all our luggage with us (thank god I had Lion chocolates to help me out! :D). When we arrived to Kalnica, I couldn't believe it, we were going to live for the next days in a beautiful Shelter in the middle of the forest!!


The days in Kalnica were also great. The environment and the company was just perfect :D. We had bonfires every night where we used to cook and eat sausages (yummy!!!) and sing lots of songs!! Especially good at singing were Thomas and Chris!. From there we made some excursions, for example to Cisna where I made a portrait of almost everybody in a very nice furnished bar.


The days after Kalnica were nice but not as especial as the ones in the Bieszczady mountains. We went to visit some "human" things like a touristic town called Solina, an open air museum in Sanok, the Lancut castle or the city of Rzeszow and we went to fly on a Glider as well (I didn't fly though). Finally, the last day was very emotive. We wrote down nice things for each other in a poster, said our goodbyes and so on.


The only problem with the Inspiring SU is that it is over and we will never be able to go back in time to live it again :D. This is the list of great people that had the luck to live this experience:

Chris, Aga, Yvonne, Eeva, Anna-Lena, Santa, Thomas, Simon, Daniel, Aniko, Jorge, Paola, Magda, Karol, Tomek, Ewa, Kasia and Maria.

Wales - Black Mountains

In one of the first posts of this blog, I talked about my first trip to Wales, when I went to the North, visiting the national park of Snowdonia. I really enjoyed my time there so since then I had been looking forward to going back to Wales. Finally some weeks ago I visited Wales again. This time I went to see the South part to visit a range of mountains called the Black Mountains.


Day 1

Flying from Santander to London Stansted with Ryanair I arrived at Liverpool Street (Terravision coach) at night. After topping up my Oyster card in the automatic machine (pass the Oyster, click "pay as you go", then write the amount and then put the money) I took the Tube to the house of my friend Yvon. Then we took a bus and hang out in Brick Lane, a cool place in London with lots of alternative youth people and indian restaurants. Yvon and I stayed chatting in his garden until late at night. He moved to London some months ago to find a job as architect.


He also introduced me to his two flatmates. Miriam, a girl from Essex (she didn't want to say she was from Essex because of the famous joke) who studied psychology and now is working with mentally ill people. And Duca (from Matilde-Matilduca), the girl above, who came with her new friend Charlie. Although I had a couch for me I decided to sleep on my mat and sleeping bag as a training exercise for the next few days.

Day 2

The next day Duca prepared a delicious fruit juice for breakfast (thank you!) and then she went to work (she is also architect). Then Miriam left out for Paris where she had to spend the weekend as part of her job. Finally Yvon woke up, we said our goodbyes and I took the Hammersmith line to Paddington where I had to take the train (First Western train) to Newport and from Newport to Abergavenny (Arriva train). I bought the train tickets from Spain through the national rail website and then went with my debit card and the reference number to obtain them in paper from an automatic machine at Paddington station. The train from Newport had 15 minutes of delay but apart from that I have never had complains about trains or coaches in the UK.


Abergavenny is a nice little town but without too many things to do. Quite boring I would say. However it becomes a perfect gate to explore the Black Mountains range. As I arrived there at 16:30 I just walked around the village, watching the old castle, the churches and of course, the beautiful British cottages and houses. I had booked two nights in the YHA hostel which was really good quality. It had everything I could ask for. I even had my own single bedroom!!

Day 3

This was the main day in my short trip to Wales and I enjoyed it a lot!. I got up early and had my breakfast in the hostel (it was included in the price!). Then I had to wait for the next bus (9:30) to a nearby village (Crickhowell) where I would start my ambitious hiking route (Google Earth route to Waun Fach and peaks peaks_black_mountains.kmz).


I wanted to go to the highest peak in the Black Mountains, Waun Fach, but before that I would have to pass by 5 peaks more being the first one, the popular Table Top. I used my GPS to take the right paths and it was very helpful. Especially because during the first part of the day the weather was very misty and it was very easy to get lost without it. I would come across with other hikers from time to time and I liked stopping and chatting for a minute with them.


Thank god in the afternoon the sky became clear and i could admire some amazing views of the black mountains.

Day 4

On my last day in Wales I climbed a hill near Abergavenny which has a very particular shape. It is called the Sugar Loaf and it is a very popular hill among the local people. As I had to leave the hostel I took all my luggage with me (a big and a small bag). Soon after starting the route I realized that I couldn't make it with such a big weigh, especially because I had to be back at the train station by 14. So I decided to hide the big bag in a certain point, which I marked with my GPS, and carry on with the little one. The route was very pleasant and I enjoyed it a lot despite the fog which was hiding the beautiful views.


After the hiking route I took the train Abergavenny->Newport and then Newport->Paddington. From Paddington I took the Tube to meet a friend and talk about our adventures. After that I took the underground to Victoria in order to catch the coach that would take me to Stansted airport. I almost missed it because the Victoria line was under construction and I had to run all the way from Green Park with all my luggage!! Finally I arrived at the airport at 0:50 and I slept there on my mat because the check-in for my next adventure was at 5:15 in the morning. Próxima parada: Poland!

London with Nusense's friends

I recently made a trip to London for a weekend to meet Nusense and her friends. I arrived at Stansted airport on a Saturday evening and took a National Express coach to Golders Green where i was supposed to meet Nusense. She came late of course, but I had a big sandwich and crisps to eat that made the waiting time shorter.

She had a surprise for me. She asked me to follow her without telling me that, actually, her friend Lee was waiting for us in her car! When i entered to Lee's car they put a very famous hip hop song, called "Crank that boy", which Nusense tought me to dance while we were in Paris. Then Lee drove us through the streets of London surroundings. She drove very fast and dangerous, I have to admit i was quite scared especially when Nusense used to touch the steering!! or when Lee said "no hands now!!". Thank god we arrived to that place safe.

But the night just had started, they had taken me to do ICE SKATING!!! I had only done ice skating for once in my life, in Oxford, and I swear i had completely forgotten how it worked. So while Nusense and Lee where ice skating I had to hold myself to the bars around the ice skating rink. Ok, sometimes Nusense helped me out but.. after that she pushed me!!

After the ice skating thing we went to Mysta's house, another friend of nusense. There, i met Mysta, L-Dosh, Steve and her girlfriend and we chilled out in Mysta's house until late at night. We had some food, talked, the girls danced.. it was a cool day!! Then, Nusense and I went to her house which was very nice despite she keeps saying she lives in hell!!

The day after we went to see some places in London, like a store of comics called Forbidden planet, then i had some fish and chips for the first time in my life (tasty), went to a park and ride her bike and at night we went to see a movie.

In conclusion, it was a very interesting weekend thanks to Nusense because i could get to know a lot of local people and places that otherwise i would never have seen.

Oxford - more pictures!

Duygu, Maëlle and Eichiro just sent me a bunch of new pictures so I will just put them here with some short comments.

This is a picture of my class and my two teachers. There are people from a lot of places. Starting from the right we have Henrique, a brazilian musician, Maria from Spain, Ana (from Serbia, a good climber), other serbian girls, Duygu from Turkey, two Polish VERY intelligent (amazing, they knew almost everything. They liked manga like me and one of them spoke Japanese. I don't know why but I couldn't talk to them as much as I wanted), another Spaniard with an Argentinian T-shirt, a nice girl from Iran, another Spanish and another girl from Serbia I think. The teachers were very good. Stuart, on the left, was very nice and even when you made a big mistake he tried to show the rest that it was an interesting point of view haha! On the right, a very interesting person as well, very educated and singular. He had lived in Zaragoza for 15 years or so and he usually wore Spanish t-shirts.

This is Duygu and me in the gardens of a colleague in Oxford. The grass was really dense and green. Apart from that and a nice church inside, the colleague didn't have too much interest without the students (as it was summer they were on vacation in their homes).

Me, Duygu and Natascha in the lunch room of the school, the last day I think. Natascha was a very nice girl from Russia who was in a different course, more intensive. She was interested in graphic design and she had a notebook with drawings. Again, like with the polish girls, I would have liked to talk more with Natascha but I find it difficult.

This is Sandra and me talking in the living room of the school. She is from Galicia in Spain and she is studying arts in Salamanca. Her boyfriend, Fonso, is also studying arts with her but he is from Asturias. Behind us, you can see the MACs we had to access the internet. They had a horrible browser with a lot of missing functionality and it used to get stuck all the time so I had to learn how to kill windows in MAC.

Two more pictures doing "punting" in Oxford. In the first one i look very concentrated while Maëlle and Maria are a bit scared haha. In the second one, Duygu and Sandra trying to appear in the picture while I balance the boat hehe.

This is me reading the... times, of course, in the living room of the school (caught!).

Maëlle, me, Duygu, Eichiro and Sandra in the bus coming back from the city centre.

Eichiro, Sandra, Duygu and me in the living room. Behind us, a nice boy from Venezuela on the left and a cheerful girl from France on the right.

Pictures from our trip to London where we visited a lot of museums and parts of London. In the first one, Duygu and me in front of the National Gallery. In the second one, Sandra, Andras, me, Paula and Duygu besides a fountain in hyde park waiting for the bus to take us home.

Duygu, me, Eichiro, Amparo and Sandra in the school. Amparo was a woman from Sevilla that used to work in Zara, Oxford, and was studying in the intensive course. She liked to wear very fashionable clothes and was very talkative.

Eichiro, Andras and me in the riverside. We went with Maëlle to walk a footpath that goes along the river until Oxford's city centre. It was a very nice and relaxed day.

A picture of the Spanish group (and Eichiro) in the Oxford O'Neills pub. This was to celebrate our last day in Oxford. I liked this pub a lot because they have live music, good and variety in the drinks and you can have lunch or dinner inside.

Me, Qin and Eichiro. Qin is a beautiful chinese girl from Shanghai and she was one of the first persons I met in Oxford (we were sitting next to each other at the first level test). Maybe someday I will make her a visit in her wonderful country.

This is Eichiro with Keiko, a Japanese girl that we met in The Bridge, the most popular nightclub in Oxford. Apparently, they went on with their "friends" relationship ;). Eichiro about to say goodbye to Oxford.

Eichiro, give me my hat!! ;) I bought that typical british hat before coming. I like it but definitely it doesn't match with Eichiro's fashionable clothes haha.

Some pictures from our day strolling besides the river to the city center. Very relaxed and interesting day. Is that your favourite one, isn't it Maëlle? The last picture is one of the best pictures I have from Maëlle.