A comb and a mirror

I changed my mind.

Everything looks different when you find new friends.

About the smell, I guess I stopped to feel it since I started to eat hamburguers and fries.

I'm at home now and feel sad, somehow life changed last month.

Homeless, it seems like all of them live in the same neighborhood, just next to my hostel. I saw an average of 12 all them every block in that neighborhood. Somehow, homeless from Chile, Spain and San Francisco are different. What I found in SF was people deeply damaged, with no sense of reality, with no connection to other people. Most of them didn't even ask for money. Some people told me that they recive some money from the city government, like $100 a month and also have free food in some charity institutions. But, i wonder how can a homeless can keep some of his dignity?

In my last hours in the city, I was walking down the streets at 5.30 in the morning, and when I was just getting to my place I saw a black man, a homeless, it seemed like he just woke up and was looking at a glass door and at the first sight I saw him with one hand on his head, but when I saw him again i realised he was looking at the glass door while he was trying to comb his hair and was using the door as a mirror and somehow i just wanted to cry.

In that moment i remembered an old man, he was like 60 or 70 years old, in Chile, maybe 10 years ago. I was walking down the streets a sunday morning and it was very usual to find very poor people trying to sell different kind of things in the streets, like candies, handkerchiefs or second-hand clothes. They usually wore dirty, but i saw this man putting all his stuff on a blanket in the ground geeting ready to sell that little things and when i saw him he was smiling and he was wearing a suit. When he finished to put order in his blanket, took a comb from his pocket and combed his hair. Each time i feel compassion for anybody I remember that man.

Maybe dignity has to be with taking care of yourself even if you have nothing to take care for.

Compassion. Sadness.

Third day in SF

I still think that I don't have a real opinion about SF yet.

Yesterday was my first day working at Opinno offices and I don't know what to think about it.

People are lovely, that's what I think actually about almost all people I've met in SF. Facilities are amazing, it's like a big ship where different companies work altogether, there are common rooms, free coffe for everyone, nice sights to the sea and the bay, a good terrace in case of sunny days... but I've just seen people working and talking all day long and that's the same thing I can see everywhere else.

I try to think this is just the beginning, but I just have one month ahead... It supposed to be more interesting, at least that was my expectations.

I think I have to review my expectations before continue here, if I want to come back glad to Madrid.

A321

I know everyone think the same: it's really uncomfortable to sleeping on an aircraft. I agree, but I must recognize that aircrafts have a certain kind of hipnotic effect on me, I just need a few minutes to fall asleep deeply. I'm not very tall but I share the idea that in touristic class the space is little, but I've learnt to feel comfortable taking advantage of the little details of the seats. For example: at windows seats you can always put your head over the window, with thew invaluable help of a pillow.

Neck pillows are my best friends for longs trips, so, if you have a pillow, a neck pillow, a blanket, airplugs and a mask you don't need anything else to take a good nap... except if you're travelling on an Airbus A321.

Why? because they're not ergonomic. That simple. It's impossible to put your head on any space, it always fall down to a side. They don't have any little space to put your legs and feel comfortable. I never before thought that I would be proud for the kind of aircraft I would travel by, but since now, if I have to travel I'll look and if the airplane is an A321 I will change my book.

That's all. This post is about an aircraft. I think I'm too tired.

The coldest summer

After 19 hours travelling from Madrid, I arrived last night to San Francisco.

So, i'm just being here for 18 hours, if we discount the 8 hours i was trying to sleep at bed I can say with enough property these are my first impressions about SF.

1. When somebody says that SF is cold, believe him. I thought I was sleeping in a camping, I felt frozen the first hour at bed. Fortunately, after 2am I became to feel the blood working again. I mean, It suppose to be summer, but it's a rare case of cold summer.

2. There's something about the smell of the streets that I don't like. Maybe is the humidity or there're not enough public restrooms, but it's definitely awful.

3. Lots of homeless people. I mean, I decided to count how many homeless people I can find in one day. Seriously.

4. Absolutely lovely people. Everyone you ask something in the street or anywhere, people of the hostel, the bus driver, all of them are friendly. Wonderful.

5. Not cheap at all.

I met a girl from Switzerland last night, it was also her first night in SF and we both thought the same thing: Why all people love SF?

Definitely, it's not a case of love at the first sight.

I have 32 days ahead to find it out.

What does a traveller wonder?

Last weekend I had my first experience in a "Start up weekend"...

I really didn't know what I was find there, I just read an email last month talking about a kind of meeting of enterprising women regarding new technologies and I found the idea very attractive.

The idea consists to get together a group of people who don't know each other, some of them show their ideas in one minute at the beginning of the meeting, all the rest of the people choose the idea they like the most and since that moment different teams start to work in those projects all along that weekend. At the end of the experience, one person of every team shows the result in a presentation of 7 minutes, in front of a group of investors who previously gave advices to every project.

One of the projects was about the creation of a tool to help people to planning trips, and even I found it very interesting to develop, I disagree to the support argument: they said the only thing you have to know before use this tool is where you want to go. I think this is the main problem with almost every travel websites, they suppose that we know what we want... but if we would know it, why should we looking for them?

Too much information, I need a website to trust in.

Could I live in a village?

Spain has a lot of little old towns where people live like ancient times. I suppose it's like a postcard of the Europe we imagine from America.

They use to live in beautiful houses made of stones, go to the bar everyday to playing cards and have beers, every weekend watch football games on TV all together, 70% of population are in their sixties or more... They don't know anything about the Internet but know a lot about wine, food and weather. Is there anything else important in life?

I spent this weekend at one of that villages. I've been there several times and every time I do the same itinerary: I get there at Friday evening, go with my friends to the 3 bars of there, have dinner really late at night (usually lamb ribs), we sleep until Saturday noon, we take a tour over the wine cellars of my friend's friend tasting all types of harvest, after that some of us take a nap and other go to other towns nearby, and so on until Sunday afternoon when we get back home.

I realise that every place I go I always ask myself if I would live there and in this case I'm sure I could live in one of this little villages only having a clear purpose, I mean, I would estay one year writing a book or something like that.

That makes me think about my purpose here, but that will be the topic of a future post.

El cosmonauta

This is a real curious travel... It's about a space travel...

I've just became a film producer of El Cosmonauta... No, I'm not joking, you can see it by yourself... today i've learnt a lot about a interesting concept: CROWDFUNDING and as the best way to learn something is practising it, I'm collaborating with this amazing project. I can't wait to see the result!!

Iceland II

These days are dark days. A volcano is the reason. An Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajökull.

Some days ago I was watching an episode of the 2nd season of The West Wing, it was about a special Friday when lots of freaky groups go to the White House to have appointments with high commands so they can show them their uniques ideas hoping to be listened. One of them was a group called something like "Cartographers for social equality" and they were defending an unusual map projection. The point was that we use a kind of map that doesn't shows a real image of the world and there's another map projection less known but more accurate called Peters map.

You're maybe wondering why I'm talking about this and the reason are, first, the script was not a fiction script, and second, because I'm deeply impressed about the way of one single volcano has the strength to stop the air traffic of more than 20 countries. Europe is not that big. If you look Peters map, you will see it. We measure distances using time, but there are many ways to get to the same place, some of them are faster and some, slower. How can we be sure about the distance between two points?

It supossed this post was about Iceland, but I apologize, my mind is being very free these dark days.

Iceland I

I never wrote about my trip to Iceland, even though I promised myself I'd do it since I came back home.

I was there last August, for two weeks, and I'm trying to talk about some things that may help people who's planning to go there.

I went by myself, so these lines could be more interesting for people who love travelling by theirselves.

So, if you're planning to go to Iceland next Summer, don't forget the next information:

1. www.icelandexpress.com is the only low cost airline that flies to Iceland from many places in Europe. In my case, I took the flight from Alicante (unfortunatly, they don't have departures from Madrid). So if you want to buy your tickets soon, check this website, it's quite difficult to find cheaper tickets than these.

Maybe you wonder if it's worthy to get there to Reykjavik and get back from another city, for example, in the other side of the country, but I suggest to do the round trip to and from Reykjavik because Iceland is a very small country, and even if you go for a week, you can see the most beautiful places going around the island.

2. It's a really small country, so when you get there you will find that your previous image of the country probably is bigger than real. The area es 103.125km2 and you can compare it to: Ireland, Andalucía, Portugal, all theses places are well known because travellers can stay there for seven or ten days and that's enough for seeing the most beautiful and famous places.

3. Iceland has only one main road, named Hringvegur or Ring Road and it has just one lane in each direction. For a country of 300.000 people, it's more than enough... There are buses going to all directions every day but just twice a day, so, if you're travelling by yourself, maybe it's worthy to buy a ticket for one or two weeks and get up really early every single day or if you are a lucky person and find good partners on the road, you could rent a car... I think the perfect number of travellers in iceland is 4 (I'll try to convince 3 friends for next trip).

A little more about the buses: you can buy different types of passports depending on how many time or where you're going to use it. The good thing is that is the cheapest choice, the bad thing is that you're going to lose a lot of time, because all these buses are really slow. For example, if you go from Reykjavik to Vik by bus it will take over 4 hours. If you do the same path by car, it will only take 1:45 hours... You can see more details here.

These are all the routes of icelandic buses

4. Do you remember all that postcards with tourist information that you can find in every hotel, bus station, hostal, restaurants? Have you thought that there's nothing more anoyiing that those papers in the world? Well, it's time to forget all your bad experiences about it: You will need them in Iceland. Think about it: a small country, where more than 500.000 tourists go just in August don't really have enough people to affort the huge demand of workers, so they have found a great help giving good information in those postcards. So, I suggest to take all of them just when you get to the airport. In the road to your hotel, you'll have 40 minutes to see the first of them.

5. I love adventure, but Iceland is not the place for just to get there and see where you can sleep at night...at least if you go in summer. If you have to book your staying, try to do it early. I mean, if you want to go in August, try to book in May. Really, I'm not exaggerating...

6. You don't really have to worry about money exchange... you can almost pay everything by credit/debit card, and when I say "almost everything" I mean there must be something you can't pay this way... but I didn't find it! Even taxis, bus tickets, cafe, internet, etc...

Well, these are my first reccomendations, I'll tell you more in next posts.

Les marionettes

Let's talk about soundtracks.

I've seen this scene thousand times.

Every time I see it, I realise that I change part of it in my mind.