Medellin No.2

Afterwards we walked around a little bit more in the city, and then caught our bus home to relax there. We met Andrea and went out with her, to have dinner at crepes & waffles. This is a really nice restaurant, where one can eat crepes filled with many different things, like stroganof, chicken, beef in different sauces and flavors and it tastes really good ... and at the end, for sure, we needed a big ice cream ;)


The next day, Carol and me again did some sightseeing. First we took the metro to get to the University of Antioquia. And we were a bit jealous, because in Medellin they have a big big pool in the middle of the university area. From this university we
started walking and passed by the point zero in Medellin. This is the point from where all geographical measurements start. For example to measure the distance from Medellin to Bogotá, the distance between their point zeros is measured.


After passing by the point zero, we reached the national university of Medellin (The counterpart of the university we were studying in Bogotá). We walked around, had a little bit to eat, and because of being tired of all the walking this day and the days before we relaxed and lay down in the grass.



This evening I had a meeting with a German friend (Christian, I met him in Bogotá during my first classes of Spanish, I think I also already wrote about him about a year ago) and another German leading the economy faculty at a university in Medellin. That meeting was the trigger to go to Medellin by the way. Christian offered me to come with him to the meeting, and I thought it is a good possibility to get more work contacts in Colombia. And when I told Carol, we decided to go together and make some days of vacations and meet her little sister ;)

The plan was to take a bus home to Bogotá that Tuesday evening, but when I arrived home, there were no more buses driving that late to Bogotá, so we had to go early the next morning. What a bad idea ... During the night one can sleep in the bus, and it does not matter that much to spend the time driving, but during the day it's lost time and it really was awful, because the bus had no or no good air condition, and we had to drive between the two ranges of the Andes. There in the valley it had about 40 degree, there was almost no shadow, no air condition, and then we got into a traffic jam... At least I learned not to drive there again in the bus during the day. But in the end we made it alive to Bogotá that Wednesday evening.

Medellin No.1

As I told in the second last entry, on Friday ,the 23rd of February started our (Carol's and mine) trip to Medellin...
Thus we arrived at about 10 p.m. at the bus terminal in Bogotá, searching for the cheapest bus to Medellin, and found an enterprise taking us for a ride for 30.000 Pesos (converted about 10€). At 10:30 the bus left the terminal an we were excited about our trip, but regardless of that, we slept almost all the ride...

We arrived at about 6:30 in Medellin and Carol's father picked us up and drove us to the flat of his ex-wife and his daughter, Carol's half sister. This was especially why we, particularly Carol, have been excited: She has never met her 11 year old sister before!



It was really early on that Saturday morning, so we all, especially Carol's sister (Andrea) were really sleepy ;) And after the first contact, we went to sleep a little bit more. The apartment was not that big, and had only one bedroom, but Carol and me were "forced" to use it all the stay, and Andrea's mum (Consuela) were sleeping on a mattress in the living room.

That day we 4 went at about noon to a shopping mall. I think that is always a little bit more fun for girls than for boys, but it was ok. Only unfortunately I did not find anything nice to buy. In the afternoon then, we met some cousins and aunts and other relatives of Andrea (so also kind of relatives of Carol), and had dinner together. In the evening then, Carol and me went out with one of the cousins to the Parque Lleras, which is like the nightclub district in Medellin. The first pub was kind of loud, and strange, with weird people ... so we went to a Scottish pub and had some Paulaner Weizen there ;)

The next day Andrea, Carol and me went to their father's home and had lunch there. He initially wanted to join us and do something together, but sneaked out of that. Thus, we 3 went alone to a shopping center, walked around, and went with Andrea to an amusement park inside the mall (which was kind of an expensive leisure ...).

On Monday Consuela had to work, and Andrea had to go to school, so Carol and me went into the city for a little bit of sightseeing. After finding out which bus to take and after burning my lips with a hot pineapple, we arrived in the city center, where it was really hot. There we walked to the museum of Antioquia (which is a department of Colombia, with Medellin as capital). In front of the museum is a place of Botero, with some statues from his work.


After we got a little bit tired, we made a stop in a nice cafeteria in the middle of the museum. There also my mum called me to the cellphone, and I told her, that Carol and me are now a couple :). This made us really happy, because my mum then also finally knew it, and was ok with it.




After finishing our coffees, we kept on walking through the city center, to get some more impressions, and found a shopping center, which looked more like a palace, not only from the inside, like you can see on the photo to the right, but also from the outside. We walked through a weird park, which had a lot of really long stone spikes on the ground, and then passed by some government buildings to reach our goal, the intelligent building (which is like a museum of modern technical stuff). But unfortunately, the museum was closed that day :( So we just sat down to have another cup of coffee in a cafeteria under some palms ;)


And the rest of our trip I will describe in the next post, in a couple of hours, or a couple of days.

Welcomeparty

Yes, for everybody who does not know, I am back in Germany since more than a month. So last weekend a gave a "welcome and finished study" party at my house. What to tell about the party ... Everybody who knows my parties, and has not been there this weekend, knows what he/she missed, and the ones who don't know my parties, let's tell you: "You missed something".
I did not take a lot of pictures, but at least some, so take a look yourselves.