*The Mainland European Times*

Hola amigos!

Cómo es? Bien??? Yo soy muy bien! Yo tengo mi una clase de espanol. Comprende?

From the above you can notice that I have had muchos clases de espanol (many Spanish classes). It's tough having 3 hours of Spanishness all over you, but I have to admit that I am loving it. Spanishness, I define as a flood of emotions and RRR's which is a rrrrrr-sound but made with your tongue in front of your upper front-teeth (try it, please, so I can see that I am not the only Spanishspeaking-retard). This said, I also have to admit that I am probably the slowest learner in the entire group . If that has to do with the busieness of the rest of my day, or if it has to do with my language abilities, is for somebody else to judge. So my weekdays are filled with attending classes every day for 3 hours, then have a Lunch on the go in the beauty of the subway, and then start working at my dad's company at 1pm till 8pm. My day finishes with Spanish deberras (homework) and dinner (which my mom is a specialist in preparing it), then I fall into deep sleep at 11pm and wake up at 6am again. Uff, telling you this is even tiring to me.

Anyhow, my weekends are splendid!!!!
Right now I am sitting in the mountainhouse in Austria, the sun is setting, the tiled stove crackles with a warm fire and I am enjoying a hot milk with honey ..... well, it all sounds pretty cozy, ey? But all these blankets wrapped around me and the three layers of clothes is because our heating installation doesn't have any more oil. I guess this is how it will be when the world will run out of oil eventually / or how the mountain people felt 200 years ago. The greatest challenge was taking a shower with ice-cold water which felt like it had just sprung out of glacier mountains. After a power-shower which left me with blue toes, I felt the appreciation for not being born a century ago.

This reminds me that, 200 years ago there was a bavarian King called King Ludwig I, who held a horse-race and festival with free food and beer for the entire city of Munich. Now, the Oktoberfest is no longer a horse-race, but a 16-18 day beer festival, attracting 5 billion people from all over the world per year. You can imagine it just like Blackpool's venture/fun-park but 5 times bigger and aimed mainly at drinking beer. The autoscooters, rollercoasters and haunted houses are just for entertainment after the drinking madness. So this madness I dared to go. My first visit was with my parents where we met my brother and his girlfriend. In the first picture you can see my brothers gf, my mom and me in traditional bavarian dresses. It was just such a beautiful day because we strolled from beergarden where we had roasted chicken with potato salad to booths with glaced almonds, cotton candy, chocolate glazed fruits - I felt like I was in Cockaigne!

Besos y hasta luego,
Vuestra Johanna