The first weekend of May, I met my travel partner in crime Sarah in Zürich, Switzerland for a 3 day weekend. Zürich is the largest city in Switzerland. Zürich is primarily German-speaking. Zürich has two dots over the U and as you will see I tried really hard to make sure I used it every time I typed "Zürich" in this post. Switzerland has four official languages (and none of them are "Swiss"). The languages are German, French, Italian and Romansh. In Zürich and other parts of Switzerland, they actually speak a dialect of German called Swiss German but write in Standard German (High German). Since all I know is "Guten Tag", thankfully English is widely spoken as well. They use the Swiss Franc (CHF) and not the Euro, which I managed to avoid until my last few hours in Zürich when I rented a bike and needed to put down a 20CHF cash deposit. And the smallest denomination the ATM would give me was 50CHF. I tried to spend the cash with what little time I had left but still went home with some of it. Our first day in Zürich was a clear, mild day. We arrived early Friday morning and signed up for a city tour with the front desk of our hotel when we checked in. Normally I like to take the hop on hop off buses in new cities, but this is one of the few cities I've been to that doesn't have this type of bus. But this 4 hour city tour and guide via Best of Switzerland is well worth the money. The tour takes you through the Old Town, and then down through the affluent Gold Continue Reading
4 Days in Malta
For the past 6 weeks, a lot of my time in Barcelona has been spent studying Spanish and simultaneously neglecting this blog. I attend class 5 days a week, 4 hours a day and have been supplementing with Duolingo, podcasts, reading basic Spanish books on my Kindle, watching TV in Spanish and attending language exchanges I find on Meetup. After 6 weeks, my vocabulary has improved and I can read and write a little better and say basic sentences but once someone talks to me too fast I'm lost. It's been fun though and I'm really enjoying it. For my first break (for Easter weekend we had Friday and Monday off) I went to Malta. My friend Sarah from the US, who currently lives in Amsterdam, and I had planned a long weekend trip to Malta a couple of months before I had left the US. To be honest, like many other North Americans, I hadn't heard of Malta before. Malta is a fascinating island. It is actually a group of islands, the primary one being Malta itself. They speak two official languages, Maltese and English. Many signs are in English. And in case you were wondering, yes this is where the Maltese dog is believed to have originated from. Other Malta Facts It is about 200 miles south of Sicily They use the Euro They are an independent country, having gained independence from Britain in 1964. They drive on the left and you can still find red phone booths around the island They have some of the oldest buildings in the world There is a direct flight to Malta Continue Reading
¡Estoy en España!
It's been so long since I've posted that I almost forgot how to update my blog. Thank goodness for Google. ? So 4 weeks after I had applied for my visa, the consulate e-mailed me and told me it was ready and that I would have to bring my passport along with my travel itinerary for them to issue the visa. I scheduled to pick up the visa February 6th and back to San Francisco I went with my passport and a print out of my flight details. It took just a few minutes and I walked out with a visa affixed to my passport with the date I was entering Spain. Now that I'm actually in Spain, I'm discovering that the next part of the process, obtaining my NIE card (an ID card for foreigners, which also permits my residency for up to a year), is also no easy task. The visa in my passport is actually only good for 3 months, you have to obtain the NIE card as well as part of the process. But that's a blog post for another day. I've been here for 9 days now and am staying in a small 1 bedroom flat I booked on Airbnb. My mom flew out with me and stayed for 6 days. We had a great time exploring the city, doing the touristy things, visiting the sights, shopping, eating tapas, and visiting family. Unfortunately the last day she was here, when we were supposed to go shopping and to Sagrada Familia, we were both sick from some bad seafood we had eaten at my aunt's house the night before. Aunt was also sick, so we knew it was something we all ate. After sleeping until 3pm, I woke up feeling Continue Reading
Visa Appointment Day
Wow, I just re-read my last blog post and it was super boring. I almost fell asleep reading it. Sorry about that. Luckily, I did everything correct for the Apostille crap because about 2 weeks later (mid-December) I received my self addressed stamped envelope back from Sacramento in the mail with the Apostille on my document. So with that, I had pretty much everything I needed except for the passport photos and the 3 forms filled out (Visa application, EX-01 and Authorization Form M790 C052), and the notarized document explaining why I wanted to go to Spain, which I had kind of forgotten about. Luckily that was something that could be whipped up in a matter of minutes, no need to wait on a government office. I wrote in the letter how I wanted to immerse myself in the Spanish culture and spend time with family, and summarized some of the requirements and what I had provided to meet those requirements. Once I had that document done, I had to find a certified translator. I went back into my e-mail and re-read some of the e-mails I exchanged with Auston from Two Bad Tourists and he had mentioned a company called Debor Services in Los Altos. Since I was running out of time, I immediately sent them an e-mail. My questions were answered quickly and I sent over scanned copies of the required documents and they were turned around within a few days. 2 days before Christmas I drove over to Los Altos and picked them up in person. The woman who did the translation was also a notary so Continue Reading