Coming back after one year of break....

After one year of break I came back to my university, MY BLOG, my old reality. Actually it's not so bad as I though. After this year I have more ideas what I can do here in Poznan , my job makes me really happy (it's not so difficult think in good way about your job after working 5 months in UK, ofc salary is the only advantage of UKs job), I enjoy being with my friends and family...But lets start from the beginning.....

11.07.2014 

We decided to come to UK and work a little bit to earn money for travelling. We knew its impossible for us to earn it in Poland, as its not so easy to earn for a living in the country, not even saying sbout saving. We wanted to save it as quick as its possible.
Mother of my boyfriend has a friend, which has a father living in Yorkshire, Northern England. Its quite complicated, a we weren’t sure how its gonna look, but the guy named Andrzej seemed to be one of the most hospitable person we’ve ever met. Helped us with finding job and stuff. So just after few days we started our job, which was pretty bad actually. Its nothing to be proud of – anyone can have this kinda job in UK, but it helped us a lot. Actually, it made our trip real. During our stay we bought fly ticket to Mexico, and then – from Costa Rica to Mexico (we wanted to come from Mexico to Costa Rica by land, then come back to Mexico by a plane, and then – to Europe) and started to think about travel. So...... we were working in the cosmetic factory. I don’t tell you the name of it, but I can say that in spite of fact that we were making handcreams for hundreds pounds for a jar it was terrible. But besides of working we visited Yorkshire and surroundings a bit. Weather was awful, but we’ve seen few nice things, like Ilkleys Moor (which inspired Emily Bronte to write Wuthering Heights), medieval city of York, Manchester, Leeds and – in the end of our stay in UK – London. So in general it wasn’t so bad (but job was!). After few months we had came back to Poland and started to prepare for Mexico/Central America trip.

Porto

After 10 days in Santiago we hitchhiked to Porto to do some voluntary work as well. Our hosts were Margarita and Paolo. There lived for 2 months two others volunteers: Sam and Tim from Australia so we spoke and practise in the same time  English. It wasn't any organic farm this time, our task/job was to try to renovate really old townhouse. But what was interesting: Paolo and Margarita had chickens in their small garden and in their pond swam 40 years old turtle:) 

Porto was really really nice, we fell in love with pastel de nata, we tried vegan food ( Sam was vegetarian and Tim was vegan, so they cooked almost every day for us) and we renovated old stairs in Margarita and Paolo's house:) 

Porto is beautiful city, I admire this place!! We went to Lizbon as well (I will describe it a little bit i my next post) but for me it was the next capital in Europe , ofc also fantastic and fabulous but I can't compare it to Porto. 

So if you haven't visited Porto so far, do it!

Santiago de Compostela

hi! I think is time to come back to my trip story:-) So we hitchhiked from Portugalete to Santiago de Compostela, basically to Luou. We did some voluntary work/service. Our hosts were Antonio and his wife Julia. We found them on http://www.helpx.net/. Here you have some information about this: HelpX is an online listing of host organic farms, non-organic farms, farmstays, homestays, ranches, lodges, B&Bs, backpackers hostels and even sailing boats who invite volunteer helpers to stay with them short-term in exchange for food and accommodation.

HelpX is provided primarily as a cultural exchange for working holiday makers who would like the opportunity during their travels abroad, to stay with local people and gain practical experience. In the typical arrangement, the helper works an average of 4 hours per day and receives free accommodation and meals for their efforts.

We have really nice experiance with this webpage, so if you want to soend some time on organic farm, ranches and not only place like that I really recommend this. It is really developed in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy  so lucky you. 

We helped Antonio and Julia with their new house during 10days They moved from Malaga to Luou becouse of better climate. Antonio is disabled so they needed somebody to help Julia with the garden, chickens etc. and sometimes to help her with Antonio. We worked 4-6 hours per day but we used to have a lot of breaks. We had afternoons free and two or three days out of work. We really enjoyed working there becouse it was really nice village with medieval church and charming, narrow streets:-)

exam session

Hi!

As everybody perfectly knows we are AGAIN in exam session. After four years of studying I'm quite bored that I have to constantly think about what I should do, what I've already done etc. etc. I'm thinking about: How do you wreak your stress and all frustration? I know some solution like for example eat more than always (chocolate, HARIBO's stuff etc) , go running or watch one more time the episodes of your favourite serial. Do you have some extra idea that you would like to share with me?:)

Portugalete

After 10 days we finished our Camino de Santiago, was in Portugalete: really picturesque city with Puente Colgante.

What's interesting, our new destination was still Santiago de Compostela but we have to be there in 2 days , not in 3 weeks so we had to hitchhike. The worst thing was (as always) leave the city and get to highway. We were waiting more or less one hour for the lift. During this time one Old Lady came to us and say: "Spanish people are not use to hitchhikers, nobody will take you...You didn't know? You should go to bus station and buy tickets or to airport" then we tried to explain to her that it was NOT our first time hitchihiking in Spain so she shouldn't be worry. After few minutes she went away , kept saying "Nobody will take you, nobody will take you". After three minutes Old Gentleman stopped and took us to the highway. From patrol station took us really peaceful and kind marriage. They invited us to go with them to the wild beach which was on the way. There we had some picnic all together and then we took a rest. Great time! Then they left us near to Santander and we decided to spend the night on the beach:)

"The lovers" - René Magritte

"The lovers"

René Magritte

René Magritte was born in 1898 in Belgium and he is one of the representatives of surrealism. His pictures are full of magical realism and as recipient can just suppose what René Magritte wanted to say us when he was painting.

I have chosen the picture titled "The lovers" becouse I consider that picture as really thought-provocking. 

In the foreground we see the woman and the man kissing eachother. Which is suprising they are wearing shawls ( so we can not be sure that we see woman and the man not for example two women). This fact can have various meanings. One of them (in my opinion the best one) is that love or desire is universal and it is not important whoose face we will see in the picture. The second option is that the lovers hide some feelings, facts from they life or love, as a feeling, is sightless and we don't see or we don't want to see one's faults.

The light is coming from left-side of the picture and it is catching on two heads in shawls. In the picture we can see one more light's effect: is the use of repleted colours as red and blue. Red can represent desire and love and blue can represent silence, water or life. 

It is quite interesting how the man is dressing. He is wearing black jacket, black tie and white shirt. In many pictures of René Magritte men are wearing that outfit. Meybe in that fact  the author wants to put himself in the picture?

René Magritte painted the second picture, titled the same and with two lovers in shawls. What feeling can be reprsented here?

Camino de Santiago part II

Next day we started our walk from San Sebastian. I remember that during the night was a big storm and it was raining all the time and that's way in the morning was quite cool. But even as we saw at 6am people were surfing already and running :) That day was really hard. We walked again 24 kilometers  and my feet started to rebell. Oh, I've mentioned what kind of shoes did I take with me? Ofc, just sneakers which wasn't good option for that kind of walking! My ankles moved all the time so when we were in the mountains I could twist it in any moment! The only thing was that everybody admired me that I was still alive :) Those mountains in the north of Spain are really tough. It's not only becouse you have to climb and go down but also becouse they are full of clay, streams etc. So remember to buy climbing boots becouse otherwise you will suffer like I did. 

Although I had those small problems it was one of the most active, interesting weeks in my live becouse I really have to fight with myself. We've met really nice people like one family in Guernica which gave us a place to sleep (we didn't want to pay 25euro for albergue so we just wanted to ask them if we can put a tent near to their house so they invite us to their house, gave us a food etc.) During that one week we noticed that people no matter what we use to say nowadays enjoy to help eachother:)