One (party-) night in Marseille

This weekend I made short-trip to Marseille - to see again my friend Lia who I met in New Zealand - and go to the 'Telerama Dub Festival' which was on Saturday night :)

After arriving and checking in at the 'hostel' I made my way up to the 'Notre Dame de la Garde' which is a big cathedral up a hill close to the 'vieux port' at Marseille - and it offers a beautiful view on Marseille an the sea.

Image-Fail, there is two times 'Notre Dame' on the Scenic Picture ;)

three kittens are enjoying the sun :)

 Later-on I went to the 'Docks de Suds' where the party was taking place - and where I met with Lia and her friends =)

Unfortunately I have neither a good picture of the party, nor a picture of our reunion - so I leave you with this short video of O.B.F. :)

Closing Session of O.B.F. at 5 am - a time when I already was sleeping ;)

The sunday I spent very tired, due to the crucial check-out time of 10am..

But I discovered the great public bike-renting system, which worked really good - and therefore I went along the coastside with various stops and enjoyed the scenery while doing some bike-tour :)

one of the islands in the background is the former 'quarantine-island' where all the boats had to stop before coming to Marseille, to check if they had the 'black death' or other diseases aboard.

<--- My last hours in Marseille, I went to the 'Christmas Market' which is located at the 'Vieux Port' and had a 'hot vine chaud' (it is - of course - not as good as 'Glühwein' but still not bad) ;)

Here on the right you can see a funny construction at the 'Vieux Port' - where they built a big roof which is working as a mirror and so you can see everything from a funny perspective :D --->

Finally, it is true what wikitravel tells, Marseille is a big Meltpot of a wide variety of different cultural backgrounds and cultures. I did not go to the northern part, where it is also not recommended for tourists, but in the parts where I stayed, I did not feel quite unsafe etc. For me I would definitly recommend to anybody to visit the city, and go by bike throughout the city - espacially in summertimes it is probably even more beautiful with its beaches :)

Visit of Jonas

Today I am very happy to share some memories of the visit of Jonas :)

Thank you for coming here and spending a nice time :D

the first thing we did - was to drive to the sea, which was already quite cold - but very beautiful

On the weekend we went to Île Sainte-Marguerite - which is an island about 15 mins boat ride from Cannes - and very beautiful. There are no cars allowed on the island, and it has a wide variety of animals and plants, and is luckily part of an environment conservation programm.

King of the World - Jonas is happy ;)

Basically we spent the most of our time cooking, talking and having a good time at the beaches of this area :)

Thank you for your visit - and hope to see you soon! :)

Monday-Afternoon-Tour

After a more or less exhausting and interesting morning at Eurecom, I decided to spend my afternoon with going to some new places, and discover new mountain roads :)

After leaving Mougins, I went over Valbonne to Châteauneuf-Grasses where I stopped first to have a short lookaround in the "old city".

It is a beautiful small town overlooking the area from a little hill and with beautiful small 'roads' next to the town hall :)

 

 

all the things you can see from the 'Mairie' lookout point

 

 To go further up the mountains, I chose to go towards Gourdon, whose beautful castle can already be seen from far, because it is on a high cliff. The road is not very busy and beautiful to ride, sometimes right at the edge of the cliff, where it goes down for a few hundred meters.

Gourdon is also called: 'Nid d’Aigle'

beautiful mountain roads - perfect to ride with a motorbike :)

After visiting the small city (only about 400 people live there), and having a café and a crèpe au sucre, I went on, all the way down again and finished with my last short stop in Tourettes-sur-Loup. 

stunning scnery from the highest point of the trip, the château de Gourdon

 

 

Because of the time flying, and the rising darkness, I decided to keep on driving and finish the roundtrip with going over Roquefort-les-Pins and then back home again.

The highest point of the journey was Gourdon with about 760m height - with all the breaks to visit stuff it took me the whole afternoon, and I enjoyed it very much =)

Explore the area with Lisa =)

So now, as I am left alone in this far-away-from-home country, I decided to spend some more time with Lisa, my new best friend :D

Except of cleaning here and gitting rid of some sticker of her former owners, we did two trips on the weekend =)

Lisa on the road :)

The first one took us to Grasse, where I got to know twelve of the other Eurecom students (the trip was organized via a big blue social network) =)

After first beeing lost, because of the others having huge problems with the SNCF I finally found them in the old town in Grasse. 

During the day we visited some museums, learned how to make parfumes, and how to become a 'nose' (a parfumier), and I got to know the others. Most of them took the french intensive courses for the last weeks, so I had to catch up a little bit (espacially with the names ;-))

Today I started with some admistrative stuff (french burocracy is amazingly complicated ;-)) and then searched for a good snorkeling place not too far away. Unfortunately, today on a weekend all the streets were pretty much blocked and it was hard and annoying to reach my 20km far destination. 

Théoule-sur-Mer, Cannes, Antibes et la mer :)

When I came to "Point de L'Aiguille" a scenic place right just where the coast road makes a sharp corner I found pretty much nothing except the very nice view and a small parking lot.

To come to the seaside, I had to climb down for about 10 minutes and reached a very nice stone-beach with a big red rock, which I think gives the place its name (?). 

small red stone, little beach, and maybe a third of the big red stone on the right side ;-)

 

Thanks to my late start and the traffic the sun had almost left the place, so I just went in for a quick snorkel. When I first put my mask under the water I was really flashed, because of the excellent sight, the clear and little turquoise-green water and - excemptional - the fish I saw! They were the same as in South-East Asia! Even if the water temperature is probably at least 10 degrees less in winter, they still can live there, and after our last diving experience in 'Lake Konstanz' I really was not expecting to see so many & beautiful fish =)

little snorkeling video ;) 

So now I am a little exhausted and running out of words, tomorrow the "real life" is going to start at Eurecom, and I am looking forward to all the new challenges, experiences and people to meet :)

Take care everyone! :)

PS: Claas was right, it is possible to see the sea from the campus :D

Byebye guys! Have a good trip home =)

On our last whole day together, we did a little tour to Antibes to go swimming in the sea and lay down on the beach, and lateron went to Cannes to do some more sightseeing. By chance we ran into this big regatta which was taking place there with loads of big old sailing ships - quite impressive to watch them. Afterwards we just had another café in the town before the girls kept on beeing sporty and cycled back (whereas I was taking the motorbike ;)) :)

 

Now after a week in my new home - all my friends from Germany have left me :(

Thanks to you guys and I hope you had a nice stay here as well =)

last & first pool session with the four of us :)

On Friday morning we had a last breakfast together before Silja, Fabi and Magda went to the Airport - where Silja & Fabi took their plane back home. Magdas flight was in the evening, so we went again to Nice to do some sightseeing and drink some café =) 

We proved, (what I first couldn't believe), that there are some places even in Nice where you can find un café avec un verre d'eau (glas of water) and a nice place to sit for one euro which is half or even less compared to the very touristic places there ;-)

So we kept on walking and trying to avoid the big souvenir shops (which you can never do), and had our lunch finally at a touristic part of the beach right in front of the oldtown ;-)

A sad but impressive part of the visit was, when we where walking in the park where all the teddybears, candles, flags, cards and furthermore where layed to remember the victims of the attacks on the promenade. It was a total change of mood within the step we took into the park. Everybody was just so respektfull and quiet, nobody talked anymore or took pictures, no laughs and just people remembering and watching all these memories of (their) beloved ones on the ground. 

niceas civitas fidelissima in memoriam - a writing on the traffic island between the park and the promenande..

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So - because I don't want to leave you with these melanchonic thoughts - here is another picture from our pool sessions - I hope you stay save, and I am already looking forward to my next visitors =)

Another Journey

Another Journey

This time, my "journey" took me to Mougins, a town between Cannes and Nice at the Côte d'Azur :-)

Martha and me had quite a long journey with Lisa, my new Motorbike, in the car down all the way to Roquefort les Pines where we stayed for two nights.

Lisa finally fit in Ludo after removing the backseats and putting some additonal haltering stuff in the car (thanks to Max, Michi, Manu & Martha for the help (so many many names starting with an M)) :D

some parking lot - somewhere in the nowhere in the Alpes, and Martha had (for sure) to take a selfie ;-)

On our way we made a quick stop in Italy to jump in the refreshing sea, and finally made it at 9 pm to our Couchsurfing Hosts (thanks a lot to them!)

somewhere in the Alpes on our way to Italy & France

On our first whole day in France, we visited our friends who where travelling all the way down from Munich to Mougins by bike (watch out for Siljas Blog, which described all the journey with some nice stories and pictures!), and went to the seaside with them - and in the evening in some Irish Pub for having a very expensive first beer there =)

 So finally, yesterday I moved in my new home in Mougins of our very very nice renter and got to know Lucas, who will study along with me for the next semester at Eurecom and furthermore is my flatmate in our flat here in Mougins.
Today, we had a nice breakfast with everybody and additional Magda who finished her exams yesteray, went out to have some fun, and jumped right in the plane, without even driving home in between :D
 

unfortunately someone had to take the picture, so poor Fabi is missing :(

Today we went on (after having a quick refresh in the pool) with a visit of Mougin which has quite a lot of beautiful galleries, ateliers and a very nice old town on the top of a little hill =)

the beautiful scenery out of the "photography museum" of Mougins =)

looks like the Carribean - but is still in Mougins

 




So to everybody: feel free to text me if you want to drop by for a visit, I will be here until February :D

Welcome à l'Europe :)

After almost seven month the last part of my travel ended in France where I visited Martha and her Aupair family :)

Mont St. Michel :)

Big happy loud LGBT demo @Rennes :)

Unfortunally I didn't take to many pics in France, but we had a good time with the kids and the family, french cheese&wine, did a bike tour, watched some NCIS episodes, drove a lot around in the town to drop and pick up children and so on and so on ... ;)

Finally on our last day we die some garden work, and after the kids were in bed, we had a good last dinner :)

Right now I am sitting in the ICE on the last bit on my way to Munich.

I crossed the Rhine already with the TGV, and now I am confused to unterstand everybody - and started to talk to the 'Deutsche Bahn' staff in English (because the train was late as always ;))

I am looking forward to see all my friends and family again - but I am sad to end my travels and return to a normal life at the same time..

Same same as my travels, this blog will pause until my next journey - which will come for sure ;)

Thanks for reading and hope to see you all again! :)

Rhine Bridge between Strasbourgh and Kehl - touchdown in Germany ;)

Benito & Kerstin - Wieder da