It was a fantastic party that we celebrated with our new friends in Valencia. Apart from the fresh “haring” (Dutch raw fish) that Miriam’s parents brought for us, Mia made her Asian interpretation of paella!

We took some photos, but unfortunately I forgot to re-adjust the settings of my camera, so the quality is not quite good.

Dear friends,

As you probably have heard, Mia and I have recently moved home. If you haven’t heard yet, you can see a photo of our rooftop terrace above.

To create a bit more ambiance on that rooftop terrace we are inviting you for our Housewarming Party on Saturday, June 13.

Our new home is just around the corner from the old one.

You are welcome from 5pm onwards for a drink and a bite. We will not be serving an x-course dinner, but there will be plenty of F & B!
We have no special wishes as we basically have everything already double (if not triple) , just come to enjoy an afternoon/evening with friends! Of course if you would like to bring something to drink, we are the last to decline that!

Please RSVP before Thursday, June 11 noon time so we know for how many people we can prepare. You can use the form at the bottom of this page, under the map.

We are looking forward welcoming you to our new home on Saturday, June 13!

Mia & Piet

You can use the navigation in the map to best find the way from your home to ours. Metro stop Benimaclet is 5-10mins walk away from us, tram stop Primado Reig is a 3min walk as are the bus stops of line 8, 11, 89 and 90. Parking of cars is a general pain in the butt and coming with one is not advisable anyway because of the (amount of) booze that you will likely consume!

[for privacy reasons map is deleted]

Nit de Foc is held on the night of the 18th onto the 19th of March and is a 20 minutes fireworks show in the riverbed of the Turia.

We had chosen a great spot near our home, basically one bridge west of where the show was held. We went there with two classmates of Mia with whom we also spent the early part of the evening in a nice restaurant very near our home.

It was absolutely amazing to see so many people, literally thousands and thousands, on the streets, bridges, everywhere, staying up for this yearly fireworks show.

Because my best friend Inge is arriving tomorrow from The Netherlands for a long weekend visit, we decided to go home, but the party here in Valencia is not finished for basically the rest of the night. And tomorrow will be the crema: burning of all the more than 300 fallas that are spread out over town, with at around 1am the crema of the falla on Plaza del Ayuntamiento followed by yet another fireworks show…

The photos below are just very few impressions, underneath them also a video.

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Yesterday Mia and I saw our first bullfight ever and it was a spectacular event!

During Las Fallas there are bullfights every day in Plaza de Toros and we were lucky enough to get tickets to a fight where matador David Fandila or “El Fandi” was performing his arts!

We arrived early at the arena, because these days with the Fallas things tend to get very busy. Earlier today we planned to visit the Mascleta, but thousands and thousands of people had the same idea, so we could not see anything.

Although I bought seats for the sector-sol of the arena, we were sitting in the shade, probably because it is still early in the year and the sun has not reached the top of the sky yet.

It seems that also the Spanish people don’t want to miss a second of the bullfights as everyone was in on time…

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The Plaza de Toros was built in 1850 and currently seats almost 13,000 people.

The Spanish style of bullfighting, the corrida de toros (literally running of bulls) or fiesta brava (the ferocious festival) takes place in 3 stages:

1. tercio de varas
2. tercio de banderillas
3. tercio de muerte

Of course the bullfight is most dangerous for the matador, but – as we saw yesterday – also in the tercio de banderillas accidents do happen and can be very painful. When a banderillero that was part of the cuadrilla (entourage) of Juli‚àö¬∞n L‚àö‚â•pez “El Juli” tried to plant the two banderillas on the bull, his vest was caught by a tip of the bull’s horn and it ended in misery for the guy. We actually thought he was dead instantly, but we read today in the newspaper that he survived the incident; although barely…
You can find a great photo-series here.

The first fight with matador Finito de Cordoba was not great; he needed to long time to kill the bull and the audience was not amused, which resulted in lots of “boo’s”.

However the rest of the show and especially the second performances of El Juli and El Fandi were absolutely amazing!

El Juli was spectacular by turning 360 degrees with the bull following him and El Fandi started his tercio de muerte by sitting on his knees while the bull stormed at him!

We took quite some photos and you can find the entire gallery here.

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We have to admit and can confirm that a Mascleta definitely has more ear-deafening fireworks than anything we have ever heard in China!

Difficult to describe:
Thousands of people were gathered on the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (the City Council Square in Valencia). I had read somewhere that people would start gathering from 13:30hr onwards and when we got there a around that time it was already pretty packed.

A few “warning”-bangs scared the hell out of the crowd and helped in building up anticipation. Music was played and on the supreme spot, the balcony of the City Council, we could see people dancing.

At exactly 14:00hr the fireworks were lit, the choreographed explosions series took off and for the next 5 minutes people could just watch in awe! It was almost impossible to speak unless by yelling into each others ears.

And at 14:05hr it all ended with a grand series of incredible loud bangs and thunders up in the sky followed by a big applause from the people.

Then it was all over and people went all back to where they came from. We headed for lunch to a little tapas place opposite of the Mercado Central: deep-fried shrimps and sardines in oil with olives, delicious. Mia finally starts to like this type of Spanish food (all the bread-based tapas such as montaditos, bocadillos and pinxtos are not her favorites), so that is great as we will have to sample lots of them!

Below some of the photos I took and 2 videos I shot. The videos actually give only a tiny glimpse of the event as you cannot hear the deep base thunders that were constantly being fired off…

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While having a look at my Woopra stats two nights ago, I came across an article that was recently published in CityWeekend Beijing, about hikes on the Great Wall. A nice piece, although I was interviewed by telephone and then some things do not come across. One of these things that got into the magazine completely “upside down” is

Start your Jiankou hike from the back side (hou Jiankou). There is a little parking lot marking the start. The descent brings you down about 500 meters down the road.

The descent obviously has to be an ascent, since you’re climbing up to the Wall. After all the Great Wall mostly follows the ridges of the mountains, not the valleys…

Anyways a nice enough piece that I can add to my “press-portfolio”

This morning I got an sms from Mia that she was enjoying the Modern Sky Music Festival (their website looks absolute crap in all 3 browsers, typical Chinese to fabricate sth like this!) Last year I visited this festival too and it always have been a lot of fun!

On this side of the world I went to book our Spanish language courses. As said before I will start on Monday and today I found out that I only will have 1 other co-student, a Scottish lady. Because the morning schedule is pretty full, the first week or weeks we will have class from 4-8pm, so that saves me from some waking up early!

I also went looking for a hospital for my thrombosis and by accident I found a great clinic! They speak 3 words of English and together with my 3 words of Spanish we manage to have a comprehensible conversation.
I saw a really nice doctor and he seems to know what he is talking about!
He wants me to do a very complete bloodtest tmrw morning as well as a new doppler (also called echo or ultrasound). Then afterwards when I get the results I have to come back to him.
He said that it is very very difficult to establish the cause of the thrombosis. And he mentioned that there are two ways of treating a thrombosis: taking a relatively low dosis of warfarin for the rest of yr life OR going in with the “heavy machinery” and try to get rid of it. He wants to see the results of the doppler and bloodtests first to be able to say anything that makes sense, but after my last doppler in Beijing I actually don’t count on the 2nd treatment… After all they said then that the entire vein in my right leg was collapsed!

So tmrw morning at 8am I have to be at the hospital, not allowed to have eaten or drunk ANYTHING! I can brush my teeth though, hahaha! Will also don’t drink any alcohol tonight and go to bed early. The clinic is on the other side of the park, so that’s close by.

Tomorrow afternoon the movers come to clear out Amparo’s stuff. It will be empty then, but I can finally start making a “home” for Mia and myself. We will also try to change the beds around, so I can finally sleep in the bedroom instead of the livingroom, which probably also gives it a more homey feeling.
As things are looking now, Mia will apply for her visa in about two weeks and when it is approved she can join me here around November 15… Let’s hope for the best!

On Sunday, August 3, yup next week already, it’s my birthday.

There are a lot of changes for most of us coming up in the (near) future and probably this time next year we’re all spread out over the globe…

Therefore this year I decided that I would like to celebrate my birthday with my friends!

I have arranged the sun deck at Saddle Cantina in the new Nali Mall, just South of the 3.3 building. They also have other customers, but we can keep the sun deck till around 6pm, so I would like to ask you to please come on time otherwise I’ll be sitting on the sun deck by myself the whole afternoon…

There will be plenty of chilled white wine, snack platters and perhaps some cocktails to top it off, after that it’s every man and woman for him/herself

I would like to ask you to RSVP, to give me a good idea what to order. You can do this by using the form below the address details.

I look forward to see you on Sunday!

Piet

Where: Saddle Cantina’s Sundeck

Time: 3pm

Address: 81 Sanlitun North Rd., Nali Patio East, 2F, Sanlitun, Inside the New Nali Patio, South of 3.3 (三里屯北路81号北京那里花园内西侧二层小楼)

Telephone: 5208 6005

ISH is a ‘troupe’ that performs integrating disciplines from the street and club circuit. They were invited by the Dutch Embassy to perform during the cultural festival in the October Holiday. At the festival there was a Holland Village to celebrate 35 years diplomatic relations between The Netherlands and China.

While on the Great Wall the group did quite a couple of cool stunts and they even did a “promo-video” for Beijing Day Trips. Please have a look: