Avis, Hertz, Europcar, Sixt,...

.. Budget, Atesa, National, pepecar, Niza Cars, autoeurope, Opodo, carbookers are all the same big shit! And there are lots more. I'm really sick and tired of their "offers" and horribly designed websites with this incredibly stupid search engines that could have been pogrammed by six-year-olds on a Nintendo and their mini tiny fuzzy terms and conditions gently hidden back behind.

So, this is the thing if you want to rent a car in Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany or Austria in the middle of winter: You are going to die. Yes, if you don't have what is generally known as a big cash account you and your family will die on your way to your winter holiday. All the big names of rental car shit out there would actually let you drive away in a brand new car without winter tires as long as you don't specifically ask for them and that means of course paying for that! A lot! In France - for example - this would be the rent of a small car. And surely you would have to order a big car because they won't fit winter tires to a small one. Don't try to take a cheap alternative. You won't be able to get any extras as long as you pay big money for that without ever knowing how much it is because they won't tell you before you are actually standing right in front of the car.

Oh, lovely information by the way - if you already wondered. Snow in Spain? Snow in France? What's the matter here? Well, did you know that tires are actually the most important part of a car. Indeed, they are right in the middle of the street and your car and mostly the one and only responsibility to keep you on the road. Summer tires are made of special rubber-mixtures to work with high temperatures and they actually loose most of the grip if temperatures fall below 7 degrees. Interesting, isn't it?!

Now here is my advice. Try to get one of those offers. I mean, the really cheap ones. Get the highest insurance option without any own risk. Drive along a beautiful road. Enjoy your day, roll the car down a cliff, say the hand-brake was broke and walk away smoothly.

Camp Nou.

Past weekend my dad came to Barcelona for a short visit and this is what we did. We attended the 257. unofficial very unknown competition of miniature photography at its best. Magnify the following image and you will know what I mean. :)


Of course we went to Camp Nou to watch FC Barcelona vs. Getafe CF. Camp Nou is Barcelona's famous stadium. It has around 100.000 sitting places and is dedicated to good old football only and therefore Europe's biggest stadium for this purpose. The atmoshpere is sheer amazing. It is like a monstrous version of a theatre. People of all ages sitting side by side watching how their team is doing and supporting it with all they have.



As you can see from the following picture Getafe CF was well organized and at the end it was no more than 1:1. Anyway, it's been a great evening and an unforgettable experience.


There were hardly any security issues and we could even stay a little while after the game for a personal tour through the stadium:

The challenge!

3 times air line from Amsterdam to Zurich.
2 brave Austrian men.
1 tiny Spanish rental car.

It was back in spring this year when a friend of mine and me drove 240km by the beautiful blue Danube from Traun in Upper Austria to Vienna by bike in less than 36 hours. That sounds not too bad you may think at first. But reconsider the fact of two quarter-century old more pencil pusher than athlete kinda guys fighting against stupidly heavy rain showers, amazingly friendly old women offering free vine and lots and lots of candy bars to keep themselves alive. For sure it was a lovely trip. :-)

So, the next ass-flattening challenge is about to be conquered. On the 21st of December we are going to drive all the way from Barcelona to Traun by car. This may be around 1600 to 1800km, depending on which highways we are going to take. There is no limitation of time here, except for Christmas Eve maybe, but as far as I know my colleague and myself we are going to get that thing done as fast as possible. :-)

The countdown starts now..

When I hit the rails again...

Well, if you are following this blog occasionally you probably already know that I like trains. So, I didn't hesitate to do another asskicking trip by train. This time I went from Vienna to Barcelona which covers a distance of approx. 1800 kilometers. I can say that the connection has been really great. I got from Vienna to Zurich, from Zurich to Geneva and from Geneva to Montpellier Saint Roche without any remarkable thing. But then? Disaster! For some reason none could sell me both ticket and seat reservation for the train from Montpellier to Barcelona except for train staff in Montpellier itself. So I had 36 minutes or so to find the counter, buy all the stuff and get back to the train. Unfortunately the train was full by the time I got there. What else could have happened if I was not able to buy the stuff before. So, I got myself a special acceptance card in order to use any free seat if there is one. Great! I have been on tour since 18 hours or so when I got on-board. Around 10 minutes outside of Montpellier the train died down. After that it tried to cover the distance by many, many, many smoking pauses. For both people and the train. Over one and a half hours later we got another diesel-powered horse to take us through a stunning ride along the coast.

I was totally wasted when we finally arrived in Barcelona but in fact, I'm here and I will be here for the next six months minimum and by now I can just say it is truly amazing.

See you soon with more news. I've got to to some Spanish-homework now. :-)

[baɾθeˈlona]

As you probably already know, Barcelona is in Spain. Oh yes, it is in fact the second largest city of Spain and has about 1.6 million inhabitants in the actual center of the city. It is surrounded by suburbs which all together include more than 3 million people. Moreover it is the capitol of the independent community of Catalonia and houses the seat of the Catalan government. Barcelona is a major economic center with one of Europe's principal Mediterranean ports.
Facts and numbers would have never convinced me to go there so I decided to check out what's some kind of important for me in particular.

Ok, let's start again.

Remember that Barcelona has a port, which means it is in some kind of way connected to the sea, right? This is good!

Remember that there are lots of people in Barcelona, so nightlife can't be that bad, right? This is good too! To be in accord with that, Barcelona is actually the home of a bunch of my favourite music creating people, The Pinker Tones. Visit their homepage and/or myspace! That is just awesome! :-)

Another criteria is the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. It's a huge university located slightly out of the city which is just fine and their computer science department deals with the topics I'm doing in Vienna. This is perfect! :-)

A great little adventure!

If you are reading my posts carefully (I hope you really do ;-) you will know that I have been to Nice two weeks ago. I was visiting Sarah, she is currently there for five months to do some university lectures and of course to collect some experiences of living in a whole new world.
As a matter of a fact I'm currently not able to fly because of some unfortunate illness so I had to go there by train which took me almost 21 hours to get there and 20 hours to get back to Vienna again. Here are some impressions of this adventure:

I needed to get up at 5 in the morning in order to catch the first train that would take me to Venice Mestre, the first stop:

Unfortunately this train got about one hour late during the journey so I missed all of the following connections. That sucked! As one is not even able to board a train in Italy without a reservation I had to get myself new ones. And for sure I had to find new connections first. After one hour waiting and struggling in Mestre I finally got on board of a really nice Eurostar train that took me to my next stop. Milano Centrale:

You can't even call this thing a train station anymore. That's a train metropolis and probably the biggest building I have ever been inside.

Again I needed to get together all of my Italian skills to get new connections and reservations that would fit my plans. Well, the travel assistances at all Italian train stations where I have been acted pretty cool. As they recognized the delay of my first train I didn't have to pay for another ticket at all.
At this moment I wasn't that confident anymore about arriving at Nice on the same day. It realized that it took me around 13 hours to get from Vienna to Milano so I already started thinking of staying at one place and waiting for the next day and new opportunities to come. But the travel assistant was pretty sure that I can make it if there will be no more delays and so I boarded the next Eurostar train heading for Genova hoping for a smooth and of course a fast ride.

Genova was just a short stop but there was enough time to grab something to eat and to watch a statue of 'Cristoforo Colombo' in front of the station. The following train took me to Ventimiglia, a small Italian town near the border of Italy and France. It was 23:32 when I got there, almost 19 hours of overall travel time.

The train from Ventimiglia to Nice was the worst of all... First it had a delay of 5 minutes. Followed by 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30. By the time we finally left Ventimiglia at 00:20 or something I should have been to Nice already. This sucking train was so slow that I probably could have been riding a turtle much faster. I've been totally wasted when I finally got to Nice. 20 hours and 33 minutes of overall travel time...

There is nothing else to say about than to quote famous Michael 'Air' Jordan: 'Why drive, when you can fly?" ;-)

See you soon with lots of pictures from Nice!

Yours, Max