From Aires (Portugal) to Heilbronn (Germany)

After two very enjoyable but not so restful weeks here we go heading back to our future in Germany.

We are all set to leave at dawn, the car is all packed to the roof and everyone is preparing for the departure.

And here is our adventure (realtime pictures here).

• Travel time: 29h00
• Distance covered: 2500km
• Gas: 129€
• Toll: 105,10€
• Hotel: 48€
• Food/Parking/Extras: 56,25€

RoadBook (GMT+1):

2009.1.2
08:00 – Time to go!
13:00 – Been driving the N-V for a couple of hours after leaving Portugal through the A6 (Badajoz). Time to swap driver and rest a bit before stopping for a lunch break. We are 130km from Madrid.
15:00 – Lunch break. We stopped just after Madrid for food and bathroom. We took a wrong turn in Madrid but quickly got back to the A-2. We need the break and some caffeine to make it to Lloret de Mar before 22:00 for a good night sleep at the Hotel.
15:30 – Back on the road…
20:00 – 4th bathroom stop… I am soooooo beat up. Joy will drive us to the hotel…
22:00 – Hotel Helios at Lloret de Mar, so far so good (I had to pay in advance?!) as long as nobody breaks into my car (parked in the public underground garage)…
23:00 – Quick “dinner” sponsored by my dear mommy (THANK YOU!)
23:59 – Shower and bed…

2009.1.3
09:30 – Buenos dias muchachos!!! Desayuno at 07:30… Was at 09:30… The park makes 12h at 10:00… Damn!
11:00 – Made it for the park. Took some nice pictures at the beach and here we go again…
13:30 – Lunch in France, Lapalme service area.
17:00 – Break to switch driver, buy a snack and drink a cappuccino. Still over 800km to go… It is getting harder and the sun is now setting. We were stalled for 30 minutes at the toll in France…
20:30 – Dinner at Bourg, Jasseron. Getting closer to the German border.
23:30 – Stopped for cappuccino. 120km to Strasbourg and then we enter Deutschland… Finally!!

2009.1.4
02:05 – At “home”, we did not miss it at all. Time to rest. I promise a follow up tomorrow.

Follow up
We woke up at 12:30, I feel like I am in a different world, I feel tired, sick and depressed. I unloaded the car thinking that I will have to move all this and much more in a couple of weeks to the new apartment.
After lunch I am crashing in bed trying to overcome the initial clash… this place, the weather, the moving and all the stuff still to resolve before moving to Stuttgart… Today I felt like quitting, but we were in worst situations in the past, so I will suck it up and move on…

From my vacations I bring some good memories:

• Staying with my family, laughing, talking, hugging, sharing, remembering, dreaming.
• Visiting my grandfather.
• Enjoying pure and inspiring friends (C’).
• Hanging out with our best friends (“Migas” and Cards ).
• Meeting my friends, the few remaining… from work at CBV (and my youth) and my MTB buddies.
• Having time to love Joy.

 
I still missed a couple of friends but I never forget and there will always be a next time.

I hope to keep in touch with you all, you are the only reason I look back.

From Heilbronn (Germany) to Aires (Portugal)

Here is our plan for tomorrow. We’ll start when I get off work at around 16:00.

Route Path:

• Pforzheim, Germany.
• Bordeaux, France.
• Aires, Portugal.

Distance: 2300km

Time: 23h (driving time).

So here we are after another week full of ups and downs, we are leaving for some quality time with our friends and family before we come back to (finally!) a normal life. A (rented) house in Stuttgart, a job, kindergarten, language school, etc…

And here is our adventure (realtime pictures here):

• Time spent: 26h00
• Distance covered: 2300km
• Gas money: 143,70€
• Toll money: 56,60€
• Extras: 33,15€

RoadBook (GMT+1):

2008.12.19
15:00 – Time to go! All packed and ready. We have fuel for 400km… Let’s roll…
15:20 – The girls have to pee…

16:00 – A5 heading to Strasburg, packed 2-lane highway.

17:00 – A36 entering France! A bit rainy before leaving Germany but it is dry here. Got a 3G connection from OrangeF.

20:00 – Trying to stay below the speed limit we drove 3 hours in the rain with some short periods of dense fog. The little one fell asleep for one hour and we’re feeling good. We are now eating in a highway rest area. Everyone speaks French! .

21:00 – Got off A6 and we have now around 200km in national roads (70 and 90km/h limit). Caffeine levels are ok. The little one is watching a movie and ready to sleep. Joy is driving, I am writing .

23:00 – Finally back on the highway, we roll on the A71 after spending 2 hours behind trucks. My turn to drive now.

2008.12.20
03:00 – Ah… Big strech and two times out of the highway as told by the navigation sexy voice. Stopped for caffeine and gas… We are still in the A89 but we’ll soon be passing Bordeaux and then heading south into Spain.

09:00 – It was a looooong ride through the whole night. I am done. We stopped for food, in Spain, 300km before Madrid. The sun shines and the weather is now clear, much safer than the fog we got during the night.

11:00 – Got an hour and a half of semi-sleep and we are now getting closer to Madrid. And we can read 188km to the Portuguese border. It is all covered in fog we can’t see sh*t… My turn to drive.

14:30 – Stop for quick lunch in Fundao. It is hot and sunny. Next stop in Setubal.

17:30 – What a hell! This is not Christmas, it’s Summer, 18°C!? Drove the last 3 hours in the desperate mood of finally getting my ass off this car! Enough is enough and we made it safelly I’ll be home hugging my parents pretty soon… I wonder how am I getting all the way back to Heilbronn… But we’ll worry about that in 2 weeks time.

Going Home for Christmas – 2008

We-re going home for a couple of weeks of vacations (please be real vacations this time!!).

We’ll be driving… it will be an interesting adventure and we’ll be posting updates to the blog every hour!!

I will post some detailed information tomorrow. Now I have to go to bed, I have been fighting the flu since Sunday.

Geburtstag

00:00 – My wife and daughter sing me Happy Birthday! I love them, they make me happy.

07:45 – I wake up late, skip shaving. Take a quick shower and think: “This will be over very soon.”

08:15 – I sit in my car, had no breakfast, no caffeine and can’t manage to configure the iPhone bluetooth, damn, time to go!. At least the garage remote is now working (I disassembled/fixed it last night). On my way to work, no traffic jam, everything is covered in snow, just perfect and white! I dream the whole way, make it in less than one hour.

09:15 – No parking, I parked on the visitors parking space (I hope the car is still here when I leave later tonight).

10:00 – Jeez, when will this be over. I think my face shows what I feel. I feel like… this isn’t going to work. When will this be over?

12:45 – Time for lunch after an “Excel”lent morning of work. I wonder what’s good to eat. I could eat a small farm animal. Had fish and boiled potatoes. I ate a Magnum, I deserved it, and It is now the high point of the day.

13:15 – Back to work, I wonder when this will be over. This is not the way I should be spending my (birth)days.

14:00 – Jeez, what am I supposed to do? Maybe I will leave at 16p.m.

16:00 – Still here, I will leave at 17p.m.

17:00 – I am leaving… in a moment, something important came up.

18:00 – Time to go. The car is still here, I feel relief. I sit in the car and try to configure the iPhone and can’t make it work (while driving)… Better leave it alone. No 60-euro-refuel-damn-oil-prices-day. It is not snowing today. No traffic jams. I’m thinking there’s no way I will keep this for much longer, I plan my weekend and make a quick assessment on the past events, it was a week full of decisions and finally I can see some good in the future ahead (not sure where or when though…). It will be a nice evening with my girls and I feel excited about tomorrow’s event.

19:30 – I made it home. The remote still works like a charm (I must be some kind of engineer).

20:00 – Ordered chinese. Heard from my dearest friend and shared my best with my girls. Glühwein for a good night sleep.

22:00 – Packing for tomorrow. We’ll drive 3 hours till the mountains for the Christmas event, I should be a blast. I am really excited for my daughter, she will love the snow! And the Spa… let’s see…

23:00 Time’s up. I made it, I am now 33!

PS: I thank my family for being there for me even at a distance. I thank my friends that never forget, they are better than I am.

December Rain

As I usually say “people get used to just about anything”, I am no different and although it is a big effort to drive 160km every day I can now do it without much thought. Sometimes driving at more than 160km/h I wonder for how much longer I am able to put up with all this situation…

As if my life was not already a mess something else came along and there is a possibility for another adventure, another beginning, another place… I don’t know… I will wait for further developments before getting into more detail.

And now for something completely new… December! It is my favorit month, not sure why though, because I am usually depressed the whole time, especially on my birthday. But it is usually when I take some time off to be with my family, to be warm by the fireplace making the yearly reports and mitigating all the problems in my mind. I also compile a list with next year’s resolutions (coming up in a future post).

Last year I took a flight home and spent two weeks with my family before coming back to an uncertain future here in Germany. This year with a secured job here and coming closer to a normal life maybe I will go home in a driving adventure through 4 countries and give some love back to my close family and friends.

This post comes after some time of silence, not because I had nothing to write about but because I have been ashamed of my lack of motivation to keep up with my training schedule.

I wrote this on my iphone during lunch, hurray for technology freaks and the northern Europe economical power!

Ah, here is a nice bowl of Cappuccino to get me through the rainy afternoon…

Back To Work

After some days off waiting for the new project it finally came through and after a morning run, there I went for the 80 km drive, the first day introductions, the first lunch with the colleagues, the first lectures on the job, the first questions and doubts, the first 80 km drive back home and the first going to bed at 22h…

Let the work come to me, and soon enough the 80 km will turn into 40 km and I can go to bed at 23h…

Goal of the week: Going for a run before work, at least 3 times! (one down, two to go)

 

Running Log - 20081117

Das Autobahn

Since I left a lot of (essential) stuff back in Munich, the first night I spent here, I slept on what I have baptized as a “Alpenüberquerung” mattress.  The room hadn’t been occupied for a while, so even with the heating on to the maximum it was a bit chilly and I had no sheets or anything warm to cover my delicate self… after taking the bath towels for a pillow I put on my jogging clothing and covered myself with my snowboarding jacket… that did the trick for the rest of the night. 

The following nights I had my daughter’s Hello Kitty sheets to make me more comfortable and stay in touch with the children in me… But the problem remained with the mattress and by the fourth night I felt I had been beaten up in my sleep and I decided to go to Munich and get the missing stuff.

Looked up the rental location and got a Fiat Scudo, left the BMW here and drove all the way to Munich (by the wrong highway!) after 4 hours I finally got there, loaded the van with all the stuff and drove back after a quick dinner at one of the usual Biergartens. The way back was faster (of course, now I took the right highway!) and I was “home” after only 3.5 hours. This to make my point: It is possible to drive without a navigation system! But not so easy… 

In a place we don’t know and driving a new car, it’s… fun. I remember when I got my car last month, after one year without driving, used to the U-Bahn (just get in, get out, it’s done) all seemed unknown and I was saved by the navigation system.

Anyway, this to tell the story of yesterday, passed driving a cargo van on the Autobahn for 620kms, but with a nice car and no speed limit (in some areas) it is really a joy to drive around here.

Today I had to go once more to Pforzheim to check an apartment, so I collected another 190 kms.

A month ago I wished I could sum more kilometers on my bike than on my car but with this move off from Munich those days are now gone. I know I have been skipping my Alps Crossing preparation but higher values arose. I will follow up on it as soon as I feel more relaxed, maybe a run tomorrow morning to check the neighborhood.

From Munich to Heilbronn

So, after a few days of almost unbearable stress I finally made some progress out of the “starting-to-be-the-routine” lethargy. After some calls I got an arrangement to move to an apartment “near” Pforzheim. So after going to Oberschleißheim to get the keys and have lunch with the guys (I get this super good feeling about this people, feels like a really good environment to work and more, really good vibe!), and after cleaning up my “home” for the last year, there I went on the road, car packed to the roof and half a tank of gas, navigation system set and… los geht’s! 290kms of highway and more than 3 hours later I got to Heilbronn.

Sounds like fun and almost makes me forget about the stress I was in before having this sorted out.

I am looking forward to move on and start working on this new project, meeting more interesting people and having a peaceful productive and all-in-all good life!

Tomorrow is tourist day so I will post some pictures of the city. I have absolutely no idea of what and where to look, but I guess this has been most of the fun for the last year of my life!

Bis Morgen.

PS: I had to leave my bike in Munich, so I foresee no cycling training sessions for the next week or so… probably until I get the apartment issue sorted out. I think I will have to rent a van to go and get all the stuff I left behind in Munich… More on this later. But the point is, the Alpenüberquerung is not forgotten.