"Remolacha" means "red beet" in Spanish from Spain

My life is starting to be normal again. Last Wednesday I performed live for the first time since last September; the day after I co-held a workshop on international process optimisation; on Friday, I went out with Hannes, my sidekick, and had a melted cheese & speck sandwich and many glasses of prosecco. The weekend was not bad, but this week has been hard at the office, currently I have more than enough to do.

Even though I am really enjoying my adaptation back to Innsbruck, there is a thing I truly detest: The return of the winter. This morning the mountains were covered by white layer of snow. It seems like in Innsbruck the spring rang shortly on the door, but decided to go for a walk and come back later. Either this happened, or the winter definitively finds it cosy in Austria and doesn’t want to leave.

If it chilly or sunny, it doesn’t matter, this week is Easter, and for the first time in years I have planed to do something: On Easter-Monday Luisa and her mother Kathrin are coming for lunch. Luisa is only 2 years old and Kathrin is 28 (or 29). This will be the first time I am going to cook for a guest not taller than 1 meter. Last year I cooked for Elin and her son Julian, who is 5. Back then, I prepared two different spaghetti sauces for him: a red one and a white one. Julian surprisingly, wanted white sauce on his pasta, later he had a second plate with red sauce and loads of what he called “Parmesan Ost”, which is Norwegian for cheese (Julian is half Mexican and half Norwegian, but I have nothing to do with that).

Kids love spaghetti, I think because it is funny and easy to eat, but for little miss sunshine (Luisa is probably the most charming girl in Innsbruck) I have no idea what to cook.
I can’t remember what I liked to eat when I was two years old. Cheese maybe. I think I will cook quesadillas with avocado. To add vitamins to that meal I may prepare a simple salad, cucumber or red beet. By the way, Kathrin told me today that Luisa learnt how to say red beet in Spanish. She even asked her mom to call called me in order to say to me on the phone “Remolacha”.

Remolacha means red beet in Spanish from Spain, but in Mexico we say "betabél".

P.S. The girl in the picture is Luisa

being trapped in an elevator is not funny at all

Last weekend was not bad; I slept a lot and visited many bars. On Friday Tanja visited me and we had two different sorts of rum I brought from Nicaragua. First we had white rum (aged 4 years) with lemon juice and mineral water, after drinking two of those, we took the next step: A perfectly mellow-brown, 7 year-aged rum, it was sweet and tasted like caramel, but smelled like honey.

Since Tanja left soon, I called a friend of mine who I knew was going to be out. I went to the bar she was, but after a short while we went to another place. The DJ was a poser, but the music he downloaded from the internet was good. I really hate it when I hear good beats and nice mixing, but suddenly realise that the DJ is just pretending to be a DJ; that happened to me last Friday: The poser had 2 turntables working, but the music was coming out of a CD-player.

I left after 40 or 50 minutes, then went home and made a huge mistake: Facebook. I finally went to bed at 3:30, but was woken up by a text message after only four hours, at 7:45. I read it and slept again, but then I got a phone call at 10 a.m.; I was really willing to sleep until noon, but I wasn’t able to.

Saturday-night was better: I went to the opening of a café & fashion-store until late, but on Sunday I was able to sleep as long as I wanted. After many hours of sleeping wonderful, I got out of bed…at 3 p.m.

Tomorrow after work, I have to buy a couple of things for my sister’s wedding: A nice looking shirt for my brother, Viennese cacao powder for the cake and good prosecco for Tita. Even though I am leaving to Chihuahua in three weeks, I would like to get all the stuff tomorrow, otherwise I can easily forget about it. It wouldn’t be the first time I forget something. Actually, some years ago I was working in a pizzeria; one day I had go to the basement to pick up ice-cream boxes, when I was in an elevator I totally freaked out because it wasn’t moving, I was sure the elevator was stuck, and the worst thing was that nobody knew I was in the basement and I had no mobile phone, then I realised I only forgot to press the floor button.

Post-central-american-depression in the early thirties

NOTE: I hope that the number of blog-readers will not decrease now that I am back in Innsbruck. Starting with this entry my stories will be less exotic with no Tsunami-warnings, Latin-food or children from the village.

This morning the sun was shinny and for the first time since I arrived in Innsbruck, I took my winter jacket off. My greatest fear turned to be wrong: The low temperatures won’t last until next winter.

One of the things that stroke me the most since came back to Innsbruck, was the fact that almost all of my friends are in a relationship (with two exceptions). I can feel the consequences of living alone for the last six months (and the spring coming), yes, during the last months I have been wishing to meet a girl…

The feeling started already in Managua, there were so many beautiful women, but my lack of initiative kept me away from the opposite sex.
Still I managed to share time with three wonderful ladies: Ericka (if you are a blog reader, you know what happened), Maria Julia, a beautiful girl from Estelí, but the age and geographical differences didn’t help (10,000 km separate us…and she was born in 1990) and Maricruz, the girl who went with me to that last trip in Nicaragua. I remember being so happy in the bus to San Juan when she suddenly told me she had a German boyfriend :-(

Let’s see how 2010 develops and let’s hope the spring helps me this time (it didn’t in 2007, 2008 and 2009). By the way, I have a plan B: I could live 2010 in absolutely sentimental chastity.

Managua-Atlanta-Munich-Innsbruck

Exactly a week ago, I finished packaging and went to attend my farewell party; it was short after 6 p.m.

When I got to the meeting point, I saw all children, teens, and the SOS staff (mothers, director, etc.), they all came to wish me a good trip and say goodbye. From that moment on, I experienced the saddest twenty minutes I can remember since Carol left me in 2004.

Two SOS mothers and one aunt took over the microphone and said nice things about me. My heart was nearly broken when Ana followed them on the microphone and beautifully expressed about my presence in the village; I couldn’t help it and burst into tears. It all became even harder when Michael, one of the “tough guys” in the village, sang me a love song and gave me his teddy bear, he is ten years old.

To tell the truth, I never thought that leaving Managua was going to be so hard.

I left the village the following morning at 7, before leaving for the airport, several children came to say goodbye. The flight went well, but in Atlanta I spent 80 minutes queuing at the passport control line and I nearly missed my connection to Munich.

On the airplane, I was lucky and had the chance to see Wes Anderson’s “The incredible Mr. Fox” and Spike Jonze’s “Where the wild things are”. Those two wonderful movies kept my mind busy, and as a consequence, I had almost no time to be melancholic.

The last days in the Managua office, the children from the village, the project’s closing event and the trip back home made me forget I wanted to go back to Austria because I missed food so much! I didn’t realise it until I arrived at Munich’s airport.

Right after picking my 3 pieces of luggage (including USD 150 overweight) I ran to “Oliva’s” at terminal 2 to have a falafel. Think of the tortilla with 3 falafel nuggets, garlic & yogurt sauce, chilli paste, red and white cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes.

After arriving in Innsbruck I went straight to the supermarket to buy half a litre of cocoa milk. This drink is very important for me since it has been my breakfast for the last 23 years. During the last five months I only drank milk during Christmas, when I was in Chihuahua, there, the milk is very good and hormone-free.

I have to admit that even though I am happy of being back in Innsbruck, I miss the village a lot and being away from it is more difficult than I thought. But I know for sure that I will go back to Managua, I have to see how Bianca, Dulce, Juanita, Kathy, Michael, Martin and the rest are doing.

the weirdest weekend ever

On Friday noon I predicted a boring weekend, by 4 p.m. the chances of having fun increased, but they nearly disappeared on Saturday morning. Even though there were many last-minute adjustments, I can say I’ve spent an excellent weekend in Nicaragua, my last one.

It all started on Thursday night. I prepared my backpack with the 4 S’s, which stand for everything I needed for a weekend at the beach: Sunscreen (factor 30), my famous Swimming-trunks (photo), Sandals and my beloved Sunglasses

On Friday noon, my friend Amy told me she couldn't come with me, "typical Latin" I though - we Latinos just can’t decline an invitation, we always accept (even though we cannot come) but cancel afterwards.
After Amy’s cancellation, I thought of traveling on my own once more, but I thought it could de depressing to be alone during my last trip in Nicaragua.So I called Maricruz, a girl I barely knew, and invited her to come with me to San Juán de Sur on Saturday morning, she agreed. My weekend was saved.

Maricruz picked me up on Saturday morning at quarter to 7 (in Nicaragua, 7 a.m. is like 9 a.m. for the rest of the world). As we arrived to the bus station, she got a call: An earthquake stroke Chile and the entire Pacific Ocean was on Tsunami warning. We re-arranged the trip and went  to Ometepe instead, the volcanic Island inside the Nicaragua Lake. We had fun there: we rented a scooter, had fried fish at the beach and swam in a pool of crystal clear volcanic-water (photo).
Our hotel room was simple, very clean and cheap, but the best thing in the hotel was the woman at the reception; she was one of these persons who are very funny, but they don’t know it.

In town there was a street party. The beer was going out for 10 Córdobas (50 US Cent, 35 Euro Cent, 7 Mexican Pesos). While dancing, a girl approached me (for the first time in 5 months!) only to ask if Maricruz was lesbian, because she liked her. That was it...my first and last close encounter with a woman in Nicaragua...

On Sunday morning we went to San Juan (no Tsunami warning). There we swam and hade nice dinner at the bamboo beach; the food was amazing, but the dessert was pure and sweet heaven: small bananas fried with coconut flakes, vanilla ice-cream and papaya-pineapple-orange marmalade. After the banana tempura we took a hell's ride back to Managua. 90 minutes standing. You surely know that is common to read in the news that a crowded bus crashed in Latin America...on Sunday,  I was one in one of those buses. 

I arrived to the Village at around 8 p.m. and was chilling as some kids came running asking for the village director. The kids told me a mattress caught fire inside  house! I got there just as the two security guards (my current heroes) entered and bravely fought the fire. All children were outside, but some wanted to help us inside, I was keeping the children out of the room on fire (The Strokes’ album).
I have never been in a fire before, and I was truly shocked by the harmful power of smoke. A fire is nothing not like in the movies; the heat is not the problem, but the smoke.

We were lucky since the kids alarmed us soon and the guards controlled the fire within minutes. Luckily, no one was injured, it surely helped that all children were still awake when the fire took place...

This was my last weekend in Managua.

P.S.: If you want to see all eight  pics I made during the weekend click here