miércoles, 22 de septiembre de 2010

14 years in Innsbruck

This week I am celebrating 14 years in Austria. For the statistic freaks: I have lived 45% of my life in Austria. For the fact freaks: I had my first real girlfriend here and I ate tomato for the first time in Innsbruck. And in those 14 years I have had 29 flat mates! Here the list:

1st Flat all people from Chihuahua!
1996: Else (cool), Arturo (cool), Holguer (weird), Jesús (...), Germán (cool)
Summer 1997: Laura (...), Alejandra (ex-girlfriend, no-comment), Billy (my best
friend back then)
Winter 1997: Carla (my cool cousin), Tita (my very cool sister), Emilia (cool),
Kenneth (my best friend for many years), Alejandro (cool) and Daniel (weird, but
very cool!)

2nd Flat (1997-1999):
Christoph and Uschi from Salzburg, and a German girl...I forgot her name, they were
all cool

3rd Flat (1999):
I lived on my own some months and then with my former girlfriend (not cool at all!)

4th Flat (the actual one)
1999: Tomás (my very cool brother) and two weird guys from South-Tyrol...and not cool
2000: Christian (cool, still one of my best friends) and Petra (weird, I am happy I
never saw her since then)
2001: Wolfgang (cool, I still see him every now and then) and Hannes (my very cool
sidekick)
2002-2004: Gimm (cool) and Hannes
2007: Mihow (cool snowboarder), Hannes moved out before Mihow moved in.
2008: Felicia (cool and funny Italian girl!)
2009-2010: Marina (cool, the French touch the flat needed!)
2010: A German girl (cool), I don't know her so well, so I won't publish her name ;-)

By the way, last weekend was great. Kathrin and Luisa came along, followed by Christian, Sonja and their son Jonathan. On Sunday, I went to the mountain with
Conny and Kathrin (both have children as well). Hannes finally came back from Scandinavia, we went for a pizza on Sunday and later for some drinks at a street party, oh yeah!

miércoles, 15 de septiembre de 2010

Actually this week won’t be so bad…

This afternoon, on my way home, Lindsey called me and invited me to the cinema. We saw „Marie and Max“, a lovely stop-motion movie about two lonely people (a young girl and a getting-old man) who maintain a very long letter-relationship between a small town in Australia and New York. The film is both, naïve and dark, funny and melancholic. Kind of the way I’ve been feeling these last days…

When I feel weird, like now, I call ex-girlfriends. After walking Lindsey home, I called Carol, but she was in a hurry (over the years, she’s has mastered the art of being late) and had to hang up after some seconds. Then I took a look to the phone list on my mobile and one of the first names I saw was Alauda. She is a wonderful Spanish girl I met in a bar in Innsbruck many years ago. I can say that she was to me what the synthesiser was for the dance floor in the 70’s. I didn’t hesitate to call her.

My uncontrollable desire for flirting made me ask her if she had a boyfriend, and her answer was the predictable and disappointing “yes”. After chatting for a while, she hung up and instantly I scored her name off my ex-girlfriend’s list. Yes, I have an ex-girlfriends-I-should-call-and-ask-for-a-revival-list.

It’s sad to see the small amount of names left in this virtual list – I say virtual because the list exists only on my head.

Seconds after scratching Alauda’s name, Kathrin phoned me and asked me something about a word she needed to translate (she is a translator) and that was it, the day was saved! I suddenly remembered that Kathrin and Luisa (that curly Tyrolean princess I made the piñata for) are coming this Saturday for lunch.

And tomorrow won’t be bad at all: We are rehearsing for the hip-hop gig. Yes, I sometimes do music and even perform. The concert will be on October 2nd, if you live in Innsbruck that night, the PMK will be the place to be!

Actually this week won’t be so bad…and by the way, I love spending the night writing for the blog, having a drink (in this case prosecco-aperol) and hearing to nice music, right now Blondie’s sound is rocking my speakers!!!

P.S. The pick is Matilda, a girl printed on the box of a delicious Danish chocolate-milk brand.

miércoles, 8 de septiembre de 2010

In October, I kind of get anxious to get nostalgic, but this year everything was way too fast

Today, the weather forecasts exterminated my last hope of a smooth summer ending. Yes, today is the last day of summer according to meteorologist…and also the day my little sister flew back to Mexico, my mother already left Innsbruck yesterday.

This June was the coldest in Austria for over three decades, July was the hottest since the 1960’s, and this august was the worst I’ve experienced (with daily temperatures under 20°C).

This summer’s highlights are few, but great: In July we picked up chanterells, I travelled to Barcelona to meet my and I stayed with old, good friends. Two weeks later, my mom and I picked up my sister at Munich’s airport and drove to Berlin, where we stayed from Saturday to Tuesday with temperatures around 30°C…sweet!

I see autumn as a catharsis. In spring, bodies and hormones explode, during summer I sleep less, I am happier, I meet many people and go at least twice a week to the theatre square and drink wine with Hannes, Isabella, Verena, Lisa…and this year even my mom.

But in autumn everything becomes slower, the days turn shorter and the raindrops are no longer warm.

My mom and my sister just left, Hannes is in Norway and Verena is leaving to Italy with her boyfriend this Saturday.

Next week will be hard. I will come back from work and I won’t dine with 66% of my family and my two sidekicks will be only reachable via SMS.

Normally, around October, I kind of get anxious to get nostalgic, but this year everything was way too fast…I am still not prepared…this fucking summer was way too short :-(