Travel Virus

I spent this weekend with my friend Manoli from Madrid. We went around lake Gard and then to Rovinj in Croatia. Now it’s starting the low season and the weather was not very warm anymore, but still quite a lot of tourists around. I visited the beach of rovinj, which is quite far from the town, and I didn’t discover it last time!

We had a lot of fun, there places where to have good food like “Ristorante da Piero”, and where to have bad food and bad service, like Ristorante La Riva, right in the center: the waiter even started to scream at me!! What the hell, I’ve never seen a restaurant where is the waiter screaming at the client, normally it’s the other way around. Obviously this guy didn’t expect that I can scream more than him.

Last weekend I visited Bratislava, in Slovakia. It’s only 50 km from Vienna, that means less than an hour by train. It’s a nice city on the Danube, of about 450.000 people. The city was very busy as there was a celebration (incoronation of some king of the past) and a football match. It was not easy to find a hotel and the tourism office suggested me a pretty crap one: hotel Zvarac, I would certainly not suggest to go there, but it’s very “original style”. I have seen many strange hotels in guest houses in my life, but the glass door was unique! How can anyone imagine to make a glass door for a hotel room???

Well luckily the weather was much nicer than the hotel, about 30-35°, like full summer! So I took the chance of a boat trip on the Danube, up to the Devin castle (in the pic), which is still considered Bratislava, but actually it’s about one hour away by boat (5€ return) or 35minutes by bus. The castle is a must for all those visiting the city. It is well kept and the view from the top is awesome. You can even see Austria, because it’s very close to the border.

The city is still quite cheap, but clean and safe. Also in the city center there is a castle, there is a nice view on the city from there. There are of course many nice churches and several museums. I didn’t visit any because the weather was too good. I tried a typical dish Bryndzove Halusky, something like knödel (canederli, gnocchetti) dressed with sheep cheese and pork (speck).

Hello from Graz, Austria!

I’m here again, for a conference on knowledge management (i-know, part of triple-i). The conference started yesterday and I already presented my research, it was good, I got lots of encouraging feedbacks. This year the weather is great, sunny and over 25 degrees, seems almost like another city. The conference also organized a walking tour through the city and a welcome reception at the Kunsthaus, which is also called the friendly aliend due to the very unusual organic shape of the building. I’m staying in Hotel Daniel, part of design hotel: it’s very fancy and I strongly suggest it. The breakfast buffet is very nice both from a culinary and from a design point of view. Everything is very colorful and with lots of lights everywhere.