kiwitz.com - Kolumbien & mehr…

Last weekend Adriana and me had a great trip to Doradal, it’s a place about 3 hours drive from Medellin. The place is famous for it’s Hacienda Napoles, 20 years ago the hangout of Pablo Escobar. They say, it used to be the biggest zoo in South America.

It’s really a great trip. On one hand it’s bizarre, you know, that this guy has killed thousands of people, made Colombia suffer for so many years and left a negative image that Colombia still has to battle untill today. And then you get to his Hacienda and they made a "Jurassic Park" out of it. The entry is about 6 USD, you get to see old artefacts of Escobars live like his own colloseum, the ruins of his house, the leftover from his cars and most interestingly the Hippos he imported from Africa and survived until today.

That all is combined with a Zoo. that didn’t seem that interesting to me and a sculpture Park of Dinosaurs. It’s well done, as they put a "sound ambiance" into the Park of growling dinosaurs ..

Now some Videos (archive) and some photos of the trip…

Today is a great day, in my work we have lots of good News, but more importantly the days of George W. Bush are over. It’s hard to believe, that this president got reelected, the whole world got its bill.

Now, it’s not only time to celebrate to have a new President of the US. But also to have the first afro-american president, I’m sure we’ll look back to this date for some decades to come.

So here in a few words the speech af Barack Obama, the elected president:

And for those who have 17 spare minutes, here’s the Video:

I still haven’t written my overall summary of China, hope I get to this soon. One of the aspects will be Internet. Today I got to know a Plugin for Firefox that got my interest:

What does it do?

The Firefox add-on China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgetable virtual trip to China and experience the technical expertise of the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (supported by western companies). It’s open source, free and easy.

So, if you would like to surf like the Chinese, get the Plugin here:

Ich schulde euch noch einen Artikel im Handelsblatt vom Mai diesen Jahres, der mir beim Aufräumen meines Desktops wieder in die Hände fiel…

Wer mich kennt, weiß, dass ich nicht allzuviele Bücher vertilge. Umso größer war für mich die Überraschung, dass ausgerechnet einer der Autoren, der von mir gelesenen Bücher der letzten Jahre nach Medellin kommt: Bastian Sick. Das angesprochene Buch ist der Bestseller “Der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod“, außerdem ist Sick bekannt auf Spiegel-Online mit dem Zwiebelfisch.

Sicherlich habe ich bereits im ersten Absatz Dutzende von Rechtschreib- und Grammatikfehler eingebaut, aber so lange die Fehler andere machen ist es wirklich lustig. In einem ca. 90 Minuten dauernden Vortrag kam man aus dem Lachen gar nicht mehr heraus, das war einfach große Klasse.

Umso schöner, dass ich mit Bastian & Freunden noch zu Abend essen gehen konnte und wir uns in kleiner Runde weiter austauschen konnten.

Also, liebe Südamerikafreunde, aufgepasst, hier habt ihr in den nächsten Wochen die Möglichkeit Bastian Sick live zu sehen:

20.10. Bogotá, Kolumbien

21.10. Medellín, Kolumbien

22.10. Quito, Ecuador

25.10. La Paz, Bolivien

27.10. São Paolo, Brasilien

29.10. Rio de Janeiro, Brasilien

30.10. Curitiba, Brasilien

31.10. Porto Alegre, Brasilien

04.11. Santiago de Chile, Chile

11.11. Buenos Aires, Argentinien

I’d have so much topics to write about, but I hardly go online, so quickly some more impressions of the games…

After our first night partying in the Loco Bar, which we highly, recommend we had a easy going day in Xian. We went up the City Walls and toured around the city on a tandem. Great Fun!

(pictures to follow)

At night we met Sophia and she took us to the train station. We took a night train to Beijing, within about 11 hours we would arrive at the Olympic City. Once in the train a flue would show it first effects with coughing and headache. Unfortunately the next couple of days I would have to rest in bed.

On Saturday I couldn’t resist anymore. Athletics started and we had tickets for the day of the 100 m final. So off we went to the stadium. Along with us Chris from Passau and the family of an OZ soccer athlete… We met up at the stadium, once I saw it with my proper eyes I couldn’t believe it’s beauty. What a stadium that was! By far the most spectacular Olympic Stadium I’ve ever seen.. So here are some of my first shot (I took several dozens!!).

Once inside I met up with the rest, it would be a day to remember…

We saw the Heptathlon, 400 metres hurdles, long jump, shortput, 800 meters…

And then the 100 meters final. the only bad thing about it, it went by toooo quickly. When I saw the run I thought to myself, did he really stopped running and nevertheless ran 9,69 ??? Once the replay was shown everybody of the 90.000 spectators couldn’t believe it. Just one man didn’t care, Bolt himself was dancing and having fun on the track…

The next day the flue got back and another day in bad, on monday my father arrived, and I finally went to a doc who ordered me to get an inhalation twice daily. At least he let me go see Germany in Handball on monday night

So monday night, along with my Dad, Miguel and Moe, the DJ of the Deutsches Haus we went to see the game. We just git there in time and the germans had their little corner, but we couldn’t get there. The stadium (which was the smallest olympic handball venue I’s evere have seen) was in danish hand, we hardly could hear the germans. The danish also showed, they were way better on the court today At half time we switched seats and got quiet close to the german crowd just behind our bench…

And after the frustrating result, we took off, Miguel and my father went to see the Athletics, Moe to work and myself to the hospital, where the nurses really loved my hair

After having visited mostly natural sights we flew further north to the town of Xi’an. It’s the former capital of china and nowadays a “normal” 8-million city. The towns city wall is still in tact and quiet impressive. So is the town itself. It’s modern and offers all kinds of shopping possibilities.  After the busy days in Guilin, Yangshuo and Longsheng we took it easy and strolled around the city the first day. Then we headed off to the famous Terracotta Warriors. The chinese call it the eight wonder of the world, it’s mentioned everywhere like this. Adriana told me about the place before, so I was a little prepared. Even though I’m not that much into archeology I have to admit, this is really impressive..

Here some pics from the warriors and also from Xi’an: