Sol En Mi Mente

Thanks to a really cheap flight and the help of my cousin and her wife, I booked a flight to Berlin a couple weeks ago! My flight was just about three hours long, and I arrived in Berlin at 12pm. Navigating the airport was easy, I can do that even in an airport where I don't know the language. The tricky part started after I got out of the airport. My intention was to go all out and take public transportation when I arrived. Really dive into Germany. But, after getting lost and incredibly frustrated, I decided to take a taxi for the sake of my sanity. Thankfully, the taxi driver I approached spoke a little English. I arrived at the Three Little Pigs Hostel and discovered I couldn't check in until 3pm. So, I decided to kill a few hours exploring. I knew the Topography of Terror was close to my hostel, so I decided to go check it out. It was an emotional experience, but one that needed to be had. The Topography of Terror is a museum that details Hitler's rise to ...

Last weekend, my cousin and her wife invited me up to their cabin in the mountains just outside the village of Soller.  It was a lot of fun and a much needed break from living in the city.  We packed our bags and headed out on Saturday morning.  It isn't very far from Palma, but the drive up the mountain is tedious and ads some travel time. We drove through Soller, a village I've been to a couple of times now, and up to the mountains on a dirt road.  The road was narrow, typical of what I'd seen in Spain so far.  We reached a gate, unlocked it and began the more unnerving part of the journey.  The roads up the mountain were absolutely not designed for cars.  They are very tiny, and the curves are so tight that there were several that required three point turns.  After making it up the mountain, we parked, grabbed our stuff and hike for about ten or fifteen minutes the rest of the way up to the cabin. It's a very small house with a porch on the...

Last week, I visited the oldest winery on the island with my cousin.  We drove to the little village of Consell and got a tour of the winery and the Ribas house that dates back to the 18th century.  To top it all off, we got to taste three different wines while we ate Mallorcan bread and fresh olive oil. The Ribas winery was founded in 1711.  The United States didn't even exist yet.  They grow several types of Mallorcan grapes and harvest them by hand, producing an average of 150,000 bottles of wine each year.  We got to taste some grapes that had just been harvested and were getting ready to be pressed.  Our tour guide also took us to see the huge tanks they used to ferment the wine.  We saw the cellar full of wooden barrels, and inside the cellar was also a very old traditional Mallorcan barrel that was humongous. The old barrels that were used when the winery first opened After the tour of the winery, we walked over to ...

To start off September, I went to visit a village on the West coast of the island, called Banalbufar.  It was originally a Moorish settlement, and its name means "founded by the sea."  It is a very small village with less than 600 inhabitants, and its main focus is agriculture.  I chose Banalbufar because it was rumored to be incredibly beautiful, and the rumors are true. I hopped on a bus on a Saturday afternoon to get to Banalbufar.  The village is in the mountains, and I was very impressed by our bus driver's skillful driving.  We went up some very tight curves as we climbed up the mountain in a city bus. When I arrived, I headed straight for the water.  the walk down the hill was very steep, and the further I walked, the more I dreaded climbing back up to town. Walking down the street to the cove, I passed tiny vineyards, irrigation pools cut into the mountain, people actively farming.  The homes I passed were simple but beautif...