My new internet project: GourmetOrigins.com

This is it! After several years working in a large company I have decided to start on my own, and here is the result:

http://gourmetorigins.com

well...the site is still under development, but you can get an idea of how it will work. GourmetOrigins.com is going to be an easy and direct way to find everything you wanted to know about the origins of your favourite foods: where are they made, how, by whom? The map-bsed interface also makes it possible to explore and discover thousands od fine quality foods that are difficult to find and, consequently, little known outside their areas of production. So, do not wait anymore! come visit GourmetOrigins.com and explore a world of lavours!

Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions

The end of an era

This Sunday I passed by the Border's bookstore in Oxford Street, London, and could witness what looked like the perfect illustration of the end of an era...well maybe I am exaggerating a bit... but that was what I felt when I saw the "Liquidation, Store Closure" and "All 50% off, selected items 1 pound" signs...the picture in the interior was a bit disheartening: a big mess...piles of books with no order, clients scavenging for bargains, hardly any interesting book left. I love bookstores, but it's been more than a year since I bought anything in them, I would found it hard to believe it a few years ago but Amazon has managed to take me away from brick-and-mortar bookstores and my guess is, given the fantastic job Amazon is doing, more an more people will be following the same path. Expect more bookstore closures...and be there early to get the best bargains!

Visualizing European unity: Gorizia/Nova Gorica

Everyone knows about the Berlin wall, but for decades there was another divided city in Europe, and by divided I mean, literally, traversed by a wall. After WWII ended, Italy had to surrender some territories of what now are Slovenia and Croatia to the newly created Yugoslavia. Italy managed to retain most of the city of Gorizia, but the train station and its surrounding area went to Yugoslavia, that started to develop a new city, Nova Gorica, that mirrored the Italian one across the border. Although Yugoslavia was officially a non-aligned country, the wall that separated both cities was a physical barrier between the communist East and the Western world. The wall run next to people's houses and through gardens and the magnificent entrance of the station, in Yugoslavia, was facing anything but the wall, giving the situation a surreal touch.

Fortunately, this is now over. Slovenia joined the EU in 2004, with Italian and Slovenian prime ministers meeting in the center of the station square to celebrate the event.

When I visited the station, there was no activity whatsoever and by looking at the wooden interiors, it seemed that the time had stopped in 1947. It is now possible to walk but not drive across the square, as a marking stone, some flowers and a low-lying fence still act as barriers and demarcate the line. A monument in the center of the square, just where the border lies, commemorates the end of the division .

In this blog(in Spanish)there are some interesting pictures.

The Pyrenees from Tuixent (Alt Urgell), Catalonia

My Blog picks: WWII panorama

Today I am presenting a site that I just found that is developing a very interesting project: to document with pictures a large number of scenarios related to WWII.

Here is the link.

A useful resource for those, like me, that like to read extensively about this epic conflict. No other war in history has been fought in such diversity of places. We can now also see in one click how these locations currently look like.

Planespotting at Heathrow's T5

This last holidays I found myself for the very first time at Heathrow's new Terminal 5. The views were very good, as the new modern buildings provide a considerably better view than any than any the old terminals, however, the terminal is totally monopolized by BA, so there was no much variety in the type of planes to be spotted. I have to admit, that the venerable 747 remains a very impressive aircraft though!

My blog picks: Abulafia

I want to congratulate the excellent and highly recommended science blog "Abulafia" for having reached it's 10,000th visitor just before moving into the New Year! Well done and I wish you many more visits in 2009!...and by the way, Dodger, thanks for the mention!

The Isle of Wight

Views: St.Catherine's lighthouse, Osborne House, The Solent, Southampton Harbour

A day in the Cotswolds

Images of a Saturday in the Cotswolds. It hardly gets more English than this!

Farnborough Air Show 08

One more edition of the Farnborough Air Show, the great gathering of the aerospace industry, that takes place every other year in this airfield of Hampshire, near London. This time was spectacular as always. Here is a close view of the Airbus 380, an amazingly quiet and agile plane, considering its size, as the public could realize during its flyover. Coincidentally, on my way back to London I could see one of the two A380 already in service flying over the city, a Singapore Airlines A380 on a "real" flight to the Asia. It's a question of time that they become a familiar sight in the London skies.

Summer weekends in England

Summer in England is great for sightseeing, quite sunny but not too hot, and there is no shortage of places to visit beyond the classical Oxford and Cambridge, as this island is literally packed with history. So, after visiting the home of the Royal Navy and the old glories of the time when Britannia ruled the waves (see previous post), the following weekends have taken me to two other places of historical significance for this country, and both within easy reach from London.

First, Windsor castle, the largest castle in the World still in use


Windsor Castle courtyard


A platoon of Guards in full dress


Tower with Royal Flag (the flag on top means that She is in!)

Then to the East Sussex Coast, the point where William the Conqueror landed with his Norman knights to change the history of this island forevermore. The Battle of Hastings, that represented the beginning of the Norman occupation of England and a move towards stronger links between Britain, France and the European mainland and away from the Scandinavian sphere of influence. It is remember not only by the name of the village that stands on the ground where it took place, called simply "Battle", but in the impressive remains of the abbey that the Normans built at the site. Also nearby the fishing village of Hastings, a place that has seen better times, and the picturesque medieval village of Rye, an old port now several km. inland, that has preserved a cozy atmosphere.



Battle Abbey


The battlefield


Postbox, notice the initials VR, Victoria Regina (aka Queen Victoria), looks like this postbox has been around for a while


Taking pictures at Rye's main street


A solitary beach in Hastings


The East Sussex Coast

Sea, sun and ships

Here are some pictures taken at Portsmouth last Sunday, besides the sunny (and windy!) day, great contrasts between the old warships of the Royal Navy, HMS Victory, that led the British forces at Trafalgar in 1805 and where Nelson died (it is still in commission with the Royal Navy, so it is the longest serving warship in the World!) and HMS Warrior of 1860, and the futuristic spire (Dubai style) that dominates the modern docks.

Midsummer night flight to London

A close view of BA Boeing 757 at Barcelona airport, there is quite a lot of light outside but it is actually 10pm! Picture taken from an Easyjet A319 while waiting to take off for Stansted.

Gamle Danmark

Pictures: Nyhavn (Copenhaguen), beaches and sunset at Langø



Video: Danish National Anthem by Miriam Jul Rasmussen

100,000!!!

The Catalan version of Wikipedia has reached the 100,000 article mark, putting it in the group of of languages with more articles in relation to the number of speakers. Congratulations! Well done!

http://ca.wikipedia.org/

Russia (and 12): Domodedovo

We are at Moscow's Domodedovo airport, after a really intense week, ready to board our British Airways flight to London. While I look through the windows at the waiting lounge I realize what an exciting place for plane spotting can a Russian airport be. At Barcelona airport, for example, around 95% of the planes are either Boeing 737 and those of the Airbus 320 family, in airports with a large number of long haul flights, like Heathrow you can also see Boeing 747s and 777s and 767s or Airbus 340s and 330s. But at a Russian airport you can see all of these plus a whole range of old soviet-era planes, new Russian planes and second-hand Western planes. This picture is a great example of the situation of aviation in Russia.
Let's have a closer look: in the foreground an old soviet-era Tupolev 134 of Rossiya Airlines, next to it an Airbus 310 of S7-Sibir Airlines, one of the largest domestic airlines in Russia. The A-310 although not a particularly old model is hard to see in Western airports as it was not as commercially successful as the A-320 and A-330 models. Further away is another S7 plane, an Airbus of the A320 family. Russian airlines have been adding new Boeing and Airbus planes that are progressively replacing the old soviet models.
We can also see 2 planes from Transaero, Russia's second international airline (the first is Aeroflot), a Boeing 767 (right) and a Boeing 747-200 Jumbo (left), two wide-body long range planes that probably transport Russian tourists to resorts in the Mediterranean, that are popular destinations from Domodedovo.
In the background there is a large number of parked planes and, although it is difficult to tell from this picture, they are mostly soviet-built. For example, just behind the tail of the S7 Airbus 310 there is an Ilushyn IL-96, the Russian equivalent to the Airbus 340, of relatively new design, but that has experienced some problems that have prevented it from selling in larger numbers.
In summary, quite an interesting mix, that is probably going to become more homogeneous, as Russian carriers update their fleets, but as the restructured Russian aircraft industry gets back to the market with new models, it might continue to be more diverse than in the West.

Russia (10): around St.Petersburg- aristocrats and writers

Saint Petersburg was once the capital of one of the last absolute monarchies, until 1917, and consequently it got its fair share of palaces and royal residences.

We were lucky with the weather, so we spent a good time enjoying the gardens by the Baltic Sea that were once the preserve of that tiny elite that ruled over this huge country. No need to say that the display of wealth in these palaces was inversely proportional to the poverty of the subjects. While the Russian peasants lived literally like in the middle ages, its aristocrats were so much in their role, that refused to speak anything other than French among themselves.

We had also the chance to visit to places that have its honour place in Russian literature, Pavlovsk, summer retreat of the St.Petersburg elite some 150 years ago and setting of The Idiot by Dostoievsky (that I happened to be reading at the time of the visit!), and Pushkin (previously Tsarskoe-Selo), named after the famous poet, that lived and went to school here.

Russia (9): the capital of the Tsars

Saint Petersburg was built in a swamp by order of Peter The Great, the Russian tsar that wanted to make it Russia's gate to Europe. The city has a truly European flair and you can realise how its urbanism borrowed from Rome, Paris, Amsterdam...anyway, the result was really spectacular and I liked it, maybe because I like cities that interact with water.

Russia (8): On the way to Saint Petersburg

It's time to change the setting, after a few days in Moscow we are going to visit the European capital of Russia. The Nevsky Express, a fast, modern, train that covers the distance between Russia's two main cities nonstop in less than 4 hours, advances through the Russian plains and the immensity of Russia swallows us...on time to see the night opening of bridges in Saint Petersburg...!

PS: the day after we got back from Russia the Nevsky Express was the target of a terrorist attack that injured a number of people.

Russia (7): Cruise on the Moscova