Climbing up coconut palms and pyramids in Mexico

The days in Göttingen had been a bit crazy, too much party, so I proposed Pepe to come with me for holidays to Mexico and since he had no other compromises he happily accepted. We arrived on the 16th of July to the Península del Yucatán with a burning sun on top of us.


The following days we traveled to Tulum, ancient city of the Mayas. There we enjoyed the ruins and history of Mayas and Pepe could hang around the jungle trees, probably feeling in his own environment.




We also stopped to visit Dzibilchaltún (sneaked Pepe inside, hihihi) and then went all the way to Mérida and its surroundings, where we made a boat trip to meet the pink flamingos. We had to take a hold on Pepe, that started jumping around when a flamingo flew close to us. At the end of the day, the burning sun was too much and we took him to buy a hat, he looked amazing!









On our way back to Cancún we walked around Uxmal. Impressive pyramids! Impressive Mayan city! But Chichen-itza, one of the 7 world's wonders, was still waiting for Pepe. Will he be able to visit all 7? We had a full lunch of chicken cooked in banana leaves and followed our route.






To finish the trip in the most relaxing way we headed to the beaches of Cancún, enjoyed the water, the trees and coconuts, the cocktails and more burning sun.





Next stop: Zurich, Switzerland!

Pepe learns about the sun in Germany

After some days of traveling in a box, Pepe was finally freed from it in the Max-Planck-Institute für Sonnensystemforschung in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany. And you can think, mmmm, Lindau, yeah, where the big lake? Well no, this is Katlenburg-Lindau and is exactly in the middle of nowhere, close to one of the geographic centers of Germany.


I guess you can imagine how eager he was to explore the surroundings :D. And since this institute is focused in the research of the Sun and the planets of the solar system, we walked around to see what was going on. Of course, the 3D movie of the Sun was the most spectacular!


After trying many ways to detach Pepe from the 3D glasses we convinced him to go to Göttingen where I live. Nice and cute student city. But before going home we stopped in a beergarten to drink a good halve litter beer, schön!!



That same night we went out so Pepe could meet more friends. In an African restaurant he had a lot of fun with a white rabbit that like him, also travels around the world!! Although he has neither name nor blog ;) Pepe also rode on a giraffe, hung around the trees and ate zebra, crocodile and ostrich meat.



Later on we also met with a good friend of mine, the playmobil farmer... I've fought so much so that he could be freed from Karstadt toys so that we could be together... Without any positive result, but I keep on with it! My friends also love him <3.



Ay! Anyways, we had fun playing pool, table football and pinballand when the alcohol levels in the blood where high enough Pepe had the crazy idea to climb the Ganseliesel fountain and kiss the girl! He had been for an hour speaking of it since we told him about the tradition in Göttingen of climbing the fountain to kiss the goose-girl after finally defending the PhD thesis.




Next stop... Mexico!

Where is Pepe?

Where is Pepe? That's a good question... Well, I have to apologize because I haven't written anything but I had three internet-free weeks due to some problems with the cable company... It seemed back to the nineties, when nobody had internet at home. Just a decade later it feels like an electricity or current water cut-off!

Pepe has been spending last month with María, first in Germany and now in the U.S. and Mexico. Just to let everybody know that he's still spinning around.

We're looking forward to hear from him and María. Coming soon!

Pepe had surgery

After arriving in Faro, we went to my town in Huelva and, shortly after that, Pepe and I drove to Seville to visit Jose, Javi and Pablo.

We went to the city centre for some tapas and cañas but Pepe decided to stay home. I guess that coming from Ireland the temperature change (today it was 32ºC in Seville) might have affected him so we found Pepe wearing a Venetian mask and strangling Kenny to death with an earphone wire...!


Fortunately Pablo is a student of medicine in Seville and figured out what was wrong with him. It seems that too much alcohol in Ireland had heavy and massively affected Pepe's liver and was causing him some kind of dementia. Thus, he decided to remove and replace his liver for a new more resistant one.






Now we hope Pepe will be able to join us for some beers tonight.

Waiting at the airport

Pepe's next scheduled destination after arriving in Ireland was Switzerland, but we've had some unexpected problems and he'll be going to Germany instead. However, the delay will allow him to come with me to Spain, where we'll be visiting my family after a week of hard working at Tyndall.

Now we are in Shannon's airport, where we've spent the whole night because our flight to Faro is scheduled at 6:25 am and there's no bus services from Cork that early.


Quite luckily, Shannon's airport provides free WiFi access for all passengers so we've been doing some internet surfing!

Dublin

For the weekend Pepe and I went to visit Gupi in Dublin. Gupi and I went together to college in Tenerife. Last year right before graduating in physics he decided to go to Dublin to learn some English. He enjoyed the experience and after doing his last exams he came back to the island. Now he's looking for a PhD position to continue with his career.

Here in Ireland, all the public holidays (except Christmas) are always on Monday, so the so-called mayday, the worker's day, which in most of Europe takes place the 1st of May, here was celebrated the 4th. I guess the day depends on that year's calendar.


There's a lot to see in Dublin, but Pepe, Gupi and I focussed on the Irish national and widespread sport - drinking. We were partying all over the weekend and, specially on Saturday, I guess we partied too much...


Irish people are kind and open, and it's easy to make friends and chat with unknowns in any pub around the city. We also got to know some friends of Gupi from the language course he's attending. There were many beautiful girls that I unsuccessfully tried to convince I'm from Liechtenstein... I thought I was better at this...

Anyway, Dublin is a nice vibrant city full of pubs (there was even one inside a former church!) but watch out your money, you won't be paying less than 5 euro a pint!

First day in Ireland

I have the pleasure to introduce you to Pepe. He's a sock monkey and will be visiting places all around the world for the next few months.

The hosts will be entitled to show him the place where they live and some stuff about what they do and then share it with us here, in the blog. For the first weeks he'll be planning the first stages of his tour with me in Ireland. If you want to host him just let me know writing a comment or sending an email.

Pepe arrived to Ireland in an envelope but since I was working at that momment I couldn't pick him up so he spent his first weekend at the post office waiting for someone to care about him. Not a good first impression I must say.

Lucky him, Aoife, who works with me at the Tyndall Institute in Cork, offered herself to go get Pepe today in the morning and bring him to me.


Now he can't stop repeating the wait was definitely worth it. Aiofe, you totally charmed the boy!

After that he tried to help me out with my work, and programmed some very interesting stuff on the computer to solve some issues we've being having at the Photonics Theory Group concerning the piezoelectric polarization in nitride semiconductors...


Man, for not having gone to school I have to admit you're a genious...