Professional work and travel

Category: Places

View over Helsinki, Finland with WordCamp Nordic Logo as overlay

Heading north for winter | WordCamp Nordic & CoWorkingCamp reunion

For me WordCamps are always a good reason to travel. Meeting new people and getting to know new places. A trip to Finland for WordCamp Nordic was a great vehicle to also finally meet up with old friends I know from CoWorkingCamp in Turkey.

Even as not all plans about timeing and things to do worked out I had a great week visiting the winter up north in Finland.

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3 Wapus for WordCamp Thessaloniki on a wall

Annual visit – New place | WordCamp Thessaloniki

Every year in fall I end up in Greece. Maybe because Greece was the second place on my nomad journey and I meet amazing people there. The same this year.
Mid december there was the greek WordCamp. Quite a late fall, but until there is no snow it‘s not winter ;). To support my friends, organizing the event and meet the super friendly greek community again, I travelled to the city of Thessaloniki.

So close to xmas and the related family vacation I just managed to visit for a long weekend. In my mind I was looking forward to a few warm-ish days away from german Advent.
The greek weather gods were not on my side. Cold, rainy and specialy windy conditions received me.

Germany from a train window

Drive by visit to Austria and Hamburg

After spending about 3 month in Spain for the winter. I wanted to go back heading a bit more north. Taking a look at the WordCamp schedule showed there is a WordCamp in Vienna. A small one but it’s a WordCamp.

Vienna

Vienna takes proud in having carriages as taxis

Vienna takes pride in having carriages as taxis

So I flew from Barcelona over the Alps to Vienna. What is surprisingly far east. My geographic instinct got a real life update there. This time no WiFi on the plane, because of AirBerlin. But my seat mate is the most interesting of all ever. He is a professional Freestyle Motocross Pilot from South Africa. We are chatting a lot about motorbikes, danger, traveling and who awesome Europe is.
Arriving in Vienna, it feels weird to me that the people speak something quite close to my native language and I can read everything, beside it’s funny wording for some things.

In my hotel, for the next 2 nights, the first thing I do is drinking a glas of tasty tap water. What a joy and a bless that we don’t have to think about getting clean water, without buying it from a shop or even worse.
In the mood for drinking tasty things I meet with parts of the team from required in a (beach) bar. With some vine sitting in the sunshine the chatting about WordPress & Co. for the next 36 h get started. Later on we decided to go for a hunt, for some classic „Wiener Schnitzel“. It’s touristy, but we had to do it. So we end up in a restaurant, with a really funny and for stranger easy to misunderstand waiter.

Next day is camp day. The first time I’m at a WordCamp with just one track and one day. Well prepared with a WordCamp coffee mug and it’s accompanying content I missed the first sessions in favor of chatting with different people in the lobby. The rest of the day we spend with watching sessions and even more chatting about Code and non-Code. The final part of the Camp was a long and fun party.

Freestyle jumps with a bicycleThe next day I was roaming around Vienna where the annual marathon and an bicycle exhibition/show was taking place. I enjoyed what some freestyle riders were able to perform with there bikes. After that show I needed to move from the hotel to an AirB’n’B a bit more outside of the city center. It was an big and old flat where I was staying an an very spacious room and shared the flat for one week with the Austrian owner and a French guy living in Sweden.

divine Landscape

Stories with and without water in Athens

Time to continue reporting from my stay in Athens. I already spoilered there will be stories about water in this post, so lets start with a good one.

Mediterranean Diving

After a week of work I decided to make use of the ocean and go for a dive. The Mediterranean Sea is still nice in October for that. I took the public transport to get to a base outside Athens.

Arriving in a small village I was impressed by the different landscape and the completely with Mares equipment dive base. The people I meet there were professional about diving, equipment, education and also very nice. Making this base a recommendation for serious divers.
I was lucky to get Lilli as my buddy for the first dive. She took some underwater photos and gave them to me. Thanks for that.

View over the sea of ​​houses

I can understand the gods – Staying in Athens is great

Getting from Sofia to Athens was pretty simple and easy. I just took the plane. Used the metro to ride into the center and meet my contact person to get into my AirBnB-Apartment. Even arriving at 11 PM is not a problem. I felt a bit uncivil to get here so late, but the city was still very active and it not unusual to stay up until midnight and even longer.

The next day was a Saturday. So no need to work and a new city to explore. I started by searching for a local SIM-Card. Running around in small streets full with shops I just found souvenirs and clothing.
I ended up in a mini-market asking for it. Because the woman behind the counter was not really able to speak English, a (un)random customer needs to help out. He told me the way to a shop. I started walking. Suddenly a scooter stops next to me, the already helpful man from the mini-market smiling at me, letting me know I should take a seat on the back seat. And so I got a free original greek ride through Athens, of cause without helmet and right through traffic jams. Unloaded in front of the mobile phone store I shortly after was equipped with data and minutes.

First time here, I decided to see the historical parts of the city. The biggest area for that is right in the center, just follow the rest of the tourists. Walking up the hill to the acropolis you get more and more a feeling for the size of this city. It is a white sea of houses all over until the green mountains around it. And there are no cute small white houses with blue roofs between there. Most of them are 4-5 storey high. Not quite cliche.

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