As a last posting of this year some personal notes. The past three months I spent in Barcelona invited by Properazzi the world’s largest property search engine to share office space with them.
Barcelona is a marvelous city, with the sea, the mountains, the architecture of the modernisme, the weather (in three months I used the umbrella only once). Public transport in the city in particular the local bike sharing system bicing is great.
You just grab a bike at one of the hundreds of stations and return it at your destination. Though you shouldn’t expect to find an empty slot to return it at one of the beach stations on a sunny day. 
Each station has a small real-time map display where you can see the next stations with their availability of empty slots or available bikes. A googlemaps application on the web site helps you plan in advance if you are not certain.
The local language spoken in Barcelona is Catalan. Nevertheless I could brush up my Spanish with some lessons.
Right now I am reading ‘La Sombra del Viento‘. The absolutely marvelous novel is located in Barcelona after the civil war and tells the mysterious and thrilling story of a boy, Daniel, who has adopted a book in the ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’ and has to protect it for the rest of his life. Soon the novel and the book begin to blend and the book and it’s author will become part of Daniel’s life for years to come.
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