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One of the best things in Zwickau is its wonderful lake, which is located very near from downtown and 5 minutes walking from my dormitory. They lake is known in German language as Schwanenteich (literally “Swan Pond”) and was built by a very rich nobleman in the 15th century.

The walkway

Some horses next to the walkway

As I’ve been able to see, this is the favorite spot by the local people for long walks. It’s also an ideal place for jogging, I’ve already jogged 5 or 6 times, or for riding bikes.
In the pond there are a lot of fish so it’s pretty usual to see people with their fishing rods. Moreover the lake is “navigable” and you can rent paddle boats or pedal boats shaped like swans.

With Davit (Armenia), Mahmoud (Syria), Jerry (China) and Noemi (Armenia)

What a photographer!

There are also goats

And of course there are also swans…

Searching stuff with Google I found a shocking new about how a swan felt in love with a pedal boat, and as you can see the boat model in the new is the same as the one they have here in Zwickau’s lake, next time I will check if any swan approaches to much to the swan boats.

Swan boat

Some days ago my French friends that live in the dorm were surprised that I didn’t know about radio.blog.club, according to them is just as popular as YouTube, at least in France.

I had previously tried GoEar and last.fm, but neither of the two services convinced me at all. Radio.blog.club is very simple to use, you type the name of the song or artist, a list of results appears and you just have to select the song you want to hear. Then when the song finishes, another random song similar to the one previously heard will be played, so it’s a very nice service to find new artists that fit with your musical preferences.

After registering you’re allowed to create playlists with your favorite music and embed them in your website. Of course everything for free, so I think that the website may not be very legal, but the French told me that they think it is because you can’t download the songs, and if you want to download them you have to pay, just like in iTunes.

During the next two months I will be working in the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (West Saxon University of Applied Sciences of Zwickau). I’m going to work 8 hours a day from Monday to Friday with Davit, an IAESTE trainee from Armenia. Our boss, Dr. Schuman seems to be in a business trip and he won’t be here until Monday, so Frau Tittman, his assistant, told us to do a presentation with Power Point about ourselves that we will present in the first work meeting this Monday. About our work I just know that it’s related to Second Life, I suppose programming scripts. In our work group we will be 4 IAESTE trainees: Davit, a girl from Egypt and a girl from China that will arrive during the summer.
I’ve uploaded the presentation to SlideShare, a website like YouTube but to share Power Point presentations. The website is very cool, in just 3 minutes I registered and uploaded the Power Point file:

Well, after a pretty hectic week, I’m ready to start writing my adventures in Germany. On Saturday I took an Air Berlin flight from Alicante to Berlin Texel airport, thanks to Luis instructions I arrived to the impressive Berlin Hauptbahnhof (inaugurated last year for the 2006 FIFA World Cup), there I waited for 3 hours, and I could find out that German Crispy Chicken burgers taste different from the Spanish ones, and here they offer you mayonnaise with the french fries while in Spain they only offer you ketchup…

Later I took the train Berlin-Leipzig and then another one from Leipzig to Zwickau, the final destination, where I will be living for 2 months. In Zwickau train station Frau Kunze was waiting for me. She is a very nice woman who works for the international relations department of the Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau (West Saxon University of Applied Sciences of Zwickau). She welcomed me and helped me out with everything, we went to a supermarket to buy the basic things to survive and then she took me to my accommodation.
I’m living in a college dormitory in downtown Zwickau in an individual room, sharing kitchen and bathroom with a nice French girl and two not-so-nice German boys. Since yesterday I’ve an Internet connection in my room, and it’s pretty fast, so from now on I will not have any excuses not to update my blog. Tomorrow more.

View from my room (in an eight floor)