Places

The city we are moving to is Ciudad Real in Castilla La Mancha. It is situated in the central Spain -around 200km south of Madrid- and is the capital of the province bearing the same name, which means "Royal City". The population of the city is around 65000 inhabitants (though students raise this number to around 100 000) and it's said to be a growing long-distance commuter suburb of Madrid, thanks to the high-speed train connection between these two cities making the time needed for the travel less than 50 minutes.

Ciudad Real homepage

Here are some pictures from Ciudad Real, taken by Maria-Isabel (gracias!)

Above: The substitute for Sputnik???

Presentation

Hola y bienvenido! Hello and welcome! Moikka ja tervetuloa!

This is the blog of a finnish boy who met a spanish girl who came to Finland for an exchange year in the summer of 2006. In the summer of 2007 after the exchange year is over, we'll head towards Spain together and that's what this blog will be about. The main reason for writing this journal is to share the experiences to come with my family and friends, but since this is my first blog-attempt ever, it remains to be seen what will eventually turn out of this.

The starting point of this blog -the present time- is a month or so before christmas in the late 2006. What in the beginning was merely an abstract idea of going to Spain, has over the months become more and more concrete. It's still a long way to go before the actual day of departure, but things have started to happen and take shape. And I have to say, this kind of migration to another country does take some planning and adjusting to go smoothly - both from practical and emotional standpoint ;)

So dear reader, I welcome you (and whoever else is/are peeking over your shoulder) to read my blog and hopefully find something of interest.

Here's some links about anything spanish that I've found useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain
http://www.wordreference.com/
http://spain.info/
http://www.renfe.es/
http://espanja.org/
http://www.mir.es/
http://www.mapa.es/
http://www.coches.net/
http://www.audisport-iberica.com/