Dr. Miguel Moital's Blog: Summer 2010 I

The Summer is now (long) gone and with it the resting, the good weather and the travelling. You will not be surprised to hear that I did a bit of travelling over the summer… I was meant to have posted these entries much earlier, but too many things have been happening in my life which have prevented me from doing so. Better late than never, so here are three posts about my summer! I - Holland and Italy; II - Portugal; III: Brazil. Enjoy!

Summer travelling kicked off with a trip to Holland to visit my Dutch friends. I studied in Holland in 1995 as an Erasmus student and made three good friends: Saskia, Kristel and Yvonne. Since then we remained in touch and for some time we tried to meet every year, either in Portugal or in Holland. However, we had not met since 2002. Since Saskia had just had a baby girl, this was a good opportunity to visit them again. It is amazing that so many years later we are the same (ok, we are bit older…). It was good to catch up, know what they have been up to and remember the good moments we spent together in the past. We met on the day of the world cup final. Unfortunately Holland lost...

From left to right: Saskia, Yvonne holding Teuntje and Kristel

Teuntje; how cute does she look here?

Watching the world cup final. My friends has a surprise for me. A pair of typical Dutch shoes!

Even the cake was Orange!

Visiting Leiden - the traditional Dutch windmill in the back

now... which one is my bike? bike parking area with literally thousands of bikes

During my trip to Holland I still had time to visit my class mates and friends Pedro and Patricia in The Hague. Pedro works for the Portuguese Tourism Board and has been working as the Representative for the BENELUX markets for two years. It was great to see them again, specially their little boy Pedro Junior.

In front of the Royal Palace in Den Hague

With Patricia and Pedro Jr (Pedro Senior was taking the picture)

Reception of the Dutch Football Team by the Queen. The crown waiting for the players to come to the Balcony. I had to leave to the airport and ended up not watching the players.

In Holland... be a Dutch!

ITALY

At the end July I went on a week-long Salsa Holiday in Italy. I had tried to dance Salsa for a while, but always struggled a bit. This year I tried again and it ‘clicked’ – I finally managed to dance. Since May I have been trying to practice a lot and learn a few more moves. Going on a salsa holiday would tick two boxes – learning salsa and relaxing and having bit of fun. I searched options on the Internet and found the ‘Salsa in Toscana’ Holiday, organized by Leuven Salsa, from Belgium. The holiday took place in Prata and Bocheggiano, two very small – but beautiful – towns near Massa Maritima/Follonica (around 2 hours south of Pisa). Both villages are at the top of hills and the views are amazing. This was my first time in Italy. Toscana is quite beautiful and I will certainly be back soon.

I had not realized that there were two quite different styles of salsa – LA salsa and Cuban salsa. I do Cuban salsa, but in Italy it was LA salsa. At the beginning it was difficult as the choreographies are different and some of the ‘rules of the game’ too. For example, in Cuban salsa you are much more free to use the space in dance floor, in LA salsa you have to keep a line with your partner. At the beginning most of the mistakes I did were because of not meeting this rule. During the holiday we had salsa parties virtually every night, most of them at open air venues. Needless to say, I met a lot of people (we were around 30 salseros) and some of them became good friends. Besides people from Belgium, there were people from France, Slovenia and even one American!