Trip to Córdoba

Hello guys!

In the last year, in November I went to Spain first time. I have already told you a little bit about the whole travel, but one beautiful city left me to present you. This city is Córdoba which is located in Andalusia. The city has a really long and interesting history. However, my purpose is not to talk about it. I would like you to show the places and monuments I saw there during the trip.

The first one of them is the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. Today the whole building is the most important monument of Córdoba and also of all Andalusian architecture.

The door of San Esteban of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, is the oldest part in the building.

The incredible interior of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba.

The Calleja de las Flores which belongs to the most popular tourist streets in Córdoba.

The Puerta de Puente

Avantasia – new album Moonglow

Hello there!

In today’s post I would like to give attention to Avantasia my favorite music band.

A few words about the band:

It is a symphonic power metal supergroup with opera influences, formed in 2000 in Fulda (Germany), by vocalist and leader of the power metal band Edguy, Tobias Sammet. The curious thing is its name Avantasia which is a mixture of two words: Avalon and Fantasia. The name of this project “describes a world beyond the human imagination”.

Tobias composes and writes all Avantasia's songs, the thing that seems be a characteristic of his all albums is to invite many other singers from the most famous power metal bands. Among the singers who Tobias cooperate with, I can distinguish: Michael Kiske, Bob Catley, Alice Cooper and many many others.

In spite of it, Avantasia has its permanent members: as I have already mentioned one of them, Tobias Sammet, others are Sasha Paeth, Felix Bohnke, Michael Rodenberg.

The band has already released 5 albums which have achieved an enormous success all over the world, including Poland. These albums are not just good and powerful music but what is more, there are songs with meaningful lyrics which always consist a wonderful story to tell.

1.       The Metal Opera part I&II

2.       The Scarecrow

3.       The Wicked Symphony y Angel of Babylon

4.       The Mystery of Time

5.       Ghostlights

As I suggested in the title of the post, it is expected that by February 15, 2019, go on sale his next studio album which will bear the title of Moonglow. So, I cannot wait to hear it!

To encourage you to listen to Moonglow, I add here an official album trailer. Enjoy it!

GRIMM

Hello everyone!

Recently I have just started watching a series based on the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales. I must say that I have really liked the series despite the fact that it is talking about unreal things.

Grimm is an American television series of fantasy, mystery, crime and drama that premiered on NBC on October 28, 2011. Many of the episodes are loosely based on stories written by the Grimm Brothers, albeit with considerable artistic license. Other episodes are based on other sources, including fables and legends, not written by the two brothers Grimm. This series has aroused in me the interest and desire to their books. I am very curious of their stories and I glad to have come across the Grimm series.

Are you familiar with the series? If not, I am going to tell a few things about the plot and main characters. The whole story takes place in Portland. The main protagonist is the homicide detective, Nick Bukhardt whose life takes an unexpected and dangerous turn after his aunt’s death, the women who raised him. She reveals him that he is a gifted person with the ability to recognize class of supernatural creatures that once inhabit the Central European forests, but nowadays they are in society, hidden in plain sight. Nick quickly understands that his city is full of those creatures. His duty is protect the ‘normal’ people and fight with the creatures which were thought to have appeared only in legends, myths and fairy tales. The detective is not able to ignore the call of his destiny but also to abandon his present life, it means his work and his girlfriend Juliette. Nick decides to lead a risky double life, as a policeman and as a grimm.

I have already watched one season, in front of me there five more, I cannot wait for what is going to happen next. So, if you have free time and you want to chill out, I recommend you the Grimm series.

I hope you will like it! :D

Rafał Ohme’s experiment and book titled “Emo Sapiens: harmonia emocji I rozumu”

Hello guys!

I would love to share with you a new extraordinary book which was written by RafałOhme, a polish psychologist. I came across his name in one of the articles about psychology where was presented his experiment. 

Before telling you something more about the experiment I would like to say a few words about the psychologist RafałOhme. He is not only a great professor of psychology but also an expert in persuasion and unconscious processes. He is the founder of NEUROHM, a company that uses the analysis of physiological reactions (including brainwaves and reaction times) for marketing, sales, HR and PR and FEEL.DO.THINK. which deals with education and training in the field of emotions and communication in management. What is more, he is a author of several books and many articuls dedicated to the neuromarketing, brain studies or the influence of the emotions on the human being.

Back at the ranch, the experiment consisted in checking what was the first things that men or women looked at while were watching an magazine or newspaper. It was possible to examine this phenomena only by using a special tool colledeye tracker. To explain it to you in more scientific way, we can say that the object is used for the analysis of visual attention. From the perspective of neuromarketing, it seeks to associate visual attention with the cognitive and emotional responses of consumers. Eye tracking measures where the person is looking (named gaze or fixation point), the time that this person looked at this certain point, the movement of his eyes (and moreover, the sequence in which the eyes shift from one spot to another), pupil dilation, and the number of blinks.

According Ohme, understanding the mechanisms that guide consumers to select certain points of interest in an image have many applications for the business world. This knowledge is very valuable especially for TV advertisements, in which lots of information is generated every millisecond, possibly hindering the identification of what the viewer really liked, or what actually called his attention in a positive or negative way.

At the end, I would like to recommend you his new masterpiece which is of course his lates book.

If you want to discover the way and techniques how to link the brain with the power of your emotions, how to use your emotions to goad yourself on, or just to find out  something more about the brain, emotions and many other things which are hidden inside of us. If the answer is yes, it is a perfect book for you! You will not regret it for sure!

Christmas time!

Hello guys!

I hope you had a good week J

We are getting close to the Christmas season which is one of the most beautiful time in year. It is time full of magic which is created by all this decoration, doing holiday shopping and of course by all these Christmas advertisements or movies, which are censored to be an indispensable element of this period.  Every country which celebrates this festive season decorates the city centers, its Old Town, and public places most visited by people. It all creates a wonderful atmosphere which makes people happier. We forget all our problems, we meet up with our whole family at one table and enjoy the time. This time of year is said to connect people, even those who have not been getting along with.

What is more, every country has own costumes and you always can find something unique and especial in them. For example, in Poland, there is a tradition to leave one more plate at the Christmas table for a casual guest, in case someone like this appears. In addition, in polish houses, people divide the wafer in the Christmas Eve evening before the dinner. It is also a day of giving presents to each other. In Spain, in spite of giving small presents to children on Christmas Day, they are given a lot of gifts on 6^th January during ‘el Día de los Reyes Magos’ called in English the Day of the three Magic Kings. It is believed that children get presents left by these three Kings, Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar.

As you can see there are many things which make this holiday such an extraordinary time.

So what I can say at the end of the post is: Merry Christmas to everyone! J

What king of food and drink you cannot miss being in Spain

Hello everyone!

I hope you have had a great week J

In this post I would like to talk about Spanish typical food which you cannot miss being in Spain.

If you have already been in Spain, and you did not try it, there is something to regret. So, next time, do not make that mistake.

One of my goals which I wanted to achieve being in this wonderful country was to experience the Spanish lifestyle which seems to be really intriguing and for sure quite different that the polish one. Like we know, food is a key element of any lifestyle, that is why I tried almost everything that seemed to be new and tasty.

First of all, I want to tell you what the most typical Spanish food is. The food is called ‘una tapa’ which means an appetizer or snack and translates to small portion of any kind of Spanish cuisine. It may be cold or hot, it can be a portion of olives, cheese or even a sandwich with jamón serrano, is a type of dry-cured Spanish ham. There are regions in Spain where the tapas are for free and they are served as an accompaniment to beers or any alcoholic drinks.

Pan con tamte 'bread with tomato'
It is a traditional food of Valencian, Andalusian, Aragonian, Balearic, Catalan and Murcian cuisines in Spain. It consists of bread, which may or may not to be toasted, with tomato rubbed over and seasoned with olive oil and salt.

Churros
They are traditional snack in Spain. Churros can either be thin (and sometimes knotted) or long and thick, where they are known as porras in some regions. They are normally eaten for breakfast dipped in hot chocolate, dulce de leche or café con leche.

Paella
It is a Valencian rice dish that has ancient roots but it is modern form originated in the mid-19th century. Many non-Spaniards view paella as Spain's national dish, but most Spaniards consider is to be a regional Valencian dish. Valencians, in turn, regard paella as one of their identifying symbols. Types of paella include Valencian paella, vegetable paella, seafodd paella and mix paella.

Tortrilla de patatas
It is an omelette made with eggs and potatoes, sometimes also with onion and chives or garlic, fried in oil and often served as an appetizer.

Sangría
It is alcoholic beverage of Spanish origin. A punch, the sangria traditionally consists of red wine and chopped fruit, often with other ingredients such as orange juice or brandy.

Vino de verano
It is a cold wine- based drink popular in Spain, and similar to sangría. The drink is simpler than sangría, and is normally made up of 1 part of table red wine and 1 part gaseosa.

They are the most famous Spanish dishes and drinks, now you know what to choose to eat and to drink in Spain.

Malaga – exotic city of palms

Hello there!

This time I am going to tell you about another city I visited being in Spain. Of course, it was beautiful Malaga, the city which lies on the Costa of Sol of the Mediterranean and it is the second most populous city of Andalusia.

Unfortunately, we had only one day to visit the city, like you can imagine is not too much time to see even the half of the city. So I was glad that we had reserved one free walking tour at least, to get to know some information about this exotic and curious place.

As you can know or not, Malaga is a hometown of three very special person who are o were very well-known. In Malaga were born Pablo Picasso, painter and sculptor at the same time, Jewish philosopher and poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol and, for sure more known by you, the actor  Antonio Banderas who still have an apartment there and visit the city from time to time. I leaped at the chance, and I went to the Pablo Picasso’s museum, where you can find most of his paintings and sculptures.

Apart from the Malaga free walking tour, we discovered the city on our own, having long walks and trying typical Spanish food. We were lucky, because that day the weather was perfect, if we had wanted to sunbath we could have done it freely, but there was one problem, we had forgotten to take  a swimsuit with us. Anyway, I had a great time, I went to the beach even without the swimsuit. Nothing stopped me J

Then, we climbed to get to the place called Gibralfaro, one of the viewpoints from where you can observe the cost and admire the breathtaking landscape.

I called Malaga an exotic city of palms, and it is true. It is a city full of palms and trees, is very green. If you have eyes like a hawk you were able to see parrots flying on the sky and from one palm to another. The only thing I regret is that I could not stay there a little bit longer.