Blogs from Bogota, Colombia, South America - page 11

Bogota: Gold Museum and Cerro Monseratte We went to the Museum of Gold in the morning with Flo, the young woman who lives in and looks after the apartment where we are staying. The Museum del Oro displays a vast and extraordinary selection of pre-Hispanic gold work and is the largest such collection in the world. A recent exhibition at the British Museum of London featuring 223 pieces from this museum claims to the ‘most visited exhibition in London’ during the autumn of 2013. The museum has a collection of 55,000 pieces, 6,000 pieces of which are on display at any one time. We spent a very enjoyable and interesting couple of hours there. The detail and craftwork of the pieces is incredible. And the gold death masks more than a little bit creepy. Sunday entrance ... read more

Day 2 in Bogota: This morning we started out with two goals for the day: visit the Botero Museum here and have lunch at Fulanitos in La Candelaria. Unusually we accomplished both; usually we start the day with a plan and within an hour of commencing our day the plan has either changed or been abandoned to the improvisation of the moment. Bogota’s Botero Museum is housed in a converted Spanish courtyard building and contains 208 paintings and sculptures donated by the artist, including 123 of his own and 85 by international masters such as Renoir, Monet, and Picasso. This museum was as enjoyable as our visit to the Botero Museum in Medellin and we remain enthralled and amused by his work. And we look for evidence of it in the people of Colombia as we ... read more

Our first impressions of Bogota weren’t that positive. There were long queues to the taxis, the street numbering in Bogota is so confusing our taxi driver had problems finding our hostel, and it was cold and gray. Also, we weren’t that impressed by our hostel. The room was noisy with a bar right outside the window, both mattresses and pillows were protected with plastic bags so they were hard and noisy to sleep on and the room was cold. After the first night we almost changed hostel, but in the end we were too lazy to move for one and a half more nights, so we just changed into sleeping in our sleeping bags on the thick blankets we got which made the bed a lot less noisy. The first morning in Bogota it was raining, ... read more

My dear friends, I am going to take advantage of this blog to let you know about the 14th National Conference at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, where I was a keynote speaker after a national competition of proposals. My talk was about Lifelong Learning and that was a chance to sort of recap my learning and teaching experience in languages, lucky me, mine was the national winner and that´s how they allowed me to be one of the 6 keynote speakers. That was a wonderful experience and although I had some problem with my slides due to the sunny light of a day, and the fact that we were not in a confined space. I´d say it was also my fault for not having a contingency plan; anyway, I tried to do my best to tell ... read more

Wieder frueh aufstehen, wir muessen zum Zoll und denen die MR entlocken. Um 8.00 sitzen wir alle im Bus, mit Helm, Motorradschluesseln, Regenzeug, Buch, Wasserflasche etc. So kurz vor 9.00 hatte sich der Fahrer des Kleinbusses durch Bogota gewuehlt und war bei der Adresse angelangt, wo wir den Fixer abholen sollten. Ein Fixer ist jemand, der sich auskennt und gegen Geld hilft, die oertliche Buerokratie zu ueberwinden. Aber wir brauchten den Fixer noch nicht - die Zollinspektoren inspizieren heute erst ab 14.00. Also zurueck zum Hotel, wir treffen uns um 13.00 wieder und ueben dann weiter. Das Treffen um 13.00 ist denkbar kurz: wir treffen uns um 15.00 wieder, Kevin hat keine Ahnung, ob wir heute noch was erledigen koennen oder nicht... Um 15.00 fahren wir wieder zum Buero, wo wir den Fixer abholen sollen. Keiner ... read more