First Impressions

Most important fact first: I am happy and have a really great time.

Yesterday Jim & Sole threw a welcome party for me. With friends from the States, England and of course Ecuador. We had a lot of fun with Karaoke, Forfeits and many interesting and fun discussions. Here are some pictures of the party.

 

Jim & Sole

 

The last beer was too much for him...

For the party shopping, we went to the local Supermaxi (supermarket). I was a bit surprised about the prices. Apart from some really cheap products, the price level is about 10-20% higher than I thought. A large steak for 2 is about 7 USD, so slightly more expensive than in the US or Canada. Compared to Switzeland about half price. In Germany I would imagine that you pay about 20% more. Or course, no-one needs to have a steak each day, so no big deal. I just wanted to find a benchmark. The basic food stuffs are much lower in cost, so no horror news here…

Prior to the party yesterday, I took some pictures inside the house and of the view out. It is a cozy place and I couldn’t imagine it much better.

 

Top: Spot the Kuckuck clock :)

Rental truck (left) - Sole & Jim's on right

Today, we had a great family lunch at Sole’s parents. 3 generations around a large table, enjoying Ceviche and other local delicacies. But have a look yourself…

Yes, you guessed right. Fish in wholewheat Corn Flakes ;)

The weather is great. Especially if you just escaped the big snow chaos in Europe. I almost forgot already how it is to sit in the sun and feel the need to take off (almost) all your clothes because it’s too warm. Being aware that the sun is extremely strong (2500m above the sea and a sun right above you), I only stayed for a couple of minutes. Still, a great feeling!

Tonight will be a relaxed movie night and probably early bedtime. Tomorrow, we want to start planning for our business ventures. I am looking forward to that.

I made it!

Finally, i arrived. The flight of my last leg of the trip was canceled in the end due to an accident of the fire brigade in Cuenca during a training in the early morning. So I rushed to the car rentals and drove the last 180 km. Piece of cake ;). Luckily I caught some 5 hours sleep on the plane. I rented a double cabin Ford Ranger Pick Up, one of the kind that was on the potential candidates to be purchased here. The engine was a joke but the car drove quite well... Ups, I guess this is not a car blog...

Now, a quick shower and then some dinner for me - didn't have much food in the past 12 hours.

What a trip

My flight from Munich to Madrid was supposed to leave at 7:05PM on the 16^th Dec. On the morning of that day, I received an automated call from Chile telling me that my LAN flight from Madrid to Guayaquil would have a new departure time “at 30AM". Although I am not American or English, I was pretty sure that this time format didn’t exist. So, I checked on the website. It told me that my flight was 13 hours late (so actually it was canceled) and thus I would have to spend a night in Madrid and one night in Guayaquil. But since I have experienced a lot of strange things when traveling, I decided to pretend as if all is great and head to the airport at the planned time and take it from there.

Check in isn’t easy if you have 5 suitcases totaling 110kg. I was prepared to pay 200 EUR for the additional luggage, since that was what the LAN website stated. Well, I didn’t take into account that my first leg of the trip was on Iberia and thus had to pay by their scheme. To make a (actually much) longer story short, I paid 270 EUR but because of two mistakes of the Iberia Ticketing lady, I didn’t have to pay 360 EUR and my luggage was paid until Cuenca (which usually is not the case).  So, check in was done after just 1.5 hours lol.

Because of the snow in Northern Germany, we had a delay of a good hour. No big deal given the fact that I had a planned layover in Madrid of 2.5 hours plus the unsecure situation with the flight itself. Even in Munich, no-one could tell me when it would leave. Anyway…

The long-distance flight actually left at about 3AM although the plane was there all the time between the initial departure time. LAN couldn’t organize a crew on time – which funny enough they knew 20 hours before that. The flight was very full. No space in Business class. I was tempted to buy an upgrade as I have quite a bad cold. But hey, I had a very nice Ecuadorian student who studies in Bonn next to me and I am sure that this will not be the last contact that we had. He also helped me a bit through customs. Although I really didn’t smuggle anything, I felt a bit on the spot when I had to open the one suitcase that had my 2 NAS and a 2TB hard drive plus some other nice stuff in it. In the end, all was cool though. No payments required.

Since MAD-GYE was delayed, I was sure I missed my connection to Cuenca. But no. The plane was still there. After just 30 minutes, I could board and thought that this would be it. Again, 2 hours late but that was ok. I fell asleep during taxi. When I woke up, we were parking at a gate. I looked out of my window and immediately realized, that this was not right. We didn’t lift off…. And even had to leave the plane again. Now, about 3 hours later, I sneaked into the VIP lounge and even got hold of the WLAN password to write this blog :)

The flight is now due in about half an hour – 5.5 hours after the original departure time (which, as I mentioned I would not have made anyway). So, in South American terms, I guess I should be quite happy. Could be much worse…

I’ll keep you posted.

Leaving Switzerland

The past weeks were the most eventful so far.

I had my company farewell party with many of my colleagues that went down really well with a great speech of my previous manager and myself. We had a lot of fun.

This week marked the end of my 3 years with my company. Although I am really looking forward to moving to Cuenca, it was also sad to leave a great team behind. I had a good time there, was always treated in a nice way and had a steady income. Especially the last point will not be the case looking forward. It will completely depend on myself and my partners to make a living.

The final event in Switzerland was a Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday. As I was sharing a flat with an American work colleague for my last 2 months in Switzerland, he had the idea to invite friends and colleagues and have an American style Thanksgiving dinner. I liked the idea and offered to do most of the cooking as it should be on my first day in unemployment. It was a great success and a lot of fun. I even managed to convince my mother to come to Switzerland from Munich.

Since Friday I am now in Munich and feeling quite relaxed and at ease with how things are progressing. There is not much left for me to do before my flight leaves in 2.5 weeks apart from reducing my luggage load by about one third. Not easy, when you receive small gifts from friends to take with you to your new home. But I will manage that somehow

Certifications. Tick off!

Originally, I wanted to apply for an investor's visa straight away. This would have required to have the company set-up before I actually went to Ecuador. A bit difficult, if you are supposed to be present to form the company... So, the only option was to apply for an extended tourist visa and sort out the investor's visa once we have formed the company. The investor's visa is valid for life and gives you all freedom in terms of work, and residency, etc.

In order to apply for a 6 month tourist visa, you need to supply the following items:

• 3 passport pictures - not that difficult :)
• Valid passport - have
• Flight confirmation - sure
• Police clearance certificate (dt: Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis)
• Health certificate stating that you have no communicable deseases
• Finance statement that shows that you have enough funds to support yourself during your stay. This can also be a simple bank statement.

As of today, I have all of the above (apart from the bank statement that I can print myself at the end of this month). So, actually, not much can go wrong from here :)

Since I had time at my hand, this was all very easy to get hold of. Of course, being a German citizen living in Switzerland, I had to drive across the border to get my Police Certificate Request Form (lol) authenticate by the major's office. No big deal really. If you are in a hurry though, this could be a bit of a test of patience.

It is Official

So many last things

It is becoming apparent that my leave from my current employer is less than 3 weeks to go.

There are more and more things that I do for the last time now. The last trip to Sweden this week, the last meeting in a series next week, last pizza Thursday in 2 weeks time, and generally seeing people for the (probably) last time who are not working at our Swiss office and will not be around during the next few weeks.

All this is obvious if you leave a company (and I have done that a couple of times) but the feeling attached to those events is much stronger if you are leaving the continent and are likely not to come back for at least a year. In the past 11 years of my business career all those good-byes were feeling temporary although most people I actually have never seen since then.

I am looking forward to my farewell party next week though. It should be fun to celebrate my three years with the company and say good-bye with a nice event. In the end, I am leaving to build something up and not because the competition recruited me… :)