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Last posts

The Berlin of Good Bye Lenin

Mónica Boixeda Berliner, Only-Be

Today there are many vestiges of communism in Berlin. Not only the Wall but also the famous Checkpoint Charlie, huge avenues built by the Communists, the last flag of the Kremlin, or numerous monuments and cemeteries that remind us those who were killed trying to cross the Wall from its beginnings up until 1989. Let’s start the tour. We all learn from history and from what we’ve seen that the world is more just now that the Wall has fallen. And the Germans began a new stage of no return, marking the end of communism. In Berlin it is possible to take a tour of the most significant places of the former GDR. And you can even take a tour aboard a Trabi, the model of the former Communist regime. With the company Trabant Berlin, you can visit the typical Communist avenues with large gray buildings, at a cost of around 70 euros an hour. The tour also visits the East and West sides of the Wall (where you’ll notice the difference) and Checkpoint Charlie (the most famous crossing of the Wall between 1945 and 1990). It is located near Friedrichstraße and was under the control of the U.S. The name Charlie is the phonetic alphabet used by NATO, it stands for the third letter. There are also others, such as Checkpoint Alpha, in the autobahn in Helmstedt or Checkpoint Bravo in Dreilinden. In addition this route will pass through the museum of the Wall, the last flag of the Kremlin, and the Wall itself, or what remains of it. You can continue this “Good Bye Lenin” style tour... read more

The best horchata in Barcelona

Nancy Guzman Barcelonian, Food and Drink in Barcelona, Only-Be

There are drinks that have that scent of childhood that chase us our whole life. Horchata is one of them. It reminds us of those warm summer afternoons with the family with our mum giving us that elixir of freshness in the afternoon after playing. Perhaps that´s the reason that we´re always after the information that leads us to the places that prepare the best horchata. Because we want to make that search easy for you in Barcelona, here are some places that you´ll enjoy drinking horchata in this summer. Horchata is a white drink that´s drunk very cold and therefore is a summer classic. It´s prepared with tiger nuts, chufa, that they only grow in Valencia, where they arrived from northern Africa in the 8th century, a product of Islamic migrations. Obtaining the horchata is a process that has four stages: washing and soaking the chufa for 8h, crush and macerate, press it so that it lets go its extract and finally add sugar to it. With time and the scientific investigations that have taken place regarding the nutritional properties of the chufa, it turns out that it´s beneficial to have a glass of horchata every day because it´s high content of oleic acid helps bring down bad cholesterol levels and increases good cholesterol levels, preventing senile dementia and cardiovascular problems. Also, it has a hight content of Vitamin E, doesn´t contain gluten, is rich in minerals such as phosphorus, iron, magnesium, calcium and potassium, it´s low in sodium and it´s perfect for people with heart problems. For all of these reasons and those that connect us to the... read more

Shakespeare in Central Park in New York

Mónica Boixeda New Yorker, Only-Be

Some say that, if he was alive today, Shakespeare would have become a film director. With the permission of the critics, if he had been born in the 1980s, he would be a blogger. And not just a run-of-the-mill blogger, but a successful one with hundreds of thousands of followers. And that´s because the great English bard (1564-1616) was an artist of his time, a shrewd master of words. He exploited the possibilities of theatre, like we all know, but his sonnets are of memorable beauty (well, let´s say worthy of the top ten ones in world literature). The thing is the Shakespeare didn´t really invent, understanding by invent its current meaning. His plays (from King Lear to Hamlet as well as Romeo and Juliet) already existed in previous compendia. However, he retook this tradition (interdiscursivity it´s called), shaped it, changed it, transformed it and placed the right words so that it didn´t lose a bit of its dramatic tension. Although news keeps coming in about places where the English playwright premiered (the latest just a few months ago), we have to take into account that theatres, as we know them today, didn´t exist back then. The venues were improvised in any place (in a patio, on the street or in the court) and the stages (like the Noh Theatre in Japan) were almost empty. Also, the female characters were played by men (it also happened in Japanese drama) and the shows had to be profitable in the box office. However, with all of these conditions, Shakespeare built a play that, according to Harold Bloom in his ´Western Canon´, puts words to... read more