Category Archives: Travel
Next trip: Israel
From 8 to 22 March 2015, I will be in Israel. “… I will be in Israel again,” I should say because this will be about my fifteenth or twentieth time to visit Israel. But six years have passed since my last trip. Why go … Continue reading
It began with dense fog. (Part 1)
Mount Dinnammare sits 1,130 meters (3,700 feet) above the port city of Messina and offers splendid views across the strait of Scylla and Charybdis, to Calabria, across the mountains of Sicily and on both the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian Sea. After having just arrived … Continue reading
Top 10 Ethical Travel Destinations? I doubt that.
I don’t know why people need lists with suggestions for travel destinations. Do people really sit at home without any idea and wait for “the top 10 travel destinations in 2015”, “the most underrated travel destinations this year” and “the … Continue reading
Wow, this ship is huge!
When you walk or drive along Via Giuseppe Garibaldi in Messina, a wide road running parallel to the shore and the port, you could at first sight believe that there is another row of multi-storey buildings behind the ones you’re … Continue reading
Medininkai
Most people only visit the small village of Medininkai to climb Lithuania’s two highest mountains. I didn’t stay long either after my mountain tour, but I still paid a visit to the wooden church and the castle. The church was closed. From the … Continue reading
The bird doesn’t care what you did
You may have done great things in life. Maybe you are a hero. Maybe you are famous. There might be a statue erected for you on a bridge in Edinburgh. Then a bird will come and shit on top of … Continue reading
Why I don’t play the Lottery
Because it’s a Soviet scam, a Communist charade: In the novel Twelve Chairs, Ilja Ilf and Evgeny Petrov describe how the Soviet Union organized steamship tours, accompanied by orchestras and dance groups, whose goal it was to get people to sign … Continue reading
Snowplow Train
It snowed all night and several feet of snow threaten to paralyze train traffic?No problem: you dispatch the snowplow train and after it crossed the country once, all the other trains are good to go to work as well. (Photographed in Gheorgheni, Romania.)
Hungarian Runes
As if Romanian and Hungarian wouldn’t be hard enough already, I have discovered a third alphabet, hitherto unknown to me, on street signs in the Szeklerland in Romania. The writing directly above the arrow is in Old Hungarian script, also called Hungarian … Continue reading
The Happy Hermit 