It is the middle of October and fall is in full swing! Night temperatures reach down to the freezing point, the days are barely warmer. Rain showers shake hands with sunshine, hail knocks down some leftover flowers and heavy wind gusts blow the colorful leaves off the trees. And then it starts over again. You never know what to expect and/or what to wear.
Citymap of Ingolstadt from 1810. It is surrounded by protection buildings and a citiwall that is still intact. Nowadays the Danube on the south side of town has 3 bridges for traffic crossing over, 2 pedestrian bridges and 1 for trains… Ingolstadt was founded in the year 806 and had a busy history, being a custom point for the salt trade from the Alps to northern territories. Here, every shipment of salt had to cross the Danube, which made it a popular location for thieves and bandits.
Today my brother Jürgen and I spent a whole day together. He needed a haircut, a motorcycle helmet, tennis shoes, lunch, a walk and everything wrapped with meaningful brother-sister conversations.
On our way to the motorcycle helmet store we found this neat barber shopWhat a fun place!Billiard table, retro furnitures and fixtures, super cool!
With his new haircut, Jürgen bought a new helmet and afterwards we had a tasty lunch at a restaurant at a nearby lake, the „Auwaldsee“ in Ingolstadt. At this lake I learned to swim, to ice skate, I learned to play Romme, I read books, many MANY books. Back then we rode our bikes to this lake, we spent our childhood afternoons there, and for us, it was perfect! The lake seemed huge, biking around took forever, swimming across seemed impossible! And today after lunch Jürgen and I walked around the lake, 3km, 1hour, just a little afterlunch walk. And it was beautiful! And perfect!!!
I know it’s confusing, but when it comes to „home“, I’m kind of a schizophrenic. What is home? Where you grew up and know every sound, every smell, every little detail inside and out? Or is it the place you live with your husband, a comfortable warm place you enjoy and where you can do whatever you want? Or is it the place you want to be buried? I’m torn and never know what to answer, if I’m asked. So, I’m home now (home #1, where I grew up).
After a short 3.5hour flight from Istanbul I landed in Munich, where my brother Jürgen picked me up and we went to a fun, loud, techno dance party / concert, that left Jürgen in shock. He never was a club, dance party, techno guy, so starting this when you’re 55 years old is a stretch 😱. I on the other hand was sore from dancing the next day, I couldn’t hear well and my voice was hoarse… I always loved techno!
Klangphonics at the Technikum in Munich
Home late, the next day was already packed with a 20 people family lunch at the restaurant Wild in Hagenhill – good food mixed with good company – what else do you need? So this is home then?
And right after lunch, the whole crowd meets at Jürgen & Anjas house for coffee / tea and a variety of homemade cakes! Delicious!!! Just like home!🤩! My nieces Saskia and Tamara should get an award 💝. My family stretches from 2-month old Niklas (our Mini Schneider) up to 85-year old Helmut!
Maxi Schneider & Mini Schneider3 siblings: Jürgen, Edith and PetraGoodies for coffee / teaMom, Stephanie, Tamara and PetraSaskiaKira, Roberto, Maxi Schneider, Saskia and Tamara
And that’s not all: last night my sister Petra and her husband Erwin took me to a lecture about the James Webb Telescope. This was so interesting! I just love it when you learn a lot while being entertained, while you can laugh and think „Uhh, Ahh, Really?“ Prof Andreas Burkert from the TU Munich is such a good talker: a big bravo to his fun, informative style of lecture! Looking at the unimportance of our home planet, how small the earth is compared to the universe. It makes you question why people think so much about themselves, how important they think they are. Listening to Prof Burkerts lecture should put you back into perspective…
And today? Home improvements are on the daily chore list. A remote garage door is needed to make the life of my mom and Helmut more bearable. So here we go, „home“ improvements. Everything involves the word „home“….. I wonder why?
Walking around town is so much fun in Istanbul! An overload of stimulation from colors, shapes and smells is overwhelming! Hundreds of stores along every street, inside and outside of the markets: stores for spices, jewelry, sweets, jewelry, shoes, jewelry, clothing hangers, jewelry, leather & fur and, guess what? Jewelry! It is overwhelming, stimulating and fun!
SweetsTeaOlivesSpicesKnivesInside the Egyptian Bazaar
The Egyptian Bazaar is more food oriented than the Grand Bazaar, the later being very touristy. What we really enjoyed are those areas outside the bazaars, where the locals shop and no tour guides with their flock of tourists can be seen. Household items, store fixtures, jewelry making supplies, fabrics & notions, party supplies, everything and anything can be found. The streets take us in, we float, we eat, drink, have fun!
Raki (double Raki) for TedBreakfast buffet at our hotel
What you can also see everywhere are cats, mostly kittens, who sleep, relax, beg for food and/or mind their own business
Istanbul, Constantinople, the center of the Byzantine Empire, the bridge between Europe and Asia, the needle hole for every trade going from east to the west and vice versa! Istanbul, where Christians and Muslins live together for centuries, where the western and eastern influences mix, where spices and gold were traded, where many different languages were spoken, Istanbul is truely a one-of-a-kind in every way.
We left the cruise ship today, said good-bye to our comfortable room, and headed straight into the next adventure.
View from our cruise ship window
We found our hotel, checked in and couldn’t wait to visit the grand bazaar! 35 years ago I was in Turkey for 6 weeks and loved it! The people were so friendly and welcoming, by the mentioning of being German, they bend over backwards to tell me their connection to my home country: VW for 17 years, Mercedes for 10 years, Audi for 20 years, etc. Many of them had worked in the German Automobile industry, after the Italians in the 1950s and the Greeks in the 1960s and early 1970s.
There are still many Turkish people in Germany, marking the second biggest ethnic group there. You can find lots of Turkish restaurants and delicious street food (“Döner Kebab“) everywhere.
Hagia Sofia in the background
The grand Bazaar just swallowed us in! According to Wikipedia, „The Grand Bazaar (Turkish: Kapalıçarşı, meaning ‘Covered Market’; also Büyük Çarşı, meaning ‘Grand Market’) in Istanbul is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 4,000 shops on a total area of 30,700 m2, attracting between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.“ It has 21 entrances! So it’s easy to float around and/or get lost…
Fortunately our hotel is just a 15min walk away from the Grand Bazaar, so I head back to our hotel after a late lunch in order to teach; somebody has to work….. The good thing is the time difference: we are 10hours ahead of time from California to Turkey, so my classes are from 6pm until midnight. Meaning I can explore during daylight and teach at night 🥳
Over 3000 mosques are in Istanbul and when they call for prayer, 5 times a day, I’m getting goose bumps all over my body. I’m not religious, but this prayer calling has a special sensation that goes under my skin – I love it!
25 years ago I visited Ρόδος for the first time. A cute oldtown, a castle, 5 hotels along the beach. My friend Lisa and I rented a scooter, we drove around the island, it was a quiet, relaxing vacation.
It looks very different now, not 5, but what seems to be 100 hotels, all the streets paved, cruise ships in the port, bus loads full of tourists shipped to all the beautiful destinations.
We signed up for a wine tasting + cooking class + 10-course meal and we loved every bit of it! Together with 6 other people from our cruise we headed out to a 45min drive to a winery where our host Jason waited for us and walked us through the vineyards where his small family winery grow 7 different varieties if wine. Some from France (Merlot, Chardonnay), some old varieties from Greece. The following winetasting was delicious, informative and prepared a relaxed mood to start the cooking class. Tzatziki, dolmas, and an eggplant dip was what we made.
The 10-course meal topped off everything in the best way possible; one dish after another, one better than the previous, wine and more wine was poured – we all were very happy!
Limassol (Lemesos) is the second biggest town in Cypress (after Nicosia in the center, which is divided between Turkey and Greece). Limassol is on the south part of the island, whereas Turkey owns the north part.
Cyprus Medieval Museum (Lemesos Castle)
I’ve been on many different islands in Greece and multiple times on the mainland, so it surprised me quite a bit, that the taxi driver we hired at the port entered the car on the right side and started driving on the left side of the road 🥶.
Later, on the way back to the ship, we learned the reason behind this: England used to occupy Cyprus for 50 years. They left and what they left what traffic on the left…..
We spend the day floating around the old town, visited the Limassol museum, the market, we are not Greek, but Cyprus salad, walked along the shore and enjoyed another warm sunny day at the Mediterranean. The war in Israel dimmed our mood and made me feel guilty of playing tourist, where – not far from us – people explode in hatred and kill each other…
We had booked a private tour with Ahmed to visit Cairo, Geza, the pyramids, the sphinx and Memphis. But our ship was late docking, and it took forever to get on land, so our tour started way late, which was a bummer! And then there was the Egyptian security protocol, which wanted all the guests who were scheduled for a tour to be loaded onto the buses and be escorted out of Port Said. 30 buses and 20 minibuses later we were finally allowed to leave the port 😖
And we finally made it, we left Port Said and drove south towards Cairo; with a police escort in a long convoy. 3.5 hours later, we picked up Ahmed, our guide for the day, and headed to Memphis to visit a museum.
That statue was discovered in the mud of the Nile River, face down, and they built a museum around it, because transporting this enormous 67 foot long statue was impossible due to its weight!
Then we finally drove to the pyramids of Geza. This was in all our bucket lists for a while and we were impressed! What magnificent views, on a hilltop on the west banks of the Nile River. West was always associated with death, East with life. And because pyramids are always burial buildings, they had to be built west. Therefore the town of Geza is on the east side.
As you can see, we had fun taking photos 😀 before we went inside 😖
Entering this colossal building was not so much fun for me. It was a hot day, the entrance is tiny and the walkway up that narrow ramp ~3 stories up, was very claustrophobic! People going up and down the same ramp, it was sticky, dim, and not enough air! 😟
Now I know why Ahmed didn’t go in with us…
The Sphinx was next before we had to rush back. An enormous sculpture that was buried in sand when discovered. Only the upper part of the head showed above the sand – and look at it now (IT, not HIM or HER)
On the way back to the port, another 3.5 hour escorted bus convoy, we heard the horrible news that Israel was attacked by the terrorist Hamas group. What a horrendous act of war towards civilians! It breaks my heart…
And slowly the big uncertainty sets into our minds, that we are supposed to port in Ashdod, Israel tomorrow morning with an excursion to Jerusalem. The more we read about the attacks, the more we hope that we are not even landing in Israel. Thank whatsup and my family in Germany, we get more details and really hope to just skip Israel…
Back on the ship we hear the “good” news: Israel is cancelled, we’ll have an extra day at sea. Hopefully we can enjoy it and not think too much of what’s going on so close to where we are….. But, of course, our vacation mood is disappearing with every detail we hear…
So I’d already been in Rome, Napoli and Sicily. Zakynthos, or Zaki as the locals call it, was the fist “new”. And it was a good one! A beautiful little island with lots of little farms growing mostly olive trees. The main summer income for the islanders is tourism, the main winter income is olive oil. No wonder that they sell all kinds of olive products everywhere: oil, lotions, along with honey, wine etc.
Our friends Yuki and Bill, Ted and I joined a day-long tour by bus & boat. Half of the day we drove around the island, first on the westside, where most of the 20,000 people live, then on the eastside with its high cliffs and gorgeous views.
The most famous view is down to the shipwreck beach. A group of cigarette smugglers had a problem with their ship and – instead of being caught by the coastguard – they just abandoned their vessel and ran off. The ship ended up on this beach and is falling apart ever since this happened (in the 1980s). Unfortunately the beach is closed and you are not allowed to go ashore because of falling rocks from the cliff surrounding the beach.
We had a few more stops with views to other beaches, one of which had sulfuric gases bubbling out of the water near the beach, making every public restroom small like a perfume store. But it is healthy apparently… On top of the cliff above the stinky beach is a little bar, where the people on the beach can order food and drinks, that then is transported down by an interesting gondola basket
The second part of the day we spent on a boat, moving along the coast and it’s many little beaches, coves and grottos. We drove inside a few of them, we swam in the Mediterranean we had a lot of fun!!! The crystal clear water has all shades of blue and turquoise – like heaven to me ❤️
Last year we fell in love with Sicily, when we visited the Aeolian Islands to do a one week long hike. But our hike organisation Macs Adventure had to change the itinerary, because the volcano Stromboli acted up and destroyed some of the hiking trails we were supposed to use. So we ended up with 2 nights in Taormina and we loved it! We wanted to come back and when we saw the itinerary of this current cruise, we didn’t hesitate to book it.
Unfortunately the day in Taormina was cut short and we were supposed to be back by 3pm. When we wanted to leave the ship by tender, this process took forever and we when we finally were on land we couldn’t find a taxi to bring us up to Taormina 🥴
It was around 11.30am when we finally arrived and we immediately rewarded ourselves with a delicious cannoli 🤩
Cannoli is a round baked philodough that is shaped into a Zylinder and filled with a ricotta cream and sprinkled with pistachios – delicious!Limoncello Spritz for Edith, chocolate gelato for Ted
There is an image that you can find throughout Taormina: flower pots with an middle eastern looking male face. Legend has it that this handsome guy came to Taormina and fell in love with a local virgin. After making love with her, she discovered that he was a married man. So she chopped off his head and used it as a flower pot. And the herbs growing from this pot were thriving! Ever since the people in Taormina make flower pots with his image so that their herbs and flowers grow well!
It is loud here in Alexandria! Very loud. And very dirty. And very smelly! I wish I had Ted’s nose; his sense of smell is almost non-existent and that is a big advantage sometimes.
Today is National Armed Forces Day, a national holiday and everything is closed.
Alexandria was on our itinerary, and my brain just jumped up and screened: Bibliotheca Alexandria, but this magnificent modern library, that I always wanted to visit, is also a victim of the National Armed Forces Day and therefore closed 😱
Ok then, let’s go to the national museum then. We met our friends on the way there, they just finished their visit, so we feel safe. We know it is open, small, interesting and it has a bathroom which makes Ted happy. We arrive and the guard at the entrance tells us that it is closed. No electricity.
Egypt is not really inviting today, we are already tired of walking around and we choose to sit in a cafe and drink a coke (Edith) and a water (Ted). And it turns out that they don’t have coke. I guess maybe it has something to do with National Armed Forces Day? Honk honk honk…
