a quick flashback..

During the past months I was quite busy travelling both for business and pleasure..here's a quick glance at the cities that I visited and what I liked the most about them. I've been to London, Barcelona, Skopje, Zagreb, Belgrad, Chicago and Hannover. I mean they are nice cities but I must say that London has a special place as it is a really beautiful city. Me and my wife we had limited time; only three days but we tried to see as much as possible. We stayed at the Cleveland in Westminster and the hotel was quite nice. Good value. Totally recomendable and the staff was really friendly. As London taxis can be very expensive we took the bus from Stansted Airport to Oxford Street and from there with a cab for 8-9 pounds to the hotel, which was okay. We saw a lot of nice things but I must say I was impressed the most with the British Museum. It was huge and mostly for free. After that I had a business trip to the Balkan, where I started with Zagreb. The weather was perfect and Zagreb is one of the nicest cities in the Balkan region. I visited our dealer there and they are one of the nicest guys, who took good care of me..feeding me Croatian food..however, the clumsy guy I am, I almost started a mini Balcan conflict..there was some statue of Nikola Tesla in a plaza in Zagreb and the Croats claim that he was from Croatia as he was born in Smiljan, which today lies in Croatia..back then it was part of the Austrian Empire..anyways, I wondered why Croats where claiming him for themselves when the rest of the world claims that he was from Serbia..boy, wrong question asked and immediately the guys started to counter-argue that the Serbs are idiots etc. In order to drop the tension I said..''c'mon guys..of course he's Croatian..I was just teasing you..'' anyways, my friends are really cool so it was all fine and they bought me a nice necktie in a traditional shop that was selling only neckties.., which was invented by the way in Croatia and adopted by the French calling it 'cravate'..in German we also call it 'Krawatte'..

From Zagreb I made my way to Belgrade and the weather was so stormy that night that I literally pissed in my pants as there were lightnings all over the city while I was in the air praying to whatever God was available to land me safely. I took a taxi from Nikola Tesla airport and check in at the Hotel Moskva, which is a splendid hotel. It is a bit expensive compared to other four star hotels in Belgrade but is a hotel that surely has some history and the rooms are nicely decorated. I won't go into further details as I have written about Belgrade before but I suggest you visit the Bohemian quarter which is called Skadarlija as it is absolutely worth to visit with its cool bars and cafes. After Serbia I visited Skopje and the week after we went on a family trip to Barcelona. Actually it was a bit outside of Barcelona, a small village called Santa Susana. We stayed at the Aquahotel 4 nights which had two swimming pools and a short walking distance to the beach. Me and my wife did not like it much there but our daugther was totally happy. She didn't get out of the pool the whole day and whatever makes her happy makes us happy too..the train ride takes like 1 1/2 hours from Barcelona Sants to Santa Susanna. Back in Barcelona we took a hotel in Diagonal Mar called Barcelona Diagonal Cero..it is a nice hotel with nice rooms. I have nothing bad to say about it. So it was quite busy but we are not finished yet..I will be travelling to Jakarta in September and I'm really excited about that. Stay safe everybody..!

there's no place like home! this time for real!

I took some days off and flew back to Germany in order to visit my parents. I took my niece with me, who happens to be a black metal  fan14 year old teenager girl. I used to be a metal-head myself so I thought we would have some common ground to talk about. Boy was I wrong! I never heard any of the bands she was listening too and most of the times I had no clue what she was talking about. One time she tried to explain me the bands she liked, folk-metal she called it. Folk-metal?? really? there is a category called folk-metal? When did that happen???

When I started to name-drop all the cool bands like Tesla, White Lion, Skid Row, Buckcherry, Motley Crue all I received was empty, blank stares! Damn you Nirvana, for ruining a whole generation of brilliant music!!

I guess, generation gap caught hold of me. However, the flight itself was not so complicated. She had mostly her headphones on and was listening to some brutal guitar riffs while I tried to read my book.
Since my trip was not only for pleasure I had to drop off my niece at my parent's flat and go from there to various most interesting cities in Germany. But first of all, we went straight from the airport to my beatiful home town Unkel am Rhein. I'm proud to say that I was born there. It is one of the most beautiful towns along the river Rhine. And a very old one as well  with friendly people. It has a historical city center with traditional vineyards. There isn't much industry around except for some small factories in the neighbour-village so people concentrated on small art shops and wine-making here. Unkel is located right next to the river Rhine, 20 km south of Bonn. Very peaceful. If you ever get the chance to fly to Cologne don't hesitate to visit Unkel, you won't be disappointed. There are many things to see and to enjoy, so you will need time. There are one or two guesthouses and a nice hotel 'Rheinhotel Schulz' if you want to stay overnight. Also you won't go hungry there as there are splendid restaurants.

We even have a prision tower from the 17th century where allegedly Beethoven was incarcerated one night, however that could also be an urban legend to attract tourists. Anyways, I am going to listen to some good old rock music now and try to forget about folk-metal and the very fact that I'm getting old :-(