Jeddah, where is Jeddah?

It´s not so known, because you actually can´t go there except you have a working visa, be part of an organized tour or you have a transit, but not longer than 3 days.
So it´s quite complicated.

Well I´m talking about Saudi-Arabia. Jeddah or Dschidda is the second biggest, and the most western City in Saudi-Arabia.
The country itself has no parlament, the ruler is the king. The islamic religion is the fundament of the whole state. The jurisdiction is based on the Q´uran (Scharia).
Especially the women are disadvantaged. They have not so many rights.
For a western women it´s quite hard to accept the terms.
You can´t go anywhere alone and if you have a man who accompanies you, you have to wear an abaya and cover your hair.

Except all that, the city, especially the old city is very interesting. I was so lucky and found some colleagues with whom I went to the city.

The old town is worth seeing, the houses are from the 19th century and built in the traditional adobe architecture.
Unfortunately the country isn´t so eager about restoring the building, but they start slowly. Some houses got very pretty, but others are ruins.

To walk around the shops and markets was great, but you felt like you are in a different unrealistic world. I sometimes didn´t feel very comfortable.


As I returned, i went directly to the cinema and watched the first saudi-arabian cinema movie (from a women Haifaa Al Mansour). The movie is called "Wadjda".

The film is fantastic, i loved it, it was sad and funny at the same time. Even it was very difficult for Haifaa Al-Mansour to make the movie in Saudi-Arabia, you don´t really realise it. Have a look at the trailer and interview
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2258858/
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/16/wadjda-oscars-saudi-arabia

In total, a good, interesting and new experience!

A great book/ novel about Saudi-Arabia was wirtten by dave Eggers "A hologram for the king".
It´s about a lonely man, traveling for work to Saudi-Arabia; about his daily somehow strange experiences, thoughts and feelings.
In 2015 the book is going to be made into a movie by Tom Tykwer. And the protagonist is going to be Tom Hanks.
I´m looking forward to it!

My latest trip was to Tokyo

I headed to the south of Tokyo, because I wanted to see the Mount Fuji in all of it´s glory.    

The weather forecast was very good, but unfortunately it turned out to be not that well.

But anyway I had two great new discoveries:

One were the black eggs

And the other Onsen

Well, let´s start with the eggs:

I went to Hakone, which is about 2 hours south of Tokyo in the area of the five lakes near Fuji. Hakone is actually kind of a national park, there are mountains, to be precise volcanic mountains, like the Fuji itself, and a great lake.

You can leave from Shinjuku-Station in Tokyo with a special train, the panoramic train (and the best is, you buy the free ticket for 5000 yen which is about 40 euro) then you can use all trains, busses, the cable car, and the boat).

But I discovered that later, so I took the normal train to Ohinawa (which is a nice little city as well), and then the bus to Hakone Yomoto. From there you take another train, which goes up to the mountains. It’s a great scenery. I have been there in January, but I think in spring, summer and autumn it must be beautiful with all the flowers etc.
The next step was the funicular, which is spectacular, because it goes over the volcanic area, so you see rocks, and smoke coming out from nowhere, its really strange, but superinteresting.

On the highest point is a little walking path on which end you find a little hut, where eggs a sold. And now the highlight: The eggs are black. You can only buy 5 eggs (I wanted to have only one..) in a little bag with salt. Next to the hut are stone tables and everybody is standing around , knocking their egg on the table, then peel them and eat, hilarious.

And, well I am not such a big egg fan, but I really liked them, I ate 3 of them!!

I am not sure how they are cooked, maybe they are cooked in the hot volcanic water, but I think what is more logical, they are put in the hot volcanic turf, that’s how they would get the color as well.

From this viewpoint you have a great view on the Mount Fuji-san, I saw it a little bit, but unfortunately there were too many clouds.

Now the second discovery, which was greattt!

Onsen

I went back to Hakone Yomoto, and only with the help of Lonely Planet and a nice guy, I could find a nice Onsen right behind the railwaystation.

If you don’t speak or read Japanese its sometimes difficult to get around and find places…

But I was lucky.

Onsen are public baths, the water is coming from natural volcanic springs.

This Onsen was quite small, there was one basin for women and the other for men. It is strictly separated. Before you enter you have to wash your body. The bath is outside, so if its too hot you just sit on a stone next to the bath.

The water temperature was quite high, I guess more than 40 degrees, because it was hard to stay in the water for more than 10 minutes.

It was soo relaxing, fantastic, I felt like newborn afterwards, and the skin felt so soft!

After this bath I also survived the almost 3 hours trip back to Makuhari, half sleeping in the train, but that’s nice, nobody cares about that, because almost every body is sleeping :)

Some news from my latest trip to Spain:

I went to Madrid first and then to Barcelona.
Unfortunately I had not enough time, but at least I could visit Café Comercial at the Glorieta de Bilbao in Madrid. This café is great.
It opened on the 21 March 1887.
Once this cafe was a literary meeting point. It became a place for poets, novelists and even painters.
Business meetings in that era gave the café its name. 

Marcial Guareno wrote some lyrics about the cafe which you can see here:  

Quiere usted tomar   
un café rico,
acuda al Comercial
que es exquisito.       

If you want to have
a rich coffee,
go to the Comercial 
which is exquisite

If you go there you should really eat "una tostada con tomate". Its just a grilled slice of good white bread and on top some grated tomateos. You eat it with olive oil and salt. Hmm delicious! (see my Mallorca post).
The croissants aren´t bad there either. And of course "un café con leche".
I love it!
(You can have ´churros con chocolate`, as well, but for this I recommend San Gínes in the city center.)

They have a blog too!

http://elcafecomercial.blogspot.de/


Let´s move on to Barcelona:

I had even less time there. But still enough for some tapas (we had the fantastic "Jamón ibérico de bellota". That´s a ham made out of pigs that eat only acorn) and wine in the evening. There was still a little time for the great "La Boqueria Market" in the morning.

I love markets and this one is wonderful. There is quite an old market history in town. The entrance is nicely decorated with some Art Nouveau artwork.

 http://www.boqueria.info/index.php

But if you go there, try to go early in the morning. Otherwise it´s crowded with tourists (Barcelona is full of tourists!).
I went there at around 9 o ´clock and it was very comfortable to walk around, watch things and people and have some breakfast.
I sat down in an open bar, where people were already eating meat dishes....oofff!
Then I realized that so many people had a beer for breakfast (ok I don´t know at what time they got up, but i still felt the wine form the night before).
And this old man who sat next to me drank schnapps!
I guess spanish people like to drink!

As i visited both cities in a short period of time, it was interesting to compare them. I like both cities, but they are quite different. I think Madrid is rougher, of course it is bigger, and when you look at the architecture it´s impressive. Lots of buildings were built under French influence, and there are some typical fascist buildings (have a look at the Gran Via).
On the contrary, Barcelona more easy going. The scenery of the city is influenced by Gaudí. The best known townsman. The buildings are smaller, and more colourful. And of course, you are close to the sea, so this gives the city the mediterranean atmosphere!

Adíos, Hasta Luego!

We spent New Year ’s Eve on Mallorca, a good friend of us just moved to Palma. It’s a great city.

But I want to tell you about:

Pan con tomate!

Great, easy, delicious and so simple!!

Pan con tomate or you can say tostada con tomate, is a typical breakfast in Spain, well actually you can eat it all the time.

We spent one week on Mallorca and I tried to eat every day one pan con tomate (it didn’t work out, but almost ;))

But the funny thing was, even if it`s so simple, there are thousand ways to make them.

Once I had it on holewheatbread, and the tomato was very thin, almost only the juice, another time there were tomato slices on top of whitebread, and another time , thick grated tomatos which you yourself could put on the bread. But all of them were delicious.

Pan con tomate wouldn’t be pan con tomate if you don’t use olive oil and salt. That´s so important. Good oil and good salt (and of course good tomatos and good bread) and you are in paradise!

One short story about Basel:

It`s a gourgous little city (around 170000 inhabitants) but quite international due to the life science (Novartis, Roche etc.) and the very famous fairs (for example the Art Basel).

I went there only for a wonderful nice and sunny evening to meet some friends. We had decided already earlier, that, if the weather would be nice, we would have a picnic at the riverbank of the Rhein.
Lucky as we were, the weather was perfect. So we met at the Wettsteinbridge, and I really was astonished because of what I saw:
The river was full of people.

Katherina, my friend, who just moved there, told me that it is the very famous "Rheinschwimmen" (to be accurate "Rheinschwimmen" is on one specific day, this year on the 13.8.2013).

If you want to be part of it, you buy a special bag, which you get everywhere at the bank, waterproof and big enough to put all your clothes in, and then you jump in the water (with the bag) and you swim or rather float with 100 of other people down the river as long as you want.
It´s fantastic and so much fun!!

After the exhausting swim :) you get food and drinks at the very attractive little stands, called buvette.

As we sat there and had some diner, we noticed a strange smell!
We didn´t know what it was, until we saw some guys sitting at the stairs and eating cheese fondue!!!

That´s Switzerland!

Seoul

This was my fourth trip to Seoul, and I still love it. Everytime I discover new, interesting things, learn more about the culture and people, eat new dishes and discover even more differences between the Korean and German culture.

Well, what was new for me that time?

I start with the book I read before I left for Seoul. Its called “Schlaflos in Seoul” 

http://www.dtv.de/buecher/schlaflos_in_seoul_21153.html. I really liked that book and I found it quiet interesting. The author is a german women, Vera Hohleiter, who lived in Seoul for two years. She writes a lot about what she experienced in Korea, but also, and what I found was the most interesting part, about the Korean way of living, about blind dates, the working hours, “dress Code”, weddings, the Korean hiking people etc. 

I really enjoyed the book and I recommend you to read it whenever you go to Korea. 

I also discovered that Vera had a a blog, have a look, its nice too! 

http://www.missgolightlyaufreisen.de/

Anyways, I spend almost three days in Seoul and I will tell you about the Korean Hiking.

As I love to go hiking everywhere I am, I wanted to do the same in Seoul. Which is perfect, because it takes you from the city center approximately only 1 hour with the subway and bus and you are in the Bukhansan National Park (Bukhansan means "mountain north of the Han River"). And this park is full of trails and peaks to climb (the highest is only 836,5m high, it´s the Baekundae, but the landscape is stunning). Lots of Korean people like to go hiking (mosty pensioners). And they are VERY well equipped with very modern hiking shoes, wind-stopping jackets, trousers etc. That’s quite funny to watch, especially when I came only with runners and not even a backpack (it worked out quite well, but I admit, a backpack wouldn’t have been that bad). If you are not good equipped as I was, you could buy everything before hiking, there is one store after the other :)

The hike was about 2 hours and finally I reached the highest peak, the Baekundae Mountain. The last part was a bit tricky, because the rocks where very slippery and it was quite step, so you shouldn’t have acrophobia. But there were slopes everywhere, quite safe. I felt safe (even with my handbag and runners).

Finally I made it and could make some pics on the summit with the Korean flag 

When you have clear weather you have a stunning view over Seoul. Unfortunately I wasn’t that lucky, because it was a bit cloudy, but still fantastic, with all the othter mountains around.

After a nice picnic (kimbap) and a dessert (which a nice Korean lady gave me, some fruits), I went down on the other side. I passed a camping spot, yes you even can camp on the mountainfoot, only for around 5000 won (which is in Euro only around 3,50).

When you want to do a tour like that one, I would recommend you to take enough time, at least one day, and you can really enjoy the nice scenery and the hiking trails.

I had to rush a little bit, because I wanted to meet a Korean friend, who had to work on Sunday (working hours!) and who had only a little time in the afternoon.

Take care!