Memories and hints of a travelling IT professional.
Using credit cards in New York City is really common. You can pay nearly everywhere by card, only if you want to buy some food from a food cart on the street it would be very useful to have some money in your pocket. The best way to get George Washington into your wallet is to use your credit card at one of the ubiquitously available Atomatic Teller Machines (ATMs).
Travelling throughout the city that never sleeps is pretty easy – because it has one of the best subway systems in the world. You just need a network map (Google is your best friend) and a city map – pick the next metro station close to your destination and find a path through the jungle.
Normally I try to travel to nearby countries by train. But this time I chose to go by long-distance bus the first time of my life. I went to the Hackerbrücke in München, the bus terminal of the Bavarian capital. I took an IC Bus from Deutsche Bahn that was not really comfy and I didn’t get too much sleep. But therefore I arrived in the early morning at the bus terminal of Zagreb (Agram) and could immediatly start to explore the capital city of Croatia.
Continue reading “Non-touristy, uncommon, incomparable”
A traditional Croatian dish I got to know in Zagreb, Croatia and immediatly fell in love with is Štruklji – cooked dough with various fillings. I found it throughout all of former Yugoslavia. It was once reserved for special occasions but is nowadays an everyday meal.
The decision to visit Budapest, Hungary was nothing coming from the heart. I just couldn’t remember of ever having been at Hungary. And it was easily reachable by train – using the Keleti pályaudvar / railway station. Everybody seems to have been in Budapest already. It is quite touristic and maybe famous as a place for lovers. I was unsure whether this was a good choice.
Continue reading “A visit to cloudy Budapest”
After visiting the wonderful island of Cuba I wanted to see countries in South American and put some places in Bolivia and Colombia on my list. My friends were not really happy with this choice and telling me that there are cheaper ways to kill oneself. As I am always recognizing concerns of friends and didn’t know too much about the region yet I selected a very well developed and secure country: Chile.
The Panamericana – or short Panam – is a network of roads going down from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. You can cross the whole continent on this 25.000 km long route, you can see wonderful landscapes and visit up to 19 countries. The plans to create the Carretera Panamericana were agreed on in 1936; only a small part of 90 km length next to Panama is still missing (even 80 years later).
It was a nice day in November and I was driving with my Renault Samsung S3 (I didn’t even know that such a car exists) from Talca to Concepción, Chile. On my way I wanted to have a stop at the dunes of Putú (las dunas de Putú) – a wide area of sand dunes close to the sea. It is supposed to look like the Sahara, but I’ve never found out, because I never arrived there.
Continue reading “Las dunas de Putú (and why I will never forget them)”
My second stop in Chile was Viña del Mar, a spa town close to Santiago de Chile and a destination for its inhabitants in summer time. As I was still coping with Chilean Spanish – which is hard to understand because of the well sounding but confusing mumbling of words – I was happy to be at the hotel of a family once coming from Offenbach am Main, Germany.
Continue reading “Eduardo Vargas, Brazil and a friendly family”
I was laughing hard when I read the note from my travel agency that they booked the Residencia Offenbacher Hof in Viña del Mar, Chile for me – as Offenbach is a city close to Frankfurt am Main in Germany. In fact a German family went to Chile and opened this hotel here.