General Archives ⋆ Page 9 of 45 ⋆ The Passenger

June 19, 2022November 20, 2022

Pearl of the Adriatic

Visiting Dubrovnik, Croatia, is a special pleasure. It is a medieval trade city with high walls, beautiful houses and streets made of ancient stones. A place with two wonderful harbors and an atmosphere that makes it easy for you to travel back in time. A place that is for very good reasons listed in the UNESCO world heritage site list as a whole. And it is an amazing place for canoeing around historic sights. As much as you need to see Venezia once in a lifetime you need to see Dubrovnik.

June 17, 2022October 10, 2022

How to play the game

Libertas (freedom), that is the motto of Dubrovnik and it is also the name of the company providing the local bus system. From 1910 to 1970 Dubrovnik also had a tramway system with orange tramways; the only thing that survived is the color which is now used for the buses. The network isn’t too large and therefore it is easy to hop around – especially as most routes stop at the city gates called Pile and Ploče (which give you direct access to the touristic highlights).

June 17, 2022November 30, 2022

DubrovnikCard

Like in every city visited by many tourists there is also a tourist card for Dubrovnik. It is available in many hotels and also at the tourist offices. You can buy the DubrovnikCard or Dubrovnik Pass for one day, three days or a whole week and it is worth the money. The card is your entrance to the city walls, the Franciscan monastery, the Rector’s Palace and different museums like the maritime museum, the ethnographic museum, the small but good natural history museum and the great museum of modern art.

June 16, 2022October 10, 2022

Hakuna matata

Since 1994 the official currency of Croatia is the Kuna (divided into 100 Lipa). The name dates back to the time when the fur of martens had been used as a currency – the Croatian word for marten is kuna. So you’re paying with martens in Croatia. 😉 But that will all end in 2023 when the Euro becomes the currency of the country. Fortunately the marten will stay – it is shown on the Croatian Euro coins.

June 5, 2022September 21, 2022

Little pearl

The capital city of Luxembourg has a lot to offer: small mountains on which the city is located, forests and many old fortifications. Lëtzebuerg was a fortress for a very long time and you can experience this at nearly every corner. Today it feels like the ideal city, a visit is very much enjoyable and leads very fast to the typical vacation feeling. Lëtzebuerg is a little pearl; you don’t need more than a weekend to explore it – but not visiting it would be a bad decision.

June 5, 2022November 30, 2022

Hidden funicular

Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg funicular, Lëtzebuerg

Public transport at Lëtzebuerg is based on buses, tramways and elevators. Maybe someone thought that a funicular is the missing piece: in 2017 the Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg funicular was opened; a funicular that is only 200 meters long with a height difference of 38 meters. If you travel by tramway from the historic city center to the European quarter you might easily miss it, as it is located in parallel to the Pont Grande-Duchesse Charlotte.

June 4, 2022November 30, 2022

Free shuttle

Parlement européen au Luxembourg, Lëtzebuerg

Luxembourg is a small country and if you want you can reach all interesting places in the capital city of Lëtzebuerg on foot. Nevertheless you’ll find one tramway line (from the main station to the exposition center, crossing the city center and the European quarter) and a good bus network. And best of all: it can be used completely free of charge.

May 29, 2022June 9, 2022

Converging city

Travelling to Bulgaria for most people means to go to beaches at the Black Sea in the East. The beaches there are at least in Germany marketed with special names like Goldstrand (golden beach, Варна) or Sonnenstrand (sun beach, Несебър). As the prices are significantly lower than in Western Europe, many people book cheap travel packages. But in those beach areas you won’t find out much about the country, its past and its culture. Even though the capital city София is not a typical tourist destination it was worth very much to be explored.

May 27, 2022May 30, 2022

Long distances

София has about 1.3 million inhabitants and is with 492 sq km the 10th largest city in Europe. That might be a surprise but you can really feel it while travelling through the city. Fortunately there are many different means of public transport available, from the metro to buses, trolleybuses and tramways. But for sure there are also taxis (you can order via app), motorized scooters from different providers and rental bikes.

May 26, 2022May 30, 2022

Lev

Bulgaria is part of the European Union but doesn’t have the Euro yet. The currency is the Bulgarian Lev (plural Leva; code BGN). Lev means lion and one lev is divided into 100 stotinki. The exchange rate of Lev to Euro is 1.95583 – a magical number for all Germans, a strange number I’ll never forget in my life. It was the exchange rate of Deutsche Mark to Euro. As the Lev was initially bound to the Deutsche Mark, it has the same exchange rate.