General Archives ⋆ Page 9 of 42 ⋆ The Passenger

October 26, 2021April 14, 2022

Ghostrider

When driving a car in Cyprus you can learn something about history: the island was once a colony of the British Empire! And there are even still today two British naval bases that belong to United Kingdom. For you this means mostly one thing: to drive on the left side of the road. Typically, this switch inside your head is easy, you just need to remember to give way to cars coming from the right when entering roundabouts. What always happens to me is that I try to enter the car on the front passenger side. Always good for a laugh…

October 3, 2021April 14, 2022

Gateway to the orient

Romania isn’t the typical tourist destination for western Europeans. In their heads the country is associated with poverty, migration, and crime – only Bram Stoker and his vampire tale are linked to Romania with the same intensity. In reality, it is a country full of friendly people making the best of their situation. A country in development with a coast at the Black Sea, a country with vast forests (housing the biggest population of brown bears in Europe) and a long history between the east and the west.

October 2, 2021April 14, 2022

Constanța

If you want to visit the Black Sea from București, then Constanța (in earlier days Tomis) is your port of choice. A comfortable train runs multiple times each day from the Gara de Nord to the shore. It was founded by Greeks in the 7th century BCE. Roman emperor Constantine the Great named the city after his sister Constantiana.

October 1, 2021January 7, 2022

Two dolphins and three eagles

When you’re discovering ancient buildings (like the Palatul Republicii at București) you will come across the coat of arms of Romania. It shows a golden aquila holding a Christian cross, a crown, a mace and a sword. It is colored in the national colors of Romania: blue, yellow and red. But you can also find other animals on it like dolphins. Wait, what?

September 29, 2021December 20, 2021

Alo!

The Romanian language is part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Even if as a foreigner you might not be able to understand what people are saying it isn’t hard to read signs. Some knowledge of Italian or Latin will help a lot. Until the year 1862 the Cyrillic alphabet was used, then starting in Transsylvania, the Latin alphabet was introduced – enhanced with the five special letters ă, â, î, ș and ț.

September 28, 2021December 19, 2021

Local transport

București has a good mix of public transport options: the metro, trolleybuses, buses, tramways. The easiest way is to use the metro system consisting of four lines: M1 (yellow), M2 (blue), M3 (red), M4 (green). Just choose the right line and the correct direction (final stop) and you’re ready to go. It gets a bit confusing with stations like Dristor 1 and 2 (which are not remarkably close to each other) but it’s the fastest and simplest way.

September 28, 2021December 19, 2021

The Lion

What confuses foreign travelers often is the fact that not all countries in the European Union use the Euro as their currency (and that not all countries using the Euro are part of the European Union). Romania is part of the EU, but still has its own currency, the Leu.

August 16, 2021April 14, 2022

Grüessech

For some years I tried to avoid trips to Switzerland. It is a nice country with beautiful nature, but the prices are just horrible. During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 I was searching for places I could reach by train and as I’ve never seen the capital city of Switzerland, I booked my ticket. But then our Swiss neighbors held a large yodel festival (really!), and the infection numbers were increasing dramatically. Therefore, it took me another year before I could do the trip.

August 13, 2021November 27, 2021

Schwiizerfranke

I still remember that day when I had some hours of layover at the airport of Zürich, Switzerland. I decided to have a short trip to the city center and entered a Euro banknote into a vending machine to buy a train ticket and what came out was not only a ticket but also some spare money in a strange currency, the Schwiizerfranke. Yes, Switzerland is in the center of the European Union but not part of it and for sure it has its own currency. How could I not have expected that?

August 8, 2021August 12, 2022

Carlsbahn

Throughout Germany you can find a lot of old railway tracks that have been given up. Few of them get reactivated later, most of them get removed and are in best case converted to bicycle paths – a good option, as the low inclination makes cycling easy. In my region you can already find four of them: the Gartetalbahn once connecting Göttingen with Duderstadt could not be run economically; the Söhretalbahn east of Kassel wasn’t needed anymore when there was no brown coal left to be transported.