12. October 2021

Snapshots – 8/2021

Welcome to the fifth post in my “Snapshots” category. In this post you will find the highlights of the pictures I took with my phone camera within a month. I started this in April and have since published posts for May, June, and July. Accordingly, you will find my photos from August 2021 here. By the way: If you want to be informed about the publication of my posts, I recommend an RSS feed or to follow me on my author page on Facebook.   I was on holiday in Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic in August. The last photo I took in August was at a local shooting range. […]
4. May 2018

USA: Miami

Miami and Miami Beach The Miami metropolitan area is located in the state of Florida and has a total of 5.5 million inhabitants. However, only 500,000 people live in the city, as Miami Beach, for example, is counted as a separate town with 89,000 inhabitants. We stayed between Miami and Fort Lauderdale in Pembroke Pines (160,000 inhabitants). In the end, all cities have a similar flair. One reason is the American habit of building streets in a checkerboard pattern. This makes getting along in the cities easy, but the number of traffic lights is utopian. This and the inferior public transport are just a few reasons, why traffic jams occur even […]
12. February 2018

Ecuador: Tena – Amazon

Tena – the gate to the Amazon The observation tower in Tena Tena is a city with 20,000 inhabitants and located on the border to the Amazon. Most tourists come to the area to participate in guided expeditions to the rain forest. They offer tours between one and fourteen days and can also adjust to your individual needs. Otherwise, the most popular tourist activity is kayaking and you can see a lot of cars driving through the streets, packed with canoes. A snapshot of the city, on the right the island with the park The sights Unfortunately, there are not a lot of sights in the city. Mainly the “La Isla […]
11. February 2018

Ecuador: Otavalo

Coca-tea for altitude sickness Otavallo is located at an altitude of 2532 meters above sea level and has 40,000 inhabitants. Tourists visiting the city are generally advised to drink one coca tea a day. The coca plant, otherwise known as the raw ingredient for the production of cocaine, shows a far weaker effect as the chemical drug and supports the body in adapting to the thin ambient air. We only tried the coca-tea later in Papallacta (3600 m) – it helps and no, it does not have an intoxicating effect. You can buy the drink in almost every shop or from running traders who only make their money selling tea. But, […]
28. July 2017

Romania: Hunedoara

Hunedoara – a castle from a fairy tale After an hour’s drive, we reached our last planned destination on our tour through Romania: Hunedoara. The German name “Eisenmarkt” (roughly: steel market) derives from the fact, that Romania´s second largest iron works were located in the 60.000 people industrial city. As we drove through town, we could not find any particularities at first glance and therefore only visited the landmark: Castelul Corvinilor (Hunedoara Castle). It was built in the 14th to 15th century and is located on a cliff. Combined with the wooden access bridge and the small creek running below, the building seems to be straight from a fairy tale and […]