What this blog is all about...

This is a blog about my experiences abroad, both living and traveling. It doesn't include all of my travels and experiences. I update the blog irregularly, when I feel like it, have some time and want to reflect on some things.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

Living abroad again... this time: Italy!

Hi everyone,

for those of you who I didn't get the chance to tell yet: I'm living abroad again! After working in Düsseldorf for a year, I got the chance to go abroad for a trainee placement until mid-July. The new job in the "old" company is in Varese, an Italian town near Milano that I hadn't heard of before. But getting the chance to live in Italy for a few months sounded pretty sweet, so needless to say: I didn't hesitate and immediately started packing.

To start the new adventure, Jannes and I arrived in Milano during Easter holidays, one week before the start of my new job. Since we had a few days off, it was a great chance to get accumulated to Italian life and do some sightseeing before working again.

Though I had been to Italy a few times before, I never considered Milano as a tourist destination, so it was my first time actually visiting the city. We stayed in a B&B near the central station, a bit outside of the old-town center, but public transport turned out to be very reliable, so we never had any issues travelling around the city. On our first day, we were quite unlucky because it was raining a lot. We mainly walked around the city, had some delicious food and visited one of the numerous art museums.

We started our tour at the famous Duomo: the cathedral that took over six centuries to build and is still a "work in progress". Since there was a huge queue that day, we decided to visit the inside another time.


From the Duomo we continued to walk through the impressive structure of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, one of the oldest shopping malls in the world.


After visiting an art museum, near the La Scala opera house, we had some lunch and headed to the Sforzesco castle. Despite the bad weather, we had some gelato...


At one of the castle's museums, we wanted to visit the Last Supper painting. However we found out that it is only possible to view the Last Supper painting by making a reservation a few weeks in advance. Deciding to come back for another museum the next day, we took a short rest at the hostel. Then we went to the Navigli neighborhood, consisting of a few canals lined with some of Milano's best restaurants and bars. While it was of course not as impressive as the canals of Venice, it still had a very nice flair and I enjoyed some delicious (though quite expensive) Swordfish ravioli.

On our second day, we were surprised by the sun, which was a great coincidence, since we had decided to participate in a three hour (it took even longer) city tour. It was a very enjoyable tour with a funny guide, who knew a lot about Milan and its history, made even more enjoyable by the fact that it was a free tour.

We basically saw a lot of the same sights as the day before. Only this time, we actually learned about the background of what we were seeing. Here are some pictures from the tour.

Typical square in Milano: the architecture is very different from Roman cities. This is a city where medieval and modern buildings meet.


Some very subtle, hidden street art:



This was one of the highlights of the tour: a small chapel called San Bernardino alle Ossa. Our guide took us into a back-room of the church and it took me a minute to figure out that the unusual wall decoration of the room was actually hundreds of small human skulls stacked on top of each other! Apparently this was due to this room being the cemetery of hundreds of patients of a nearby hospital in the middle ages. Creepy...


Another highlight of the tour: the old town square with a lot of Roman buildings. By letting Jannes and I communicate to each other though we were far apart, our guide demonstrated a very weird architectural phenomenon called "wispering gallery" that can be observed under some specially shaped domes. It really seems so strange, if you ever get the chance, try it!


We ended our tour in front of the Milan stock exchange: and were surprised by this dominating sculpture in front of it. Apparently, a few years ago a famous modern artist from Milan promised to give the city a free sculpture as a gift. And, well, he decided to put this symbolic gesture in front of the stock exchange. To me, this really shows that Milan is different from most other big Italian cities: rather than showcasing it's history, Milan more often decides to look for new and futuristic art, buildings, sculptures.


After our tour was finished, we decided to spend the afternoon at Sforzesco castle again. We had some more gelato, but this time, the weather was actually appropriate. Then we strolled through the nearby Parco Sempione, just enjoying the first rays of sun this spring. Amazing!





Then we visited the sculpture museum in the castle and Michelangelo's last, unfinished sculpture, the Rondanini Pieta.

Finally we even managed to visit the inside of the Duomo. So huge!


In the evening, we decided to go up to Milan's most modern part of town, Porta Garibaldi and to participate in the most typical Milanese evening activity: the Aperitivo. It's basically pre-dinner drinks that include a typical Italian cocktail, such as "Spritz", accompanied by a small "all-you-can-eat" tapas buffet. While we enjoyed the whole experience, the bar we had chosen seemed a bit too posh, fashionable and high-class to us (still sweaty from the day's activities). So, we decided to grab some dinner at a nearby restaurant that served only dishes from the Parma region. I managed to find one dish without meat on the menu: Melanzane alla Parmigiana. Delicious!

The next day, the weather was pretty bad again. And for some reason my energy level was very low... So we had a long brunch at a cute cafe in the student neighborhood of Milan and walked through a park that was nothing special. After a while I started feeling really exhausted and tired, so we went home. I had to lie down and it took me all afternoon to recover... However, in the evening I regained some strength, so we decided to go out for dinner in our neighborhood. While it wasn't the nicest neighborhood, we found a posting about a sushi restaurant on trip adisor that sounded quite promising. And let me tell you: while the restaurant seemed quite tacky (Chinese music playing in the background with some non-definable, brightly colored decorations), the food was the most delicious we had during our whole stay! A glorious choice of sushi, all within an "all-you-can-eat" budget of 20 euro. Almost impossible to believe that the food could be good, but it really was! Later, the chef came to talk to us and it turned out that it was in fact a fusion restaurant of Japanese sushi and Sicilian seafood. Though it doesn't sound like it, this is the perfect combination!


The next morning, we already had to leave Milan and headed out to Varese by train. We were actually positively surprised by the welcome we got: Valeria, my "landlady" picked us up at the train station and brought us to my new home for the month: a holiday apartment that was next to the villa she was living in with her youngest daughter. I'm quite happy about the place and Valeria is a very open and friendly hostess (she took me to the supermarket by car, lent me her bike for trips through Varese, she even invited me for dinner once). The next morning Jannes had to take the plane back to Germany and I was alone in Varese. Before I could get sad about this, I had to head out, to my first day at work...

Anyways, that's it for now. In the next post I will tell you a bit about life and work in Varese!

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Sandy dunes, snowy mountains and labyrinth city: one week in Morocco

Hi again,

Knowing that this would be my last chance to travel for a while (I’m starting my new job next week!), I had quite a few things planned over Christmas. First, Jannes and I travelled to Morocco for a week. After Christmas, I visited Berlin for a couple of days with friends from university and I ended my long vacation in Switzerland with my brothers and Jannes, skiing. In this blog post, I’d like to tell you about the amazing and adventurous week that Jannes and I had in Morocco.

The trip was actually quite spontaneous, since we only bought the plane tickets two weeks before. We decided to start our travels in Marrakech and fly out from Fez, leaving all the places to visit in between undecided.

Once we arrived at the busy city center of Marrakesh around 8 pm, we found out that navigating around the medina (old city), where our riad was located, wasn’t as easy as google maps had made it seem at home. Somehow we managed to find our way with the suitcases through the busy medina to the street where the hostel was located in. However, it turned out that the ‘street’ was actually a narrow labyrinth of small paths, each leading to different group of houses. Getting kind of desperate, we decided to ask the employee of a nearby street stall for help. He then led us happily through the deserted labyrinth paths to a abgelegene metal door. That’s when one of his friends joined us and our ‘guide’ demanded to be paid his 10 euro fee for leading us to the hostel. Unfortunately, no one in the supposed guesthouse (that didn’t have a sign or any indication that the door was in fact leading us to a guesthouse) seemed to hear our insistent, slightly scared banging on the door. Finally, somebody opened up and we managed to get rid of our ‘guides’ by giving them 2 euro and rushing through the door before they could protest and get handsy. Knowing that we’d immediately stepped into a tourist trap, we decided to be a bit more careful from then on. Then we had our very first tajine, the most famous dish in Moroccan cuisine, which was truly very good, but not the best tajine I had on the entire trip.

The next day, we started out pretty late, since over night and all throughout the morning it had been raining constantly. Not the kind of weather we were hoping to get on our vacation… Around noon, we decided to face the rain and started our day of sightseeing. First, we exited the medina and walked through the newer parts of Marrakesh, searching for a tourist info. While we had to find out that the tourist info was closed once we arrived, our walk was quite interesting and therefore no waste of time. While the new parts of town were bustling with nice restaurants and regal hotels, we noticed that it was quite deserted and a lot of the pompous hotels seemed like ghost towns to us.


Then we returned to the medina. Unfortunately, due to the ever present rain, the medina and its souks, that supposedly bustle with life and colors on other days, were pretty empty that day.


It was probably because there weren’t as many tourists as on other days that the vendors from the small shops and street stalls got very pushy and, honestly, annoying after a while.

That’s when we decided to have a late lunch and get away from the souks for a while. We found a small café advertising with the beautiful view from its roof top terrace and they weren’t lying: the view from there was by far the nicest thing we saw all day! Even the sun came out for a bit:


After having some delicious harira soup for lunch, we visited the oldest Koran school in Marrakesh. The building is from the 16th century and the amount of small chambers inside and its courtyard were quite impressive.


The Koran school museum was located in an old palace and its most impressive feature was by far the enormous candelabra in the middle of the hall. They even built a steel structure reaching across the roof to hold it!

Then we walked back to our riad and I must say, in the twilight, with the rain gone, the souks somehow seemed much nicer:


In the evening, we visited the Place el Fna which was, probably due to the rain, not as busy and interesting as the guidebook had suggested. Still, there were some food stalls, street vendors and even street performers, though I must say, I bet on other days it would have been much more fun to hang out there. Then we had dinner at a Senegalese restaurant, which was very nice. The dishes had names that I’d never heard before (though they actually just turned out to be chicken with rice and sauce) and I discover a new drink called Bissap, which is made from hibiscus flowers and tasted amazing!

The next morning, we got up early to take a bus to the town of Essaouira from the train station. While waiting for the bus to leave, we saw a tourist stall that was offering four day desert trips, which was what we had planned to do during our Morocco travels, so we took the opportunity and reserved two spots in the group leaving the next day. We were surprised, since we got a much better price than expected and had sorted out what to do the next few days, all while waiting for the bus. The bus ride to Essaouira took about two hours and held one major shock, when we passed a couple of Argan trees that had very special kinds of fruit: a couple of goats were actually sitting on top of the tree’s branches! As we had read before, it is a rather common occurrence to see goats on top of trees in this area, since they like the argan fruit so much they are willing to climb up the trees. Unfortunately the bus passed by too quickly for us to take pictures, so here’s one from wikipedia:


Arriving in Essaouria, a cute seaside town that is known for its colonial history and arts community, we realized we might not have picked the right day to visit the seaside: a rain shower and cold wind greeted us when we stepped out of the bus. However, after walking through the busy medina and arriving at the seaside, the showers stopped and the sun came out for the rest of the day.



We enjoyed the rest of the day immensely, finally being able to take off our winter jackets.


A Portuguese watchtower from colonial times.

Local artwork exhibited at the old docks.


We found a coffee place on top of a roof and enjoyed the views of the vast, roaring sea.


And of course we spent some time at the beach!

In the evening, we took the bus back to Marrakech and had a quick dinner and a quiet evening in the riad, chatting with the other guests.

The next day started with another early morning. The travel agency had told us that we would be picked up by the van driver directly at our hotel, so we waited there, After half an hour of waiting, the van driver finally showed up. Turns out that even for locals our riad was very difficult to find! The other group members were already waiting for us and we took the last two spaces in the back of the crowded van. What followed was a silent three-hour bus ride in the cold, since the windows of the van wouldn’t close. Then we arrived at the Atlas mountains and started our ascend. We saw some stunning mountains, valleys and vegetation changing from lush green forests to brown shrubbery, with little clay houses nestles between the mountains.



Despite the beautiful views, I quickly found myself wishing that our mountain crossing would be over soon, since our van driver had a suicidal driving style on the very narrow and curvy mountain road…

Finally we arrived at the very top of the mountains and were surprise by some snow. The last thing we expected to see in Morocco!


After another few hours of driving down the mountain, we arrived at a village. In order to get to Kasbah Ait Benhaddou, a traditional oasis, we had to cross a river that had flooded during the torrential rains of the past few days. At least now the sun was getting stronger and I was even starting to sweat a bit.


Not having heard much about where our desert trip would take us, we were positively surprised by the picturesque oasis taken out of an Arabian nights picture book. No wonder this beautiful kasbah built entirely from loam was the backdrop for lots of movies and series, such as Gladiator and Game of Thrones.


When we arrived on top of a hill in the middle of the Kasbah, we had an amazing view on the lush green gardens and the stony desert landscape:


In the distance we could even see the Atlas mountains we had just crossed:


After we had lunch in the village, we drove another few hours through the mountainous area until nightfall. Then we stopped at a hotel in the middle of nowhere.


Other than our group, there were lots of other travelers heading for the desert in the hotel. Though the place was a bit dirty and freezing cold, since it was in the mountains, we had a good time, chatting with fellow travelers.

However, since it was around 10 degrees in our room and no heater to use, I could barely sleep that night and was a bit tired for the second day. Our first stop was nothing special though, so I got some time to relax, while we were shown a bunch of authentic (and expensive) Moroccan carpets in a town somewhere on the way to Erg Chebbi desert. Then we passed through Dades valley and saw some more cute kasbahs and lush green gardens along the road.


Then, around midday, we stopped at Todra Gorge and walked along the more touristic beginning of the gorge. While it was nice and empty when we were there, we could imagine the masses of tourists passing there during high season, since the path was lined with souvenir booths. To be honest, that ruined the whole experience a bit, because rather than being able to focus on the beautiful nature, we had to ward off sales people.



Then we spent some more hours in the bus, and finally we saw the rocky surroundings turn into beautifully shaped orange dunes. We had arrived at the highlight of our trip: Erg Chebbi, Morocco’s largest sand dune desert. After dropping our non-essential baggage in a camp, we met the camp inhabitants: camels. After everyone was introduced to their transportation for the afternoon, we were helped on the camel’s backs.


I expected the camel ride to be similar to a horseback ride, but it was more like a boat-ride: gently and slowly up and down.

The next hour, I took way too many photos and couldn't take my eyes from the scenery. This was the perfect alien experience I had been hoping for, almost like taken out of a scene from Star Wars: a few space-travelers riding through a vast orange sand field on a deserted planet. Only a bit of garbage here and there made me realize that this fascinating landscape was not as deserted as it seemed.


After an good hour of riding through the desert, we arrived at a desert camp that consisted of a few large nomad tents arranged in a circle. Next to the tent was an extremely high sand dune and our camel guide challenged us to climb up the dune and catch a last view of the disappearing sun. Unfortunately, in my haste to get up the dune, I forgot to bring my camera with me. After a challenging twenty-minute climb up, we arrived on top and were rewarded with a great view. While the sunset above the dunes was truly an amazing sight, I remember this as a rather sobering moment. When riding through the dunes in the afternoon, the landscape had seemed vast, infinite. Now I could see the road and the small city where we had started our trip. Even to the other side, I could see some small mountains not too far marking the end of the sand dunes. The romantic desert that I had seen before, now seemed a bit like an oversized sand box. 

After we descended the hill, we had an amazing evening of tajin-eating, sitting around the fire, star-counting, drumming and telling of adventure stories in a circle with the fellow travelers. 


It was not as cold as the previous night, so I could even get some sleep before we woke up at 6 am to watch the sun rise above the dunes.


After a more quiet camel-ride back, we arrived at the city and our trip was declared finished by our travel guide. This meant, that we would drive straight back to Marrakesh, without stopping anywhere along the way. However, we had planned to travel to the city Fez to spend the last few vacation days there and going back to Marrakesh would have been a major detour for us. So, we asked around and found four travelers that were planning to travel straight to Fez, just like us. Our travel guide suggested to drop us off in the next biggest town and call someone he knew to take us to Fez from there. We took his offer and promptly found ourselves dropped off in the middle of nowhere, next to an old, shabby Mercedes cab. Though the cab only had four seats, it turned out that this was in fact the car that the travel guide had arranged for the six of us. After some back and forth, we decided not to take the tiny taxi and instead travel with a medium-sized cheap, that conveniently was also waiting at the empty parking lot. Lucky us! The driver hadn't expected travelers that wanted to drive as far as Fez, but he was very flexible. We found that flexibility is a necessary virtue when travelling in Morocco.

So, we set out on our travels to Fez, passing amazing and differing landscapes, from beautiful kasbahs and empty stone fields to snowy forest with a traditional nomad camp (we chatted to them a bit during a toilet break) and the famous region Ifrane, the "Switzerland of Morocco". Once we stopped at a farm to buy some dried dades and later in the afternoon, we bought some delicious cakes somewhere next to the roa. Otherwise, we didn't have a lot of stops during our trip and since some of the landscapes we passed were really impressive, that was a bit of a shame.

After arriving in bustling Fez in the evening, we immediately went to our riad and had a small dinner.

The next morning, we had some energy again to walk around and discover this new town. We enjoyed our first few steps through the medina, getting a bit lost in the labyrinth streets. Unlike Marrakesh, in the narrow streets of Fez that were surrounded by streets stalls selling everything to tourists, we didn't get bothered as much by persistent sales people. Also, through the narrower net of streets, that truly were a labyrinth, the city seemed a bit more mysterious than Marrakesh.


After arriving at the blue gate, the most famous entry passage to the medina, we decided to leave the more touristic old town for a trip through the "normal" streets of Fez. Soon, we found ourselves climbing up a steep hill next. Before we knew it, we were standing on a platform overlooking the city. Next to us was a giant pile of rubbish and right in front of us was a breathtaking view: a shepherd was guiding his sheep over a very thin ridge, with the city as a backdrop. What a sight!



Then we walked along the edge of the park some more and all of a sudden found ourselves on a beautiful cliff with the most amazing view of the city. It was almost empty, only some locals were having lunch there. So, we sat down and completely forgot about time while viewing the spectacle of the busy city below, listening to the muezzin's midday prayer and the distant noises of people talking, cooking, living. It was so interesting, entertaining and relaxing at the same time, that we spend at least an hour just sitting there.



Then we walked a bit further, to a small castle above one of the city gates, where the numerous leather tanneries of Fez were drying their smelly products in the sun.



Then we explored the narrow labyrinth streets of the city some more, sat down at the Rcif square, the busiest square of Fez, and enjoyed an afternoon coffee. In the evening, we met up with one of the guys who had joined us on our trip from the desert to Fez and had camel burgers for dinner.

The next day, we enjoyed a long breakfast on our balcony, again with an amazing view.


Then we met up with our fellow travelers from the desert again. They had the idea of joining a city tour with a professional tour guide, to get in-depth insights about the history and stories lying behind the medieval walls of Fez el Bali (the old town), so we joined them.

The guidebook told us we would find an official guide at the blue gate (the most famous city gate in Fez), so we went there and asked around. Someone quickly appeared and told us he was an official tour guide, so we accepted his offer, but we soon began to question the guide's qualifications. While he could of course guide us around the labyrinth of the city and tell us a bit about the mosques and gates we were passing, he didn't offer a lot of explanations and even hit on the girls in the group (including me, unfortunately). As he was quite old and was calling us his "sons" and "daughters" and inappropriately tried to touch us (but didn't succeed), it was a bit creepy.

Still, we did get to see some interesting things on the tour. The guide took us to a lot of handcrafting shops, obviously knowing the people who worked there. While the objective there was clearly trying to sell us souvenirs, rather than explaining how everything was created, we didn't enjoy all of these stops. However, in a carpet shop, we got to see how fascinatingly fast the women were weaving the hand-crafted carpet and we even got to try ourselves.


Then we visited the famous leather tanneries of Fez. The view from the tanneries' rooftops was quite unique, but we didn't get what all the fuzz was about. After all, this was supposed to be Fez' most famous tourist attraction. We thought we saw a lot more exciting things than the tanneries during our time in Fez though.


After our strange guided tour was over in the afternoon, we decided to walk to another city gate and had an extremely local and simple dinner at Rcif square, consisting only of boiled potatoes and harrissa sauce.

Since the three Americans and the Australian guy that we had been meeting up with since our trip to the desert had a similar pace of sightseeing, we arranged a tour to Volubilis, the famous Roman ruins near Fez, for the next day together. Thankfully, we still had the phone number of our driver, Tata, who took us from the desert to Fez, so the next morning, he met us at the city gate and took us to the ruins.

After a scenic drive through olive groves and grassy hills, we arrived at Volubilis. We hadn't expected the area to be as huge as it was. The ruins of temples, bathhouses and palasts were stretching out for at least 10 square km. So, it took us a few hours to explore the ruins and discover the hidden and still surprisingly well preserved mosaics.





On our way back, Tata (our driver) suggested to stop in Meknes to visit the palace's horse stables and the old city. Not knowing what to expect, we agreed and soon found out what was so special about the royal stables in Meknes: they were gigantic. We found out that at some point, around twelve thousand horses were housed there!


After having lunch in the old town of Meknes, which was nice enough, but not as picturesque and unique as Fez, we headed back. Then we had to say goodbye to our fellow travelers over these last few days and our driver. Having spent quite a lot of time together and experienced so many great things in the group, it was a bit sad to part ways. But that's the traveling life and at least I still had my most important travel companion by my side for the rest of the vacation :).


In the evening, Jannes and I managed to get back to our favorite spot in Fez to watch our last Moroccan sunset. We could even catch some glimpses of the mountains on the horizon...


All in all, this vacation was so much more than I expected. I found out that there is more to see in Morocco than just a pretty desert and the souks of Marrakesh. The incredible nature and mountains that we could only see briefly, from out of a car window, made me want to come back one day and do some hiking. And Fez really was such an incredibly interesting city!

After this eventful, adventurous trip, I am ready to start working life.