Category: Travel & Leisure

About Castles and Princesses

Once upon a time there was a loving couple who had spent the weekend in the far away small town of Fohnsdorf of the Kingdom of Austria. After overcoming deep dark tunnels, climbing the big Alpine Mountains and crossing the Mur River they had reached their destiny: the Schloss Gabelhofen, the most famous Castle Hotel of all the Kingdom… And so is how a relaxing weekend in Austria feels: like a fairy tale.
I spent two nights together with my husband in this beautiful castle of the middle ages, recently restored and transformed into a four stars hotel with an award-wining restaurant and an extremely friendly and professional staff. Just 700 metres from the hotel is the modern Spa Aqualux with thermal pools for adults and children and an impressive panoramic sauna, from where you can see the Castle Hotel Gabelhofen and appreciate the scent spectacles with waving towels, umbrellas and naked people of all ages.
Save your time for some sightseeing. After a four course dinner and many Spa options either in the hotel or in the nearby thermal Spa you still have much more to do. Judenburg offers a Planetarium built up in a 600 years old tower with over 200 steps up and 75 metres high named Sternenturm. The tower offers besides the Planetarium a perfect place for panoramic pictures. We also visited the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, a circuit for motorsports that hosted for 18 consecutive years the Formula One Austria Grand Prix and may do so again in the upcoming years. Last but not least, the nearby city of Leoben has about 25.000 inhabitants and is since the middle ages a mining and industrial centre. Here we visited the city centre very closed to the Mur River and went shopping at the former Dominikanerkloster, an old abbey where modernity and antiquity meet up.

 

What should I know before planning a trip to Bolivia?

After few months working on the reconstruction of my Blog I am now ready to relaunch it together with my own domain: www.bolitravel.com.

If you are thinking about travelling to Bolivia or just have some interest in getting to know a little about this South-American country, check my page category “Tribute to Bolivia“.

The first part of the tribute named “An overview of Bolivia” has the following information:

  • What to expect about Bolivia?
  • Getting there and moving around
  • Common concerns when planning to visit Bolivia

More will be coming soon!

You can also check:

Getting rid of stereotypes: a perspective from Berlin

When you think about Germany some words that might come up to your mind are: tough, severe, organized, punctual, clean, efficient, hard-working, integrity… But Berlin is not Germany; Berlin is just Berlin, an amazing city that has set a very particular style through its history.
How would it be to be able to rebuild a city again, rearranged its streets, its buildings and its own culture? How many of us haven’t thought about it when something in our own city doesn’t work well? It sounds definitely tempting, but not if you have to do it because your home, your city and your life were totally destroyed.
The Second World War meant not only the destruction of Berlin but its weakening, and after the war came the Cold War and Communism in East Berlin. With so many stories of racism, anti-Semitism, exclusion, deaths, barriers, and so on.. Berlin people have developed a new era of open-mindedness and tolerance.
During my five days trip in Berlin I could see not only people of different nationalities but also showing with openness who they really are: transvestites, punk, hippies, unemployed, executives, prostitutes or just a person who fits the mold. On the other hand, Berlin is not as clean as many other cities in Germany, unemployment rates are higher and vandalism is very common.
However, Berlin is a city that you must get to know.

More about Berlin

 

 

What about Gran Canaria?

I was recently on holidays with my husband in Gran Canaria, one of the seven islands of the Canary Islands and the second most populous one. The island is beautiful and the local people are very friendly. They remind me so much to the people from Central America and the Caribbean. For this reason I will consider Gran Canaria like the European Caribbean. During my stay I got to know that the unemployment rates in the island are the highest in Spain and probably one of the highest in Europe. 30% of the local people have no job and this goes up to 50% between youth. I find this totally amazing and besides the general financial crisis I think the main reason for this is the tourism model that the island, as well as all the other coast areas in Spain, has adopted: a massive sun and beach tourism with high dependency on tour operators and cheap prices. Although Gran Canaria received more than 3 million tourists last year the impact on the economy was apparently not enough to improve the local working opportunities.