Someone sings
Gierusalemme, ikhaya lami
And the whole world dances along
Yet another one has claimed that town to be
His home, now
And the whole world dances along
They sang Deus lo vult in 95
To the tune of an Urban pope, the second
And shortly thereafter
Crosses waded knee-deep through blood
Oh holy urban killing field!
This goes back to a Facebook nomination chain post, which I shall simply replicate here. Now, since I’m somewhat unruly, I did provide commentaries (contrary to the request), but refrained from nominating anyone – I’m actually not a big fan of these requests and I usually opt out from them.
So, if you like, see ten of my favourite travel pics. It’s not a top ten or anything, just a start in roughly chronological order. In this recap, I made it up to 1994. Now that’s a few months ago, so to say, and I reckon I’ll do this “10 choice pics” thing more often.
1988, Kaluga – then Soviet Union, now Russia. As the East German schoolkid that I still was, I had sucked up the slogans about our “big brother”, the Soviet Union. “To learn from the Soviet Union is to win” (Von der Sowjetunion lernen heißt Siegen lernen). When I went there at the end of the eighties for a one-week school exchange trip, I saw actual poverty for the first time, and even the family I visited, who was not poor, lived way below the standards I was used to. I saw beggars for the first time of my life, in Moscow. And yet, there was the Perestroika going on, Michael Gorbachev’s reform movement. For us East German teenagers it was almost shocking to see, and as the relationships between the East German government under Honecker and Gorbachev started to sour, they were refreshing. The slogan in the picture calls upon on Kalugans to put all their strengths into the Perestroika, more Democracy and economical reforms.
I have a few hundred photographs, on film – travelling was analogue then. No email, no internet, let alone a mobile phone, and no digital camera. As usual, I traveled without a guide book, except for Mayer’s History of the Crusades, so I could visit crusader castles. I wish I had more scans of photos from that journey! Here’s a very small selection of 6 months travelling in what was an optimistic region then.
I had been to Israel before, in 1992, my only tour-group experience. Many trips to the region would follow, though never again to Syria. This is unfortunate, for Syria was one of the best countries I’ve ever traveled in my life: the friendliest people you can imagine, few tourists if any, inexpensive – in short: fantastic! I traveled Turkey a few more times (1998, 2004, 2010), as well as Israel/Palestine, Jordan and Egypt (1996, 2000, 2008). Here are some of the journeys:
