10 latest experiences http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu en-us According to the official website, Berlin's Festival of Lights will "turn Berlin into a sparkling metropolis with a firework of illuminations and events". Worth a visit then. Berlin, Germany lu Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:25:31 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/1056 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/1056 Six and a half hours on the train from Germany and then arrival. From the train station, over the road and the tramlines, to Les Brasseurs pub for a quick beer and then a reunion with my friend Ange, who by happy coincidence lives in Geneva. My first experience of the city besides the pub was a lakeside walk spent fighting the arctic winds. It was cold but the snow topped mountains beyond the lake made the chill bearable. On first impressions, Geneva seemed like a pretty cool place. Geneva, Switzerland lu Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:47:47 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/931 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/931 Here’s what I knew about Baden-Baden before the trip: 1. it’s in the Black Forest region of Germany 2. it was the home of the English WAGs during the World Cup 3. it is the town with the richest population in Germany 4. it has a funny name Baden-Baden, Germany lu Wed, 05 Sep 2007 11:51:42 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/904 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/904 I don’t know much about monkeys. In fact, pretty much all I know is that our predecessors are supposed to be somehow related to their predecessors. And, to be honest, I’m not even sure whether I got that bit right. Still, I like to look upon them as distant relatives; creatures that we should be able to find some common ground with. I get on well with my cats and my dog, so I figured if I ever came across a gang of monkeys it would be a walk in the park. Bali, Indonesia lu Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:53:22 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/850 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/850 The Lake District is home to some of England’s most beautiful scenery and, with limited beach opportunities and often unruly weather conditions, it belongs more to the old school category of holiday destinations. But do not let the English weather put you off, for the Lake District has a lot to offer the holidaymaker. The Lake District, Cumbria, Uk, United Kingdom lu Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:54:51 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/840 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/840 In retrospect, hiring a driver and a car to take us on a nine-hour trip so that we could arrive at our destination, sleep for a few hours, get up in the middle of the night and drive the whole nine-hours back again that same morning, seems like a bit of a strange thing to do. It was a strange thing to do. The whole experience was a bit random and a bit crazy but it was an experience that I will never forget: one of those one off things that you do once and don’t really want to do again, but that remains with you until your dying days. We had more in mind than to just be driven for a whole day by some random Indonesian who apparently thought he could give Michael Schumacher a run for his money. We had a reason for what we did. The reason was Gunung Bromo: one of Java’s most picturesque active volcanoes. We had it on good authority that watching the sunset over this volcano was well worth seeing and so we travelled all the way from Yogyakarta to Bromo to enjoy the spectacle. G... Bromo, Indonesia lu Fri, 10 Aug 2007 14:57:23 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/704 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/704 Yogyakarta is often described as Java’s cultural capital. A city with under 500,000 inhabitants, it is the home of Indonesia’s oldest university and a place brimming with tradition, history and the famous Batik art. It is also happily located near two of Indonesia’s most impressive temples. We took a taxi driver up on his offer of driving us around the sights outside Yogya for a day and haggled a nice price of Rp.350,000 (≈ 30€). First stop: Borobudur. One of the Seven Wonders of the World, this quite gigantic Buddhist temple actually lay hidden under jungle and volcanic ash for centuries, until Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles ordered the clearing of the site and the restoration of the temple in 1815. Looking at Borobudur today, it is hard to imagine that it lay hidden for so long. When I first saw the temple, after having paid my ‘non-Indonesian’ entrance fee of Rp.90,000 (≈ 9€ and 10 times the price of the Indonesian fee) and fought my way through the many people ... Yogyakarta, Indonesia lu Thu, 09 Aug 2007 11:06:28 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/689 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/689 France used to be my family’s annual holiday destination, but in the years that have passed since this annual event has ceased to be, I have scarcely set foot on French soil. The few impressions I have retained from my childhood regarding this country together form a picture of a rural, wine-filled country, full of old men with scraggy dogs and very good food, where everything moves at a tremendously slow pace. I am not sure where these images originate or whether they bear any resemblance to the true state of things, but they filled my head with a certain excitement and expectation on the drive to Annecy, as if I were about to enter a land more at home in romantic fairytales. Annecy is in fact a fairly fairytale type of place. Situated near a beautiful lake surrounded by mountains, it is an aged town of small narrow streets, cobbled squares and miniature streams cutting through the stone of the densely packed buildings. On the day we visited though, many others had too. The tin... Annecy, France lu Thu, 09 Aug 2007 09:50:06 +0100 http://www.hereorthere.com/members/lu/experience/688 http://www.hereorthere.com/experiences/688