At the airport in Basel

Friday 23rd of August. I am waiting for my Easyjet flight to Berlin. The plan: A few days in the town of my mother, Berlin. I love this town and I will meet Antoinette. Next week, Ursula will join us… and with her I will leave for Mongolia.  We are all friends from the school days that we completed some 40 years ago. It is good to be with friends.

A full month on the road again. I hope to find some Internet Connections to blog about the two Swiss traveling in Mongolia.

Leaving life at home behind me
Life has been breathtaking since I came back from Petersburg. Renovation in my house… I lived amidst piles of books, carpets and folders in the living room, while the first floor is empty to be overhauled. I did some consulting work for a few days… I enjoyed this change to my retirement and I plan to do more of this later.Then a person very close to me left this world… I am very sad.

Now, I leave life at home behind me, with one more friend in my heart.

Ahead of me is Mongolia

Mongolia has always been a mysterious spot in this world for me. I came across the peoples from Mongolia, when learning about the Huns that invaded Europe (I once sat on the chair of Attila in Italy), about the Turks that invaded Anatolia (the ruins of the Byzantine cities were one example that told me about them). Then Chinggis Khan – he became a pop star in the 1980’s. I came across them in Russia as the “Golden Hordes”, in India as the Moguls (Sha Jahan’s Tadj Mahal shows how powerful they were). And China feared them, built the Great Wall, and could not prevent being invaded; the Mongols became even emperors of China.

The mysterious peoples from the steppes. I look forward to discovering them and to understanding why I came across them in so many corners of this world.