Oktoberfest in Phnom Penh – it’s Munich on the Mekong

I’ve never been to Munich’s Oktoberfest.
Somehow the combination of binge drinking, oom-pah music and big-busted waitresses in dirndl-dresses always failed to intrigue me.
So I was unprepared for what I experienced last night, when I attended the Oktoberfest in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh – of all places.
Imagine an authentic Bavarian band playing German beer-drinking music and [...]

Nobel Peace Prize laureate speaks out on Iran

I heard the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi talk about the situation in Iran on Monday (July 13, 2009). What she said was very impressive.
Shirin Ebadi said many more people have been killed in Iran in the aftermath of the elections than we know now. “What happened in Iran is an obvious human [...]

Feels like fall

It’s strange to be back in Europe after six weeks in Asia. No more heat and humidity, like in Thailand. Instead, it’s autumn in Germany.
The days are sunny and the skies are blue. It’s dark by six p.m. and the evenings are turning cool. The last remaining leaves on the trees have turned red or [...]

Citizens defeat racists in Cologne

You won’t find me at a lot of political rallies.
So when I got my ass up this weekend to go out and demonstrate, you know that it must have been a cause that was very important to me.
This weekend, racists and neo-Nazis from all over Europe had planned to gather in my home town Cologne [...]

Bellydance for tolerance

The people of Cologne have a nice sense of humor. They’ll even turn political protest against Neo-Nazis into a carnival.
Liberal groups in Cologne are calling on the people of the city to stage a mass bellydance on September 20th. They’re hoping that 11 000 dancers will swing their hips to oriental music in protest against [...]

German is good in Ulan Bator

Believe it or not, but you can see a lot of German influence in Mongolia’s capital Ulan Bator.
Everywhere you go, you’ll come across advertisements for Khan Bräu, for instance. The Khan Bräu brewery has been around since 1996. It’s run jointly by a German and a Mongolian.
Khan Bräu makes its beers in Mongolia, but they’re [...]

Cologne’s KOLUMBA

My cultural highlight this week was a visit to Kolumba in Cologne. This museum has been around for almost a year now, but you know how it is: when you’re not a tourist, when you live in a city, you never really get around to seeing the sights…
A couple of friends had already been [...]

Join the parade

Cologne witnessed Europe’s biggest gay pride parade this weekend.
20 000 marchers and more than 70 floats snaked their way throught the tightly packed city streets on Sunday.
An estimated half a million people watched the parade. One million people joined the gigantic street party downtown, which lasted the whole weekend.
With sunshine and temperatures in the upper [...]

Fly your flag

Germans really went wild during the past weeks of the European Soccer Championship. They’re a soccer-crazy nation. And they showed it by proudly displaying the colors of the German flag: black, red, gold.
It was their way to show their support for the German team at the championship.
Everywhere you looked, you saw black, red and [...]

Dresden goes Disneyland

I felt uncomfortable when I visited Dresden this past weekend. It was the first time I’d been to the city in almost 15 years and a lot had changed since my last visit.
The most obvious change was that the central parts of the city around the Church of Our Lady, Frauenkirche, are being reconstructed. [...]