ISSUE 2
presented by:

 little thistles:

• Monsters
• Picture dictionary
• Lingva zoo
• My family and me
• There's no place
  like home

 and the older ones:

• Diaries
• Polemics
• People around us
• That wicked music
  by Van Gogh
• Come to my place!
• Echoes of my country
• 2 cool actors
  and a movie
• Give us a chance
  to travel
• My favourite magazine
• Buildings in Valjevo -
  beauties or eyesores
• Family festivals

Give Us a Chance To Travel

Days in Germany
by Ivan Ljiljak-Vukajlovic

Well, if I'm not wrong, last time we stopped at Saturday.

We had a Picture Trail competition in Eggenfelden (which is the closest larger place eight to ten km from here). In the beginning there was a horrible rain, but right after the first check point the sun started to shine nicely and we went on following the trails and solving the tasks. My group (Penny from Australia, Sahar from Palestine and me) managed to win fifth place (out of five competitors: )))))))))) ), since we failed a couple of tasks. I hope we will get the photos taken there and so I will be able to show you what a shameful ordeal I went through.

Sunday was a free day, planned to be spent together with the host family, but since my host was busy (some new guests were coming to his country tourism boarding house) I joined about half of the group which went to a place (whose name, as well as most of the German places names, I naturally forgot) with a biiiiig swimming pool. As that place has a big BMW factory (about 20 kilos of people work there), they had enough money to make the pool the right way, so that, besides the fun things such as fountains, slides, diving-boards and the like, they also have (and do make) artificial waves for ten minutes every hour. In the evening, my hosts took me to dinner to a Chinese restaurant and I must say that you would have been proud of me because out of four people I was the only one who wrestled with the sticks, while the others used forks and knives.

On Monday we went to Mozart's birthplace (Salzburg), which is a pretty small tourist town with no less than 100,000 tourists at all times. Later on we had a boat tour round a lake (an Austrian one, at about half an hour drive from Salzburg) and had lunch in a restaurant. Heeeeeeeey, I almost forgot to tell you that in Salzburg I tried Wiener schnitzel and it was much better than those I had eaten so far in all my life (I wonder why : ))))))))) ).

The next day we were supposed to take a train (it's better to say 'trains' since we were to use four of them) to Expo 2000 . On second thoughts the train from Passau to Hannover is like an aeroplane, the only difference is that it runs at mere 250 km/h (Ah, where do all our Serbian trains fit in?) The campsite where we were put up was a disappointment as it was about 30 km from Hannover, so we had to use two trains to get to Expo.

The following two days were spent in touring round the Expo, and my first impression was that it is huge. I managed to cover 10-20 % of it, visiting the following pavilions: Australia, Mexico, Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Iceland, England, Russia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Holland, China, and Thailand (if I am not wrong) and a couple more (whose names I don't remember). I wouldn't like to go into much detail now; the only thing I want to tell you is that the Croatians did the job excellently and since I exchanged a few words with them I got 2 posters and the catalogue (which they do not give away). I liked the French pavilion the best, as it is really excellently built. All the pavilions are loaded with big LCD (thin) screens, projectors, as well as touch screen comps on which country information is incessantly run, and I tried to send you an Ecard from the Croatian pavilion (which you probably haven't received as there occurred an error) so I got mad because I had spent half an hour typing on the screen keyboard. Oh, I almost forgot, the Albanian pavilion was shaped as a concrete bunker (?) in which a film about the time of communism was reeled on, that is, there was nothing about us (???).

At Expo we had a lunch in a Portuguese restaurant with live music with dance inbetween dance and kung fu. There is an Expo shop at every 100 m where for a 'small change' you can buy a pile (pardon, a huge pile) of souvenirs (don't be suspicious, I didn't buy anything :))))))) ). Everything at Expo is expensive, half a liter of coca cola is 4 DM, while you can normally buy it at 1 DM. They are gradually switching over to Euro (this applies to the whole Germany); all price lists and bills include the price in Euros as well (I believe, though, that this is due to the Euro price being two times lower, so that people think they are buying something cheaper).

On Friday, the return day, I went to bed at six in the evening, woke up at about nine, put on my pyjamas, lay down again and finally got up the next day at noon - I had got very tired at Expo.

It is Saturday now, and I am probably sending you this in the evening from the Hummels' where we are having a farewell party.

Regards from the not rainy but cloudy Germany.

Yours,
Ivan