Travel to the beautiful City of Veracruz

Dear Friend and Reader,


You know the Country of Mexico has really beautiful places, especially when you drive from Mexico City to Veracruz. It’s a beautiful sight first coming out of the Valley of Mexico City and on your right side you see the volcanoes Popocateptl and Itzlaciuatl. Then you drive over about three thousand meters and then you come down to the valley of Puebla. The city of Puebla where the Volkswagen Company is located is a nice beautiful city with an old history. The Zocalo (centre) of the city is a nice square place in Puebla where you can sit outside of the restaurants at this time of year and observe the by-passing visitors and dine or just drink your beer or Tequila whatever you like after a busy day of visiting the surroundings of the City of Puebla.

When you drive further you get a beautiful sight of the volcano Pico de Orizaba with his snow-covered top all year long. It’s really a fantastic sight when you drive through this part of Mexico. The autobahn is not always in the best shape especially during the rain season which started this year a little bit earlier than usual but you see that they are working all year around to keep this important vane in a more or less good shape. The traffic on this important road which connects the port of Veracruz with the Capital of Mexico and brings the new cars from Volkswagen to the port for export to the whole world and the imported cars from Volkswagen Brazil to Mexico is sometimes a little bit heavy. But it is a nice drive when you are not in a hurry and with time to absorb the beautiful sight along the road.

When driving with a rented car or an own car you need some cash because the highways or autobahn in the whole country of Mexico are very expensive. In my opinion they are the most expensive toll road in the whole world and I wonder sometimes how the Mexicans can afford those expensive roads. But in some way you see this expensive roads reflect in the prizes we have to pay for our food and so on because everything has to be transported from the ports and country side to the cities. But in some way it seems to me that nobody really cares because the higher the toll the more traffic you see.

When you drive down from the high mountain chain to the sea-level of the city of Cordoba you instantly feel the different climate the moisture and the heat of this part of the country. The whole year round it’s green and you feel the different air when coming from the Capital of Mexico where the air is real thin because of the altitude.

When you drive through this part of the country you feel like driving through a green garden with plants in abundance like nowhere else in the country. Veracruz connects Mexico with the old world of Europe and South America. Veracruz is worth for a visit when staying in Mexico, but not only the city itself is worth a visit also the whole state of Veracruz with his gentle and helpful people. In this part of Mexico, the people still have a different lifestyle and the people are more tranquil than in other parts of the country.
In this part of the country you feel like the time has turned back or is running slower than in other parts. The people still have more time, at least it looks like and you see at late hours of the night the people walking on the beach or sitting in the cafes and dinning outside like and it looks like every one is visiting and not working. But this lifestyle you only find in the tropic parts of the world where people go out at night and not that much during the day.

But anyhow when you plan in the near future a visit to Mexico not only think of beach and laying around doing nothing but also take advantage to travel for education in different cultures and getting to know people and how they live. You come sometimes more relaxed back from vacation when you learn and know different cultures and new people then when laying two weeks on a beach and burning your skin.

You know when learning about different cultures and getting to know new people is a far better way to understand the problems which face other countries and his population. In this globalization era without knowing and understanding the different cultures we cannot live together in a harmonious and peaceful way. Especially where we travel in a shorter time by plane then before and where we hear the news through media and internet from all over the world. We should not only be concerned with our own interest, needs and wishes while ignoring those of others.


Talk to you soon,

Anton Winkler

Have you ever Thought of Traveling to Singapore?

Dear Friend and Reader,

Have you ever thought about traveling in a really exaggerated way? For example you get an invitation that says “met me in Singapore”.

What do you do?

At the first moment you might think Singapore…that’s too far away, but if you are a crazy guy like me you go immediately to the travel agent office and look for a flight to Singapore. You ask the travel agent…what offers do you have to Singapore, the first one they offer you…you think forget it…I will not pay that much just for a few days.

Than they give you another offer and you accept it, because you’ll not get in that short time something better and you book it, because you are crazy like me and you don’t care about anything but flying to Singapore.

Let me explain to you a little bit the background of that story. In December I attended a seminar in Atlanta with Matt Bacak and Shawn Casey, I don’t know if you know these incredible guys, these guys are the big shot in internet marketing and promoting of products, but anyway it doesn’t really matter if you know these guys.
I tell you I attended the seminar and I thought by myself when some day Matt tells me, hey Anton I will have a seminar in Singapore will you join me…I won’t think twice, I fly anywhere I can…to see Matt.

And to my surprise suddenly I received an invitation and I only followed my instinct and went there.

But there is more, I traveled about thirty or thirty-one years back to Singapore for the first time and I tell you this City is one of the most beautiful Cities on this Planet. You won’t find another City like Singapore anywhere else. The cleanliness and the beauty of that City is something you must see with your own eyes in order to believe it.
I was impressed of that city many years back and the second time I went there I was even more impressed.
The green parks, the trees everywhere, the streets and Highways exits are covered with green plants you almost can’t imagine that underneath that green plants are concrete for the bridges and exits. It’s incredible to look at something good organized like that. I only can have a great admiration for the City-planers of Singapore. They really did a great job.

The City tours and everything very good organized, Chinatown with its own beauty of colorful streets and imagine that in this City-island are living four different cultures in peace and harmony together? It’s really unbelievable, when you imagine that in some cities or country’s not even two cultures can live in harmony together?

If you like lunch or dinner or breakfast the Singapore cuisine is something special and very tasty and you enjoy the food every hour of the day. The buffet with there variety of different cooking and even cold food like smoked salmon, marinated octopus, marinated top shell, century eggs, mango pudding…I don’t like to tell you more because I’m already getting hungry when I think back.
It’s really a worthwhile trip even if you are crazy like me and spent only three days there.

The flight is a little bit heavy because you are sitting almost one day in planes from Center America to Singapore but I didn’t even think of that because the reward is something you never will get anywhere else.

Talk to you soon.

Anton

When Travel to the Far East.

Dear Friend and Reader,


Travel to other countries is always an exceptional experience, e.g. if you travel to Europe you leave in the afternoon and arrive in Europe the next day in the afternoon.

When you travel to Asia you leave in the morning and you are arriving at the other day almost at midnight depending on your destination. You lost on your flight almost a day.

This phenomenon happens because of the International Dateline. You ask hey Anton what is the International Dateline and why do you loose almost one day? I’ll try to explain in my own words. International Date Line
The International Date Line is around 180 ° longitudes.
The International Date Line (IDL),as also known as just the Date Line, is an imaginary line on the surface of the Earth opposite the Prime Meridian which offsets the date as one travels east or west across it. Along the 180 degree Prime Meridian which corresponds to the time zone boundary separating +12 and -12 hours from GMT.

When traveling across the IDL east results in a 24 hours day loss because the time will be subtracted and traveling across the IDL west results in a day being added.
According Wikipedia the first date-line problem occurred in connection with the navigation around the globe by Magellan’s expedition around 1519 to 1522. The crewmembers who survived turned to a Spanish colonized stopover and they were sure of the day of the week because of their various and carefully maintained sailing logs. But the habitants of the island insisted the day was different as they were been told from the surviving screw. This phenomenon caused so much excitement that they send afterwards a delegation to the Pope in Rome that he’ll explained why that happening was.

Talk to you soon,

Anton
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