Quite late...

I think I've to excuse me. I didn't write anything in the last time although some of you might have liked to read about my life in Hamburg. But I may tell you that it was not my fault. First, I had to work for my institute and that meant sitting all day in front of the computer. So, after work I wasn't very keen on sitting, typing and writing again. (On the other side, this means that I also had enough to do at the institute now. Most of the time I was searching for information, once about the UN-intervention in Somalia 1993/94 whose conditions may be similar to those the UNIFIL-troops in Lebanon might be concerned with in the near future. The other thing had to do with Turkey and I'm quite happy with that!)

Well, and the second circumstance that made me not writing anything for the blog was that my computer had some virus problems. Eleven of these f*cking b*stards I had on my computer, fortunately they didn't destroy anything but just blocked the system. I hope that from now on working with Mozilla Firefox or Opera instead of the Windows Internet Explorer will save me from those problems!

I really hope that everybody of you is fine and enjoys life. By the way I really like to know if anybody of you also has a weblog or an own homepage. Please tell me, I'm curious!
About my state of being I may say that I enjoy my daily life in Hamburg quite well. When the weather was good I went for a lot of walks through the town, accompanied by my photo camera and taking pictures. I put some of them on my photo page.
Hamburg is a beautiful city with much water. The river Elbe divides the town into two parts, on the southern shore there is the huge harbour area (after Rotterdam Hamburg has the second biggest industrial harbour in Europe, as far as I know), whereas on the northern shore the whole urban area lies. More than the Elbe there is the Alster, infact a small river that was turned into a huge lake right in the center of the downtown. Here, the well-established have their own sailing boats and small yachts lying in harbours and sailing clubs, and so, everybody can enjoy the view on dozens of white sails over blue water fighting with and aginst the stiff wind. (And so do I when I go the work each day.)

Walking around the Alster was what I did last weekend. North of it there are a quarters of the well-established, Rotherbaum, Eppendorf or Winterhude, whereas in the west you can find St. Pauli, famous for its football club that is totally not successful but that is loved and supported by almost everyone, and famous for the Reeperbahn - a long street with sexshops and cinemas, bars and nightclubs, strip shows and brothels and lots of other places for lonely hearts and open pockets. If you want to know more, please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeperbahn;-)

So far so good and instead of describing more by words I think its better to do it visually by pictures. So please have a look at the photo page and even more important: don't forget to tell me about your state of being.

Best wishes to everyone
Lütfü

P.S.: By the way, above you can see my cousin Thomas and me before going to the Hofbräuhaus, a Bavarian style restaurant in Hamburg (for a Bavarian as me it's something a little ridiculous, but "the Prussians" like it...)

P.P.S.: I don't know why, but although I try to set the links to my photo page and to delete the Google News and Edit me-Links, the changings cannot be seen. Stupid! So, I give you the link to my photo page directly here: It's www.flickr.com/photos/seemecrossing .

Moin moin!

This is how indigenous people from Hamburg say "Good morning", "Good evening", "Good bye" and even "I'm fine" to each other! So far what most of the Germans already know. And they also think that every Hamburgian uses this expression day-by-day. So did I when I entered a Hamburgian bakery for first time in my life, said "Moin moin" - and of course the waitresse didn't understand!
And, dear friends, there's a second mythos I have to deconstruct: the weather in Hamburg is not as bad as everybody thinks. Infact during this week that I'm here, it was quite sunny and warm and only a few raindrops (except of the kind of little taifun that we had three days a ago).

Right now I'm sitting in my office at the German Institute of Oriental Studies, it's Monday afternoon and before leaving for the afterwork party I decided to set a small post.
When I turn to the right and look outside the window I can see the southern part of the Alster, that is, let's say, the Golden Horn of Hamburg, with lots of white small sailing ships on it, surrounded by both beautiful historical buildings and more or less modern office complexes. (In the end of the month probably I will put the most beautiful and interesting pictures on my photo-page.)
Concerning my work, I may say that I'm not doing too much. This is due to the fact that 1. it's holidays now so lots of scientists who are usually working at the institute are not here; 2. my boss himself, Prof. Udo Steinbach, who is working on Turkey, is on holidays until 15th Augst and so I don't get any work from him; and 3. I still do not yet know about my final thesis' subject in detail so I cannot really start with the literature research. But I'm sure that this situation will change with each week more that I'm here, and anyway, I though have more time for getting to know and enjoying the city.
I'll tell you more, soon!

Best wishes, moin moin!
Lütfü