This blog was written during our ten-day visit to Israel. My wife Susan’s sister Aliza has lived in Israel for decades. In our thirty-five years of marriage, Susan and I have visited Israel at least a dozen times. Israel is a dynamic society of high-achieving hard-working people.
As Susan and I conclude our sixth and final week in Mumbai, India, I will attempt to relate the cultural impressions rather than just recounting the events. Readers of my previous blogs will know I’ve been visiting India for many years, playing music in various settings.
This blog describes a visit to ancient Petra and a conference of Middle East Nurses United in Human Caring.
This week marks my second visit to Venice. The first was in 2004. My opinion remains unchanged: Venice is one of the most interesting cities on the planet.
Bali is an island populated by 95% Hindus, but are only 5% of Muslim-majority Indonesia. As early as the first century CE, Indian traders spread Hinduism and Buddhism to East Asia, including what is now Indonesia. Hinduism in Indonesia reached its height by the 7th century. It was during this period that the Buddhist temple of Borobudur was constructed. (Borobudur was featured in my previous Indonesia blog.) By the 13th century, Islam spread through the islands of Sumatra and Java, supplanting Hinduism. However, Bali remained almost exclusively Hindu, despite the rise to dominance of Islam throughout the rest of what is current-day Indonesia. Bali has maintained the ancient Hindu religious practices which are also still practiced in India.
Why have a German reunion in Salt Lake City? In 1969, I traveled to Kiel, Germany, for a “junior year abroad” at the Christian-Albrechts University. I ended up staying out of the US for three and a half years, during which time, besides living in Germany, I spent significant time in Sweden, Afghanistan, and India. I returned home at the end of 1972, after the Vietnam draft had been abolished...
How much can a tourist learn about a country in five days? First impressions count. One can draw conclusions from even a short visit that merit more research perhaps through a future visit. Having just spent five days in Bhutan. . .
Four years ago, Susan and I toured Jordan for the first time. Through the internet, I hired a driver/tour guide based on an ad from a Jordan tour company. This driver, Mazen, met us at the airport holding a sign with our names on it. Spending hours together with him in the car that first year, we became close friends with Mazen. We have hired him as our tour guide during our three subsequent Jordan visits. Mazen has invited us to his house twice for dinner with him and his wife. Both he and his wife speak enough English to get to know each other well enough to cement our friendship. . .
In my long life, I’ve witnessed several major technological revolutions. In my early music years of the early 1960’s, all musical instruments were acoustic. Then in the late sixties, Jimi Hendrix led the way to an electric guitar revolution, and music was changed forever. The Hammond B3 . . .