Travel -- Turkey and Germany

In late August I visited Turkey (Kusadasi area in Western Turkey) a pleasant and beautiful region by the Mediterranean Sea. I was very close to Ephesus, an acient city ruins site. I also paid a brief visit to Izmir (the 3rd largest city in Turkey following Istanbul and Ankara). It was also a sort of a reunion with family from Iran and USA, which made it special. This was the first time back in Turkey since my stay there back in 1983-84. You can see my photos from Turkey here.

On the way back I spent 3-4 days in Munich (Germany), the capital of Bavaria, and home of BMW and Siemens. Munich is a remarkable city -- ancient, modern, high-tech, meticulous, clean all at once. It is also the host of Oktober Fest, when about 6 million visitors crowd the city of 1.4 million in a period of 2 weeks in mid Sept! It has beautiful architecture and wonderful museums including the one with the largest collection of works by Wassily Kandinsky (Russian painter, 1866-1944), one of my favorite artists. The city was apparently about 60% destroyed in WWII, but it is all rebuilt, brick by brick. On some of the buidlings you can actually recognize the rebuilt segments. You can see my photos from Munich here.