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Last update:Wed, 20 Nov 2024

An Official Celebrity in Sri Lanka

A round trip is a permanent farewell and at the same times a constant arrival. This form of travel combines pleasure with sadness; it pleases curiosity and makes the known seem pleasant. The old Ceylon, spiritual places and confusing roads. Encounters everywhere, Sri Lanka turns you in a philosophic mood. By Jennifer Latuperisa

Visiting the garden. Her eyes are sparkling. It is a mixture of curiosity and joy. Her smile is big and broad and adapts to her nose, which indeed has turned out too big for her pretty face. Her name is Dishie. Its her garden. It is Spartan but green. She touches my hand lightly, serves tea with biscuits and bananas. Apart from that, she says nothing. She only giggles hardly audibly in a little ashamed way. Fernando, my driver, translates the few words. My mere presence makes him proud. A journalist from Germany, he says proudly. Yes, she does not look typically German; her father is from Indonesia, he explains, as if I was not present. Then, he waves with a letter that I will never be shown during the entire trip. It must be something official, with important stamps and my name. I take another picture of her with her husband, whose golden elephant ring I find very impressive. It is from Indonesia too, he says, and points to the jewellery. I see, I say somewhat clumsily. On our departure, he says that their dog is a German Shepard from Germany. Well, I say.


Sri Lanka needs wider exposure abroad – Ambassador Kongahage

exposureSri Lanka's Ambassador to Germany Sarrath Upali Kongahage said that leading journals such as Lonely Planet, National Geographic and a number of other international travel magazines had extended massive coverage to Sri Lanka as a top destination in Asia, but we need to capitalise on those kudos and ensure wider publicity with such articles abroad for the country's tourism product.

Sri Lanka: Yellow Coconuts and Repaired Toilets Working Group from Isernhagen returned from student exchange

sria500Isernhagen. Many schools offer exchange programmes to countries such as France, Spain and England. By contrast, the Gymnasium Isernhagen flies with its students to a completely different place every year: Sri Lanka.

Thanks to German Tourists for Continuously Breaking Records: Sri Lanka is Aiming for Double-Digit Growth Rate Also for 2013

ITBImageKBerlin / Colombo, March 6th 2013: With its unique diversity, Sri Lanka is still continuing to boom. Thus the bookings in 2012 increased over an impressive 17.5 percent compared to the previous year. A total of 1,055,605 tourists visited the island in the Indian Ocean between January and December. With 373,063 visitors (up 18.4 percent), tourists from the EU countries made the majority.

How the Kaarst Tamils are celebrating New Year

Kaarst

The city of Kaarst has a big Tamil community. Once a year, the members meet to celebrate the New Year Festival "Thai Pongal".

The "Thai Pongal" is the most important festival of the Tamils. New Year and Thanksgiving are celebrated at the same time. What almost nobody knows: In Kaarst, there is a rather big Tamil community, which has united in the beginning of the 1990s as local association of the "United Tamil's Association" (UTA). The Neuß-Grevenbroicher Zeitung has visited the New Year Festival this year.