Strasbourg

Going to Strasbourg during Christmas season is a unique experience – they have really nice Christmas markets there, everything is festively decorated and the architecture is beautiful to look at. It’s quite interesting that signs are bilingual – French and German, especially if you have been, like myself, in another part of France for a longer time and all of a sudden you start reading German street names again ;). The typical dish that you absolutely have to try is ‚Flammekueche‘, which is like a thin flatbread with cream cheese, ham and cheese or whatever ingredients you’d like to put on it. There are also some great shopping possibilities, tons of different shops where you can get practically everything. And we’ve also been to this one Christmas market where various European countries are represented and sell typical food or handcrafted products there – since they also had an Austrian stand, that was a chance to finally have some ‚Spaetzle‘ again…

Bad Ragaz

I worked there for a few months and I can tell you that this village in the Canton of St. Gallen is nice. You have the possibility to play golf and after a good lap you can go to the thermal spas, to relax.
The nightlife of Bad Ragaz provides you a lot of bars and a casino. Most of the bars are expensive, so an alternative is the local Pub. In this Pub you can meet friends and drink 1 or 2 or ... beers or what ever. The only bad thing is the closing time :-(.
If you need a cheaper accommodation in this village, go to the Hotel Garni Jerger. The price range is as follow: 60-180 CHF per room and night.

Visit the following links to get an impression of Bad Ragaz:
http://www.badragaz.ch
http://www.hoteljerger.sloper.ch/jerger_main.php?id=0
http://www.resortragaz.ch/de/home/?

Istanbul

It takes time to see Istanbul properly, since examples of its 2,000-year-old past can be difficult to find amid the chaos of the present. Most visitors go straight to the Sultanahmet district, the oldest part of the city, where there are at least some remnants of Byzantine Constantinople, such as Haghia Sophia (Aya Sofya), among the splendours of Imperial Ottoman architecture, such as Topkapi Palace and the Blue Mosque. Sultanahmet is, however, a ‘tourist quarter' with the usual irritations of badgering touts and crowds of people and it is not the only historic part of the city.

The city centre, including the areas referred to as ‘the old city' and ‘the new city', which are separated by the estuary of the Golden Horn, is located on the European side of Istanbul, on the western side of the Bosphorus Strait.