saudi arabia is currently undergoing rapid social change. even women are allowed to drive here! 
we were in a hardware store and were approached by a woman and invited to dinner at her family’s home. she told us about the many positive changes that have been initiated by the royal family, a kind of revolution from above. her 23-year-old niece wore her abaya all the time and, under protest from her aunt, could imagine an arranged wedding. meanwhile, neither the abaya nor the niqab is compulsory for Saudi women, although both garments are still commonly worn.

we crossed part of the rub`al khali, the largest continuous sand desert in the world, quite quickly to get to oman, but will soon return to saudi arabia and the desert.

currently undergoing rapid social change. even women are allowed to drive here! 
we were in a hardware store and were approached by a woman and invited to dinner at her family’s home. she told us about the many positive changes that have been initiated by the royal family, a kind of revolution from above. her 23-year-old niece wore her abaya all the time and, under protest from her aunt, could imagine an arranged wedding. meanwhile, neither the abaya nor the niqab is compulsory for Saudi women, although both garments are still commonly worn.

we crossed part of the rub`al khali, the largest continuous sand desert in the world, quite quickly to get to oman, but will soon return to saudi arabia and the desert.

We crossed the border into kuwait in the evening and then looked for a quiet place to spend the night in the dark. A car got in our way, the driver jumped out and asked if he could help us. And so we became guests of prof. ali on his farm. He still had an appointment and so he let us stay in his guest house, instructed his cook to look after us and we could stay as long as we wanted. Arab hospitality….

In the early 1990s, saddam hussein invaded the small kingdom, leaving behind burning oil fields and a gigantic oil slick in the arabian sea. International efforts helped to repair the damage, as can be seen in the kuwaiti oil museum.

ur was probably one of the first cities in the history of mankind and you could also think it was the cradle of civilisation. well, a lot has gone wrong environmentally since then, as you can see from the roadsides in iraq. We were strongly warned by the German embassy (in Athens) not to drive through Iraq, but the people are super friendly and are really happy about tourists coming back to the country after all the suffering, war and terror that the population has had to endure over the last 40 years. The visitors are the hope for a normalisation of the situation and a return to peace.

The ancient site ur is secured with solid mesh and barbed wire, and a guide said this is because it is now a unesco world heritage site. The reconstructed ziggurat has origins that probably date back to the 5th century BC.  The current form was dedicated to the moon-god “nanna” and was probably built over 4000 years ago by king ur-nammu and his son, or rather the two rulers commissioned its construction. The stepped temple has a base length of 62.5m x 43m and was probably 25 metres high.

babylon was founded in the third millennium before christ. little is known about this early period of settlement. however, some of the buildings that were constructed in the sixth century before christ under the babylonian king nebuchadnezzar II have survived to this day.

it’s actually a sacrilege to mention both at the same time, but unfortunately saddam hussein, who in his megalomania saw himself as the successor to the babylonian king nebuchadnezzar II, had a palace built directly on the site of babylon. And on top of that, on a hill – who knows what ancient relics lie beneath its foundations? Saddam probably had 80 (other sources mention up to 150) palaces in which cooking had to be done 4 times a day – it could have been that …

we were allowed to park our truck directly in front of the replica of the ishtar gate for a photo shoot, and we parked it infont of the palace as well. the original Ishtar gate is in berlin and will unfortunately only be open to the public again in 2037 after the renovation of the pergamon museum.

saddam had parts of babylon rebuilt and probably destroyed a lot of archaeologically relevant material in the process. one of my photos shows the supposed remains of the hanging gardens of samuramis. however, their existence has not been scientifically proven.

the resentment of the iraqi people is reflected in the devastation of saddam’s palace. the two upper floors are now no longer accessible. we were lucky enough to join a spanish travelling group and so i was able to take pictures on the upper floors.

in the battle of karbala, which took place on 10 october 680, imam al-hussain, a grandson of the prophet mohamed, was killed. with this battle, the shiite hope of establishing their third imam as head of the islamic community was dashed. the separation of shiites and sunnis was sealed. in islamic history, the battle of karbala is symbolic of the struggle between good and evil. (wikipedia)

The shrine is kept in the imam hussain mosque and the shrine of his brother, who also died as a martyr in the battle, is kept in the abu fadhi al-abbas mosque. The two shrines are considered the most important Shia religious site in Iraq.

after the plundering of saddam hussein, the gulf wars and the is terror, iraq has not really recovered economically. Two generations have been deprived of a well founded education, the schools and the health system are still in a state of collapse. Everywhere are military checks pints, we were probably considered an unusual vehicle and were therefore always inspected with suspicion.

The people are happy about every tourist, they are probably the sign of a normalisation of the living situation, but we really didn’t meet many tourists.

Baghdad has grown from 4 to probably 8-11 million inhabitants in just a few years, and the streets and souks are correspondingly chaotic. The most important traffic rule seems to be: “don’t give space”. And unfortunately, environmental awareness seems to have been lost in the turmoil of war; we rarely have we seen such a littered country.

At the beginning of october 2023, we set off for our middle east trip and wanted to take the ro-ro ferry via greece to haifa and onwards via jordan, saudi arabia to oman. The terror in the world put a stop in our agenda, – the ferry connection was cancelled. All we could do was organising an iraqi visa in ankara and travel to saudi arabia and oman via baghdad.