It all started when Monica, a librarian friend of mine from Houston, Texas, told me that she would be attending a librarian conference organized by a Turkish university.  We decided to spend some time together during her stay in Istanbul, and I promised to show her some historical but not touristic parts of my city.

Eating out in Turkey is always something very special for the gourmet: a very old and traditional cuisine complete with the aroma of fresh additions of herbs and spices.

Just as in some regions in Europe, the procedure of drinking tea plays an important role in Turkish daily life. Whenever there is an opportunity to have a tea, they will take it. What is different to Europe is the way of doing it. In Turkey you will get the tea served in tiny little glasses with two pieces of sugar on a small tray.

The influence of different traditions, habits and customs of the Mediterranean on the Turkish life style have created another face of Turkish culture-a huge variety of different tastes in Turkish cuisine.

The fish restaurants of the Turkish coast offer lots of unusual meze dishes -specialities based on recipes which were originally brought from Greece by returning Turkish people.

If you have left yourself enough appetite after the starters, then the main meat course will follow. The traditional dish is Meatballs, which consists of a huge number of grilled burgers of different sizes, prepared with different spices and other additional ingredients, for example with cheese and with vegetable.

As we were picking up the leader of Goethe Institute from Konya bus station for a visit to Karaman and Mut we had a very interesting meeting.

Considering your taste, you can make changes in the numbers and amounts of the ingredients.

There will be adventure in this weekend at the Manavgat-Adventure Park! The groups, who want to participate in trekking on Saturday and Sunday, are going to spend an amazing weekend in the Taurus Mountains. The ones who want to stay in the park, will jump from one thing to the other to the climbing section and probably consume quite a lot of energy.

With Linda and Franc we had started from Shkodra in the direction of "Han i Hotit" to the north east of Lake Shkodra shortly before the border crossing to Montenegro, then followed the road to Kelmend, which is now newly asphalted and expanded until Tamara.

The discoloration of the leaves on the trees and other typical signs of approaching autumn slowly appear - unfortunately this often is accompanied by the first colds together with infection.

Various dates and private visits were the reason for one more stay in Kitzingen, which once more should lead to an experience with regional culture, in this case with a kind of sweet pastries made of yeast dough, the designated kind of donuts and offered in a special variety at carnival time.

After our meeting with Nikos at the local petrol station of Rapsani we were going up towards the center, where the female "Harvesting Team" from the United States was already waiting for us in the chestnut plantation.

After visiting the castle, we had an appointment with Nikos on his farm area right next to the ecological vineyards, where some members of the group for later grappa distillation had already gathered.

The original of the recipe belongs to Yeşim, she brought the muffins that she made by the mixture of different recipes and they were delicious. I want to thank her for sharing this practical recipe with us. (It seems like my muffins are more delicious :))

Turkey has been famous for its confectionery for centuries, Turkish delight being the most eminent example. This is a fascinating subject, not just because of the flavours to be enjoyed, but because in the past, and to some extent today, sweets played a symbolic role in every part of private and public life.

In Turkey, a bit of the crispy sections of white bread is tasted whilst it's hot, crispy and steamy "just out of the oven" fragrance is in the air, before it is even put on the table at home. In Germany, we were always warned not to eat hot bread for otherwise we could get a "tummy ache!"

Names like Nest of Nightingale, Women's Navel and Lips of the Beautiful Darling show the Turkish passion for desserts. There is a more than rich variety of different sized pastahane (pastry shop), which seem to be bursting with as many gluey, sweet dishes as you could imagine.