So I finally found some time to get the photos together and put them together in a nice gallery for you to see. The second gallery contains the photos of my digicam. So now to the report on the holidays:
We only got a flight from Graz, and because the plane tool off at 0600 hours, we decided to drive there by car (train would have meant staying in a hotel in Graz for one night). So we packed our things together and into the car and started our voyage at approximately 0015 and cruised towards Graz. Well, after a boring time on the highway we arrived at the Airport Graz at approximately 0300, only to discover that it was closed. This airport is even smaller than the Blue Danube Airport Linz! Well, we had to wait for one hour, then we checked in, got us a coffee and waited. Finally we were allowed to get on the plane and started towards Sharm el Sheikh. After a rather uneventful flight (”This is the captain speaking. If you now look out on the left side [of course we were sitting on the right side] you would be able to see Mount Olymp, if it wasn’t hidden by clouds”) we landed at Sharm and were greeted by a gust of REALLY hot air. The temperatures in Sharm were always between 34° and 40° Celsius, so I think you can imagine our condition after some hours in an airconditioned plane.
After fetching our luggage, we were greeted by our travelagent’s representative with the words “Welcome to Sharm. Your hotel is overbooked.” To keep things short: we were put in another hotel for some days (Thursday till Sunday), and then we got a room in our booked hotel. The alternative one was o.k., although a bit bigger and with more children.
On Tuesday, we started our diving lessons together with 2 others, whom we had met there.
We chose a small divecenter in Naama Bay, which was a newly opened center belonging to Orca, because they were friendly and offered a good package for the PADI Open Water Diver course. We spent the next days watching videos, reading the book, answering quick tests and doing excercises on our confined and open water dives. It was great, except for some excercises, e.g. removing the mask under water and putting it back on or walking in the wetsuit with all the gear on the hot beach to get to the water. Although we were only at the Naama Bay beach, life underwater was fascinating. The most special thing we saw there was a small anemone with a family of clownfish (one big, one smaller, and two young) which startled Elke a bit, because the father shot out to defend the anemone when she dived down to take a closer look 
. After wo took the final exam (I scored 100%! woot!) we took a day off and wanted to relax a bit and perhaps go snorkeling at the reef beach near our hotel.
The next morning we were greeted by our dive-colleague Peter: “Did you hear? There were bombings in Sharm.” We didn’t believe him until he showed us a SMS and we had turned on the TV in our room and heard that on Friday night, at about 0300 hours (wait, that would make it Saturday… well, whatever) some bombs hat hit various spots in Sharm. The bombings had taken place in Naama Bay and near the Old Market area, and our hotel was right in between these two spots. Both were 10-15 minutes by car away. This day was a strange one, because nearly all guests stayed at the hotel. After lunch, after we had talked to the boss of the dive center, we went to the beach (which was also nearly empty). On Sunday we went to the dive center and then by boat to the street of Tiran. There were reporters all over the dock, trying to get interviews with those tourists seemingly uninpressed by the attacks. Fortunately we had our peace under water, where we saw our first turtle. Then, we had another day off and finally our third boating trip (the first one was on the last day of our course), this time to the underwater national park of Ras Mohammed. There we had the luck to dive at our first wreck, the Yolanda. It was really funny to see all those bathtubs, washbasins and toilets scattered there, which had been the cargo of this ship.
So that was it. The remaining day was just some relaxing, and packing the luggage back together; nothing interesting happened. The last morning we checked out of the hotel, got on the bus, arrived at the airport, checked in, got on the plane and took off… to Hurghada. There we had to get off of the plane, wait for half an hour or so on the airport, then get onto the plane again and finally we were headed for Graz.
