Isernhagen. 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.
Berlin / 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.
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.
An Australian parliamentary delegation led by the Australian Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop that visited Sri Lanka during the end of January has praised the work done in the North & East of the Island within such a short period since the end of war.
Colombo is among the least expensive cities in the world, according to an annual survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU worldwide cost of living index released Monday ranked Colombo as the seventh least expensive city in the world.