For those who have visited the Sultanate once, the take home bundle would be the exquisite natural sights spanning around the unique landscape, turquoise blue waters, and vast deserts and adding icing to the cake is the time-tested hospitality.
These have pulled tourists time and again to Oman and prompted them to explore even more complementing the thriving tourism sector.
But Lucienne Pernau, a Bavarian medical professional, who visited Oman briefly for a conference is in an instantaneous love mode with the country and is acting as a tourism ambassador for Oman to all those whom she meets.
It all happened when the car she was travelling in had a glitch and was stuck in the middle of the road near a desert during her visit.
“I got stuck with my car in the middle of the sand at the side of the road. It was around 5 pm and I could hear the evening prayer from the mosque. I was scared because I did not know what to do,” Lucienne described her experience ‘stuck in an alien land’ but how things changed in a few minutes.
“Not even 3 minutes went by after the car was stuck and I could see several men and children coming up to help me out. It was so kind of them to have come up and rectified the glitch unconditionally.”
“This is a sheer humanitarian gesture which I’ve not very much experienced anywhere else. I believe this unconditional love and care is what makes Oman and its nationals different,” she advocates.
tourist attractions
36-year-old Lucienne Pernau who is currently pursuing her MBA in International Healthcare Management at Frankfurt school of Finance and Management feels that Oman’s landscape and tourist attractions are second to none and it has given her many firsts in her life.
“For the first time in my life I saw blue tears at night on the coast that I drove up from Muscat. I walked down to the beach, it was late at night and very warm. Just as I stepped into the water I saw that all the waves were glowing in blue tiny sparkles. It was magic!! The heat, the darkness, the rushing of the waves and these sparkles everywhere — it was stunning and the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.” For her, the first experience in Oman was a ‘magic’.
“I had the best food made for me right by the side of the road. When I stopped and tried to buy some fresh fish with my few Arabic words that I had learned from the business experiences in the past I managed to have a conversation filled with warm laughter and was handed over some food. The men were so kind they did not even take my money! I was deeply touched by this friendliness”.
In the mornings, when she drove to the beach to run while the sun was still rising and the air rather warm than hot, she met several kids and old people walking by the beach — all of them with the most-friendly smile. At gas stations, supermarkets or driving around in the most beautiful authentic villages — everyone, according to her, was so friendly.
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