Thanks UKHeliBob for the support.
While trying to read and copy the gibberish as you suggested, I found the problem as follows:
In my case, I use 2 digital pins to supply +5V and GND to the LCD (out of convenience only).
Unfortunately, in my setup I placed those two digital command lines after the lcd initialization, which means the LCD could not read the initialization command, and thus failed.
BY changing the order, I now get the correct text (another problem is the contrast, which for some odd reason requires negative voltage ....).
Thanks again
samtal