Europe

Photo of the Moment: Rijn Kanaal Bike Path, Amsterdam

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Photo of the Moment: Vintage Scooters, Germany

Signspotting: Stonethrowing Competition in Aid of Christmas Lights, Ireland

The Telectroscope: Window Between London and New York City

It’s a window to the world. More specifically, it’s a window between London and New York City, and it’s called the Telectroscope. It claims to be a tunnel, buried through the earth, connecting the two cities. If you stand on one side in Brooklyn, you can see out the other end, in London City Hall. It isn’t […]

Postcards from Rome: Rome’s Eighth Hill

Michelangelo designed the dome and the Lantern for St. Peter’s – at the time the tallest dome ever built over the largest church ever built. Tickets for the Lantern are 6 € each, and an elevator takes you to the drum – the first layer where the dome rises out of the basilica. There […]

Iceland’s Penis Museum Pulls in the Crowds

First, a little word association. I say: “Iceland.” You say: “Penis”, right? Of course you do. That’s because Iceland has allegedly cornered the market on phallic museums. Literally. A penis shaped sign marks an otherwise nondescript building letting visitors know they are entering the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Husavik, about 298 miles northeast of Reykjavik. According […]

Postcards from Rome: There Are TWO Kinds of Pizza

Pizza-cut-with-scissors and “real” pizza. Pizza-cut-with-scissors – and yes, they do cut it with scissors – is the fast food pizza in Italy. It is pre-made. You tell the guy at the counter how much you want, and it is sold by weight. Once they have cut the right size piece for you, they throw […]

Postcards from Rome: Uncorking Rome’s Table Wine

Drink the table wine. It is cheap. It may even be produced by the restaurant itself. Many Roman restaurants are generations-old establishments that have little farms out in the countryside which help to supply the produce for the meals. And of course, they also supply the grapes for the wine and […]

Postcards from Rome: Discovering Rome’s Hidden Gems

Michelangelo’s Sforza Chapel is just one of the hidden gems in Santa Maria Maggiore © Angela Nickerson Simplicity does not exist in Rome. Churches, museums, restaurants – they are layered with the art from generation upon generation. The artists and architects of each era competed to leave their stamp on prominent buildings in the […]

Postcards from Rome: Michelangelo Slept Here. Or Was It Dante?

Michelangelo’s house is gone. The façade of one of the last homes he owned is now preserved as the front of a water storage building on Via Garibaldi. That’s the only existing building that we know he slept in. However, knowledge can be overrated in Rome. Everyone wants to claim that […]

Afghan Hijacker Found Cleaning Heathrow Airport

Airport security in Britain has come under scrutiny after a former hijacker, who was involved in the hijacking of a Boeing 767 in Afghanistan, was found working in Terminal 5. Nazamuddin Mohammidy was one of nine Afghans who took over the Afghan airliner in 2000. The plane was flown to Stansted, where the hijackers demanded […]

Photo of the Moment: Angelic Monkey, Gibraltar

Signspotting: Alien Men’s Room at the Science Fiction Museum, Seattle

Photo of the Moment: Camels in Amsterdam

Port of Call: Riga, Latvia

I recognized those haircuts. I’d seen them in 1987. Complete with tapered stonewashed jeans tucked into high-top sneakers, teenagers and young adults filled all decks. This was, I presumed, going to be their booze cruise. The next demographic up were middle-aged men with forlorn looks dragging at cigarettes, followed by families with kids under ten […]

Photo of the Moment: Prague in Blue

Austrian Rugby Team Does the Full Monty in Vilnius

Humiliated at their defeat to Lithuania, the Austrian rugby team apparently decided to humiliate themselves further. The group of twenty players staged a striptease on a street in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius as onlookers clapped and cheered them on. The episode would have remained hidden except for one onlooker who recorded the clip, and posted […]

Photo of the Moment: Lonely Tree in Tyrol, Austria

GPS Technology Helps Visitors Trace the Berlin Wall

Visitors to Berlin are often disappointed to find few remaining traces of the Berlin wall, and no delineation between the eastern and western parts of the city. When the wall came down, most of it was sold, frustrating history buffs who might otherwise want to visit the forbidding structure that symbolized the difference between […]

Photo of the Moment: Forgotten Village of Kamarbon, Iran

Photo of the Moment: The Wild Aubrac Region, France

World’s Oldest Tree (8,000 Years Young) Found in Sweden

Scientists have identified a cluster of spruce trees in the Dalarna Province of Sweden as being the oldest in the world. The Norway spruce trees were found in a mountainous region in Western Sweden. Carbon dating tests have revealed one of the trees to have taken root around 8000 years ago, which officially makes it […]

U.K. Graffiti Artist Strikes Again with Biggest Work to Date

The anonymous British graffiti artist known as Banksy has produced what is believed to be his biggest work to date. The three story art on a post office building near Oxford Circus reads “One Nation Under CCTV,” and features a little boy painting the words, while a security officer watches. Close to the painting is an […]

New Guggenheim “UFO” Museum to Open in Lithuania

Following on the lead of the spectacular buildings at New York and Bilbao, the new Guggenheim Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania promises to be an equally impressive figure on the city’s landscape. The design by Zara Hadid shows a futuristic floating space ship typs of structure that looks like it will take off at […]

UK’s First Islamic Pub Opens (With No Booze!)

Halal Inn and Islamic Pub, Britain Here’s an idea that might not be catching on any time soon. Two British men have opened the UK’s first Islamic pub where … wait for it … no alcohol is served. The pub is named the Halal Inn. Its owners insist it is like a pub in every […]

Museum of Broken Relationships Opens in Croatia

Broken Heart, Near Grant’s Tomb © CarbonNYC The Museum of Broken Relationships in Croatia promises to offer comfort to those who’ve been dumped. Visitors can find solace in one of the museum’s many odd exhibits – old love letters, photographs and other lover’s gifts to one another. Each exhibit has been donated by a jilted lover, […]

Bizarre Culture: Bulgarian Butchers Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ [Video]

It’s tragic enough when countries around the world feel the need to adopt some of the U.S.’s worst pop culture exports. But this fellow covering Michael Jackson’s Bad just takes Bulgaria’s version of American Idol to a whole new level. A very, very scary level. Ouch. Needless to say, he didn’t make the […]

Photo of the Moment: Pastoral Road, Scotland

German Nudist Flight May be Grounded

A travel agency that had planned a charter flight for nudists from the town of Erfurt to the Baltic Sea destination of Usedom, has been forced to cancel its plans even before the clothes came off. Internet travel agency OssiUrlaub had scheduled the fabric-free flight in July 2007 and generated considerable public interest. According to […]