German Half-Timbered House Road

31 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Living, Working, Building, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  4 minutes

Complete overview of the seven regional routes of the German Half-Timbered House Road © Wolfgang A. Köhler

Complete overview of the seven regional routes of the German Half-Timbered House Road © Wolfgang A. Köhler

The German Half-Timbered House Road (German: Deutsche Fachwerkstraße) is a German tourist route leading from the river Elbe in the north to Lake Constance in the south. Along the road you can find nearly 100 cities and towns with remarkable timber-framed houses. It is divided into seven sections, leading through the following states of Germany: Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse, Thuringia, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. The total length is nearly 3,000 km (1,864 mi).   read more…

Naples, the European Shanghai

31 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  11 minutes

Historic center - UNESCO World Heritage Site © Inviaggiocommons

Historic center – UNESCO World Heritage Site © Inviaggiocommons

Naples is a city in Italy; it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. Known for its rich history, art, culture, architecture, music, and gastronomy, Naples has played an important role in the Italian peninsula and beyond for much of its existence, which began more than 2,800 years ago. Situated on the west coast of Italy by the Gulf of Naples, the city is located halfway between two volcanic areas, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields.   read more…

Theme Week Moscow, the third Rome

30 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, Bon voyage, Theme Weeks, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  10 minutes

Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, Kremlin in the background © Ikar.us

Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, Kremlin in the background © Ikar.us

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the world. A global city, Moscow is the most populous city on the continent of Europe and the seventh largest city proper in the world. Its population, as of 1 January 2010, is 10,563,038. Based on Forbes 2011, Moscow had 79 billionaires as the city with greatest billionaires number displaced New York.   read more…

Trier, probably Germany’s oldest city

29 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Sustainability, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  5 minutes

Trier Palace © Berthold Werner

Trier Palace © Berthold Werner

Trier is a city in Germany on the banks of the Moselle River. It is the oldest city in Germany, founded in or before 16 BCE. Trier lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of ruddy sandstone in the west of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, near the German border with the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg (some 15 km distance) and within the important Mosel wine-growing region. Trier sits in a hollow midway along the Moselle valley, with the most significant portion of the city on the east bank of the river. Wooded and vineyard-covered slopes stretch up to the Hunsrück plateaux in the South and the Eifel in the North.   read more…

Barcelona, “la gran encisera”, the great enchantress

28 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  10 minutes

Plaça Catalunya © tango7174

Plaça Catalunya © tango7174

Barcelona is the capital and the most populous city of Catalonia and the second largest city in Spain, after Madrid, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of 101.4 km2 (39 sq mi). The urban area of Barcelona extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of over 4,200,000 on an area of 803 km2 (310 sq mi), being the sixth-most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, London, Ruhr area, Madrid and Milan. About five million people live in the Barcelona metropolitan area. It is also Europe’s largest metropolis on the Mediterranean coast.   read more…

Zurich, the city with the highest quality of life and the highest cost of living

26 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Architecture Reading Time:  10 minutes

Fraumuenster and St. Peter's Church © Ikiwaner

Fraumuenster and St. Peter’s Church © Ikiwaner

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich. While the municipality itself has approximately 380,500 inhabitants, the Zurich metropolitan area is an urbanised area of international importance constituted by a population of nearly 2 million inhabitants. Zurich is a mixed hub for railways, roads, and air traffic. Both Zurich Airport and railway station are the largest and busiest in the country.   read more…

The archipelago of the Azores

25 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Sustainability, Environment, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

Angra do Heroísmo - Terceira Island © Luissilveira

Angra do Heroísmo – Terceira Island © Luissilveira

The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. The Portuguese archipelago is located about 1,500 km (930 mi) west from Lisbon and about 3,900 km (2,400 mi) east from the east coast of North America. The archipelago, and economic exclusion zone, forms the Autonomous Region of the Azores, one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal. Its main industries are: agriculture, dairy farming (for cheese and butter products primarily), minor livestock ranching, fishing and tourism, which is becoming the major service activity in the region. In addition, the government of the Azores is responsible for employing a large percentage of population directly or indirectly in many aspects of the service and tertiary sectors.   read more…

German Green Belt

25 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Environment Reading Time:  5 minutes

Green Belt Germany map © Lencer

Green Belt Germany map © Lencer

The German Green Belt (Grünes Band Deutschland in German) is a project of Bund Naturschutz (German only), one of Germany’s largest environmental groups. The project was begun in 1989. On the former inner German border, there is a strip of land approximately 1400 km (870 miles) long (with an area of more than 100 km² / 39 mi²) that remained nearly untouched since the construction of the Berlin Wall. The government of GDR wanted a distance between the fence and the actual border, in order to arrest or even shoot people who managed to pass the fence. It stretches from Travemünde on the Baltic to the Czech border, near Hof in Bavaria. A number of endangered species can be found there.   read more…

Brainport Eindhoven

23 March 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  7 minutes

PiazzaBlob Eindhoven © Curt Woyte

PiazzaBlob Eindhoven © Curt Woyte

Eindhoven is a municipality and a city located in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, originally at the confluence of the Dommel and Gender streams. The Gender was dammed off short of the city centre in the 1950s, but the Dommel still runs through the city. The city counts 213,809 inhabitants (1 January 2010), which makes it the fifth-largest city of the Netherlands and the biggest of North-Brabant.   read more…

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