Categoria: English

Zagorohoria: rocky peaks and stone bridges

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Every rock and stream is a myth Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani The horizon is jagged with rocky peaks. The Greek summer fades out slowly. But the icy mountain air, the fireplaces already lit in the houses, the sudden rains make it clear that the season is changing. A fresh wind pushes the last warmth away. The Pindus mountains are the last splinter of the Balkans. From the north of Greece, the chain continues in towards the south-east until the Peloponnese. But that border between the Ionian and Aegean seas is very far from where I am now. I’m in the north,

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Discover Procida, the Italian capital of culture for 2022

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The Italian capital of culture for 2022 will be the tiny yet beautiful island of Procida. It’s the smallest and least known of the islands of the Gulf of Naples. You maybe have already heard of Capri and Ischia. Does perhaps Procida sound new to you? Well, springtime is the perfect moment do discover Procida, which will be the Italian capital of culture for 2022. Next year we all hope that the pandemic emergency will be over and that we’ll be able again to travel freely! Here are a tiny guide and some beautiful images of this charming island! And

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Perast and the bay of Kotor

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A STORY OF BEAUTY, CHURCHES AND CATS The Bay of Kotor is an encyclopedia of the contradictions of post-Yugoslavia. Glimpses of dazzling beauty, carcasses of the Yugoslav navy, ancient Habsburg forts, and wrecks of fishing boats. Venetian villages with unchanged grace but polluted and sometimes smelly waters. The charm and the white stones of Kotor are dominated by the huge cruise ships that moor and throw up hasty and distracted excursionists. Perast Perast: churches and old Venetian lanes that descend rapidly from the mountainside to the edge of the sea. Fishermen’s houses, and restaurant terraces. You can sit on a

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Out of the crowd in Mykonos for beautiful landscape photos

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Out of the crowd in Mykonos for beautiful landscape photos! If you’d like to escape from the glamour and the crowd of Mykonos town and its most famous beaches, head to the northern point of the island, to the Armenistis lighthouse. Armenistis Lighthouse It’s a 6 km walk from Mykonos town. Just less than one hour walk if you really want to be out of the crowd in Mykonos! If you rented a car or a scooter you can also drive, the road is paved until about 300 meters from the lighthouse. The last part is unpaved but still easily

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Following the pace of Nature in Jambiani, Zanzibar

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Jambiani, a coastal village Jambiani: huts built with wood and fossil coral, nested in a corner of the southeastern tip of Zanzibar.From here on, there are only sand tracks; mass tourism has not arrived yet.The rhythms of life of this village are set by Nature and tides. People of Jambiani live by the sea. Men fish aboard their ngalawas, narrow pirogues with balances made of very hard mango trunks dug with fire, and sails made of sackcloth. Women and children deal with algae cultivation. Algae cultivation Algae are grown in small underwater plots delimited by wooden sticks and wires. They

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The question is…

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The man was crafting and selling copperware in a small shop in one of the overcrowded narrow streets close to the old Bridge of Mostar. He dressed completely in white. Long white hair and beard and a beautiful cap. His age was indefinable: the beard let me think of an elderly, but his eyes were young. Let me say he was around 50. It means that during the siege of Mostar in 1993 he was maybe around 25. Not younger than this- He didn’t speak any other language than his own, and we could interact only with gestures. He behaved

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Where it all began (or went to an end)

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There is a crossroad of Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that was the pivotal point of the history of the modern world as we know it. From this place on 28 June, 1914 Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sofia You can read this sentence on a memorial slab placed in the exact point from where, with some gunshots, Gavrilo Princip did his job. The assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the spark that ignited the First World War with all its consequences. The collapse of the empires, the treaty

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5 of the most beautiful wooden churches of Maramures, Romania

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A lot of green around, many hills and a church made completely of wood.  You could think you’re in Norway, but no! You’re much more south: Maramures is a poor, agricultural region of Northern Romania, stretched between the mountains and the Ukrainian border. Maramures Maramures is an interesting area: it still holds ancient rural habits and has beautiful landscapes. In one of its tiny villages, Viseu de Sus, starts its way Mocănița. It’s a narrow-gauge railway built in 1932 and still operational with steam and diesel locomotives to transport wood from uphill to the plant down in the valley. The railroad

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5 Beautiful Things To See In Eger, Hungary

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Eger is a beautiful historical town in northern Hungary. It’s relatively less known than other Hungarian touristic attractions. And that’s good because it’s not exploited by too much crowd. But at the same time, it’s a pity, because such beauties should be more enhanced Less than two hours (both by car or train) from Budapest, it lies on the edge of the crowded tourist routes. Yet it is a pleasant town, with many things to see. Baroque buildings and churches, the amazing old town, the spas, the wine cellars. Many have ruled over Eger, from Mongols to Turks to Austrians.

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Zadar psychedelic sunsets

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When the sun goes down in Zadar, the earth and sky melt together at the horizon. They share the same colours in a fantastic psychedelic show. Alfred Hitchcock, who was a connoisseur, used to say that from Zadar’s waterfront one can enjoy the most beautiful sunset of the world. But since the times of Mr Hitchcock, many things changed, not only in the field of movies. Greetings to the sun The new waterfront of the Dalmatian city is a great place for a stroll with a view. But not only. It also hosts a couple of modern art structures. Made

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Everyday life of a plain West Ukrainian village

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Solotvyno is just a West Ukrainian village, on the banks of the river Tisza, right at the border with Romania. Perfect location to investigate plain Western Ukrainian lifestyle, I thought, and that’s why I visited it. A bridge in the outskirts of the village links the two banks of the Tisza river, thus connecting Ukraine with Romania. This was my entry point to the country. Solotvyno, where is it? The village is on the edge of history and geography one could say. But in Central Europe what appears isn’t always the whole of the image. There are hidden streams of

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Photographer of the Day: Giuseppe Maria Galasso

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Photographer of the Day! It was a nice start of the week! It was a boring Monday morning, I was barely awake, still thinking of how to get ready for the week, when my RSS feeder showed me this: together with a beautiful review of my image written by Ms. Susan Kanfer: Giuseppe Maria Galasso transports us to a destination in our dreams. The Pier is not of this world. Straight edged and symmetrical, it floats within the ethereal glow of soft water and sky. And yet within the dream, everything seems purposeful. The sculpting of the light, the pink ribbon

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The white zone – 2014

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I decided to follow Julieanne Kost’s advice and started to create slideshows of my best pictures for every year; Ms Kost calls it The White Zone, and I do follow! My first attempt regards 2014 when I started again photographing regularly after some years mostly spent watching our newborn daughter growing up. Some of the photos are just family snaps, but I like to have them together with the others. Hope you like the slideshow!

Jugonostalgija

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The country that once was called “Yugoslavia” disappeared from the maps at the end of last century and after a cruel war. Outside the former Yugoslavian area, nothing of it remains on maps, just a trace on the history texts. But the “Made in Yugoslavia” Zastavas still run the roads of the new countries that once were federate republics of Yugoslavia, with new plates and old spare parts. And the word “Yugoslavia” is still an evident presence in many houses of Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. They call it Jugonostalgija….

The special history and amazing beauty of Palmanova

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Located in Northeastern Italy, Palmanova, the star-shaped town, is a unique destination. A great example of a Renaissance-era planned town meant to be used as a living area but also as a fortress and stronghold. The star-shaped town Palmanova has the shape of a star. Right in its middle, there is a huge square, an enormous empty space that was once used for military musters. The town was built, following the ideals of utopia, at the end of the XVI century by the Republic of Venice. It was the last outpost before the border with the Austrian empire. Unfortunately, no

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Discover the old times charm of Marzamemi

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Marzamemi, a fishermen’s village Marzamemi is a beautiful ancient tuna fishing village in Sicily, not far from Siracusa. It was built during the Arab domination of Sicily. The name itself “Marzamemi” has an Arab root. “Marsa” in Arab means “harbour”. Also, the tuna fishery dates back to Arab domination. On the other side, the fishermen’s houses were built in the 17° century. This is the time when the whole area was sold to the prince of Villadorata, who built new houses and structures to empower the fishing activity. The story Fishing tunas and other large fishes was a profitable enterprise

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Deep South and close to Africa

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The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints. On the Offshore Lights, you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no one will say you’re wrong: not the seagulls, not the prisms, not the wind. (M.L. Stedman) Down, down, down to the extreme tip of Sicily until there is no path anymore. Only a tiny beach and a rocky shoreline. But you can walk further towards the South, along a boulders walkway that surfaces only with the low tide. We are deep South and close to Africa. Once at the end of the walkway, we

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Outstanding Cappadocia: unique wonders and attractive landscapes

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Finally, after hundreds of kilometres of steppe, you’ll get to a barren, uninhabited tuff rock. It might sound like an introduction to hell and yet it’s just the prologue to the wonders of Cappadocia. A mix of geological and human uniqueness ignites the imagination and sparks delight. A diagrammatic landscape, all peaks and slopes, pockmarked by water, wind and humans, who for centuries have carved the tuff to create dwellings, shelters, churches. Shapes and colours always change, depending on the position of the sun and the weather conditions. Who knows what the landscape looked like when the first, amazed Western

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The fascinating wonders of the European Spoon River

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Nested among high peaks and green valleys in Northern Romania, near the Ukrainian border, lies the tiny village of Săpânța An ordinary village with an extraordinary cemetery It’s an ordinary village, close to the river, with the main road passing through. Like every ordinary village, also Săpânța has a cemetery.  But it’s not an ordinary one. Think of it as the European Spoon River.  In Săpânța the whole scene looks much different than a usual cemetery. Under wooden crosses painted in a characteristic bright blue, the departed past life is engraved with a humorous epitaph, a brief but poetically sincere story

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Africa hidden secrets: the Datooga of Tanzania

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It isn’t easy to get in touch with the Datooga, a pastoralist Nilotic population of Tanzania. Their huts are made of a framework of branches covered in mud with thatched roofs. And they are well camouflaged with the surrounding savannah. As a result. if you don’t know where they are located, you must follow some tracks to find the village. That is to say that Datooga people blend perfectly in with their environment: their dress is the color of the reddish-brown soil. Only on closer inspection, they appear more colorful: patched leather dresses, beadwork, and brass bracelets and necklaces. Origins The origins of Datooga

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