Far in the west of old Constantinople and originally being located outside the city walls a jewel and testimony of early Christianity can be seen, that is the Chora Church. Like Hagia Sophia it was once being transformed into a mosque. Today it is called Kariye Museum and holds the worldwide most historically significant as well as elaborated mosaics and frescos of Palaiologan Renaissance…
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For more than 1.000 years Hagia Sophia sits where Europe and Asia shake hands. Even today this last of late antiquity’s main churches can still boast with having the largest dome of the world. It served as main and coronation church of old Byzantium and its capital Constantinople, present Istanbul, as well as Ottoman main mosque.…
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Belarus unclenches itself towards the rest of Europe and welcomes meanwhile visitors, landing at the Minsk International Airport, with a visa on arrival. Beside a typical Soviet style metro inviting me to continue my European subway photo project, Minsk boasts with an urban architecture telling from pre- as well as post-war Socialist times, the so called Socialist modernism…
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Scotland is much better than its food-based reputation. Meanwhile the notorious Scottish-English weather even excels our Berlin mix of clouds and rain. No matter if in the Highlands or in east coast cities and villages, there’s always a break in the clouds permitting the light of low standing October sun to push through and to stage the mountainous landscape between Edinburgh and the lovely Isle of Skye.…
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The giant red dunes of Namib desert belong to the worldwide tallest of its kind. They pile up at Sossusvlei, were Tsauchab River disappears in the sand of Namibia. Only one of those sand heaps may be climbed, that is the dune at kilometre 45. It rises up some ~170 metres high and is built by 5-million-year old sand deposits of the Kalahari.…
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If conditions are good, then life in Africa becomes literally exuberant. One of those places is Cape Cross, where about 250.000 brown fur seals romp about the cold but rich in nutriment waters of Benguela Current. The home of one of the largest seal colonies of the black continent has a large kindergarten full of cute seal puppets, but out in the water lie great white sharks in ambush…
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Around St. Lucia, in the very East of South Africa, climate becomes tropically sticky and doesn’t let you sleep well. Where Swaziland isn’t far away and the waters of the Indian Ocean surge, the cohesive coastline scatters creating a lagoon landscape being an El Dorado for hundreds of hippos.…
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On Lanzarote and neighbouring La Graciosa the volcanic origin of the Canary Islands is most apparent and youngest. In 1730 a gigantic eruption started, tore the Earth open and created within 6 years only an exceptionally extraterrestrial appearing landscape. Lanzarote’s way of growing wine in the lava desert is unique worldwide and complements fish and seafood like hand and glove when sitting at the Atlantic shore watching some first-class surfers taking the waves…
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When it comes to remnants of the Eastern bloc, then Berlin and Kiev are pretty much alike as social as well as architectonical traces are still yet omnipresent in both cities of a 3 million. Kiev’s most remarkable eye catcher is one of the tallest of its kind, that is the imposing Mother Motherland Statue.…
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Berlin has a worldwide unique history since all hot conflicts one the one hand, as well as the Cold War on the other hand, left its traces behind in the city. Shortly before World War I Berlin saw a its most profound changes. The city grew and had to update its infrastructure to meet the increase in population plus being technically en vouge in terms of transportation.…
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