Don’t be shy to admit it: you are well aware of your striking looks! Uphill, downhill, along the Moldova with Smetana’s music resonating in one’s mind: walking your streets stands for a rewarding high-performance exercise for the senses – and for a bit of a challenge to the feet, too, I must say. To explore you from the core means treading historic grounds paved with cobble-stones hewn to all shapes and sizes. Yet, if the horses could cope with tricky surfaces on hooves back then, so can I in sensible footwear today. But, where to look first in this maze of wonder: left, right, up, down or around?
Posts about Creativity
Germany’s Blockbuster: Neuschwanstein Castle
When the King is a Queen
As is endorsed, Schloss Neuschwanstein, Germany’s prime tourist attraction perched on a steep rugged rock deep in Bavaria, served as a role model for what was to become the epitome of a castle eligible for the classical Disney story. Its silhouette was even chosen for the logo of the Walt Disney Studios. The elaborate palace is a real estate shrouded in ever-lasting mystery and thus an ideal venue for the incarcerated, bewitched or poisoned princess desperately waiting to be swept away by the handsome heir to whichever throne.
Sardinia: Mamoiada Carnival
From man to beast
Even a candidate as stubborn as winter himself must get cold feet at the sight of a Mamuthone (header image) – not to speak of an entranced hoard of them foot-stamping and cow-bell-rattling on streets around the many bonfires lit for the grave occasion. The noise is deafening and the atmosphere perturbing. The aim of this ancestral rite is to scare winter and evil spirits away with all the might one can muster. Thus, room is made for spring and to welcome the good it promises to bring. In order for nature not to oversleep, the tradition of stamping and rattling, by employing full weight of body and bells, is a forceful means of reliably shaking her out of hibernation and to remind her: Now is the time for renewal! Measures that seem to have worked over the ages.
TED Talk: How to beat stage fright
Phobias: A Plague or Mutations of the Basic Instinct?
Phobia is Greek and means to be afraid of something. In the non-Greek world, it is mainly used in psychological terms, signifying severe fear as in: terrified and: neurotic and: in need of professional treatment. Those in the grip of a veritable phobia are panic-stricken and paralyzed when it comes to tackling certain situations. Phobias are relics of our evolutionary past and were quite useful back then. Should a ferocious sabre-toothed tiger – teeth bared – spring up inadvertently from the undergrowth with an intimidating roar, the primitive brain would switch to red-alert and reliably signal to the short-legged homo erectus: RUN as fast as you can! It was a matter of survival, and the same basic instinct takes control over us in perilous situations until this day.
Wet, wet, wet: The Museo Subacuático de Arte in Mexico
Most of the time, satisfying one’s cultural hunger can easily be accomplished by simply walking into a museum. Theoretically. Yet, the Museo Subacuático de Arte, located in different sites on the map of Mexico, demands a little more effort than that – but surely does offer an additional thrill: its life-size exhibits are mounted to the seabed and thus best inspected in the sporty scuba-diving or snorkeling mode. Accelerated heartbeat assured. Those who would rather keep their noses above sea-level are invited to explore the arcane population of underwater sculptures conveniently aboard a glass-bottomed boat, with or without a preceding jungle tour.