Posts about Destinations

A view on nightly San Fransisco from Cavallo Point Lodge.

Cavallo Point Lodge: a resort-turned army post near San Francisco

11.03.2015

If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to bear in mind the wide variety of accommodation options it offers. But if you’re going to San Francisco for a stunning view of the city itself, you may want to choose a place on the opposite side of the bay. Here is one in Sausalito that would fulfil this concrete wish of yours – and perhaps satisfy a number of other visions stressed-out business travellers or leisurely vacationers might maintain.

There was no Golden Gate Bridge yet, when the U.S. Army acquired the site of Horseshoe Cove at the mouth of San Francisco Bay in 1866 to establish a strategic military base. Much later, 24 Colonial Revival buildings – erected between 1901 and 1915 – embraced the 10-acre parade ground of the camp named Fort Baker. When the Golden Gate National Parks were founded in 1972 and Fort Baker was no longer needed by the military, it was designated to be taken under the wings of the National Park Service, a transaction officially concluded in 2002. The post has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1973.

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A Fiaker carriage in Vienna: as typical of the city as its many coffee houses.

Austria: The science of coffee-brewing in Vienna

9.03.2015

Coffee is not just an invigorating brew but rather a scientific field of expertise worth being explored. Barista Schools popping up the world over bear witness to the cognition that a cup of coffee is not something to be prepared in one’s stride. It is a challenge which has to be given care and devotion at least as deep as is granted to the meticulously performed Asian Tea Ceremony.

Here in Vienna, each type of coffee is honoured with its individual cryptical name. The least one can do for a treasure accidentally left by the Ottomans after their siege of Vienna in 1683. Apart from war and devastation, they had brought along with them a culinary novelty: Viennese citizens discovered a number of bags filled with precious coffee beans in an abandoned Turkish camp after the battle was over. Jerzy Franciszek Kulczycki, a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman, had taken hold of the bags and opened Vienna’s first coffeehouse in the same year. www.wien.info/en/shopping-wining-dining/coffeehouses/in-the-old-city

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A black-and-white drawing. T.E. Gordon's "Hunting with Golden Eagles". A creative commons picture.

Eagle Hunting in Western China

8.02.2015

China’s Kazakh minority preserving culture

Chinese Kazakh eagle hunters ride with their eagles during a local competition in January, 2015 in the mountains of Qinghe County, Xinjiang, northwestern China. The festival, organised by the local hunting community, is part of an effort to promote and grow traditional hunting practices for new generations in the mountainous region of western China that borders Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. The training and handling of the large birds of prey follows a strict set of ancient rules that Kazakh eagle hunters are preserving for future generations. (Photos by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images, introduction: Qinghe, Xinjiang/China)

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Beautiful buildings along Neisstraße in Goerlitz.

Filming Location Goerlitz: George Clooney was here …

3.01.2015

Imagine, you were a citizen of a usually quaint pretty small town situated close to the Polish border and, all of a sudden, George Clooney crossed your path! Or one of the ‘Inglorious Basterds’. Or perhaps you would happen to bump into Bill Murray right in front of ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’. Theoretically, you could. Practically, although the mentioned protagonists were physically present, you would probably have had to be satisfied with a clandestine glimpse of the desired human objects (one of which was voted „sexiest man alive“ not too long ago) from afar. With film sets meticulously cordoned off and actors well protected against curious intruders at all times, one does not just walk into stars of such calibre at random! Not even in the narrow alleys of remote Goerlitz. Unless, of course, one becomes an extra in one of the productions – allowed to play an (in?)significant role within the twinkling orbit of much-admired international celebrities.

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Grilled sausages: Herman ze German restaurants are London's sausage dorado.

German Voorst-appeal entices ze Londoners

5.11.2014

No Carbs, Fräulein?

It is an undeniable fact: The common sausage is not a stunner to look at – nor does it photograph well. No matter the species, a regular Wurst’s mere shape and colour are giving food stylists a hard time: There is absolutely no way to let it shine. Yet, once thrown on to the grill and noisily sizzling, its distinct aroma promptly exerts its wondrous magnetism and lures entranced workers and bankers, housewives and business women, young, old or canine straight into places such as Herman ze German’s. London’s cosmopolitan denizens, its native population and tourists alike seem to succumb to the multiple stimuli exuded by the authentic German sausage … if the verifiable afflux accounts for anything. The Bratwurst (pork & veal), Bockwurst (smoked pork) or the Chilli Beef Wurst (pork & beef) on the menu all are eligible for ennoblement, thus crowned the sausage of sausages: the legendary Currywurst.

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