Author: Ms. R.

These pathways found in the cities of Solna and Sundbyberg, were once home to train tracks that were used to transport important military cargo across the countryside. The tracks ran from the Northern Main Line just north of Ulriksdal to Tygförvaltningen. They were hidden in the forest and were primarily used to move munitions. This is how these mysterious tracks garnered their moniker.  The actual tracks were removed long ago, but at the end of the road, visitors will find a platform next to……

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In late March, the satirist behind Uma Página Numa Rede Social, a humorous political analysis project based in Portugal, noticed a curious shift in the evening news. With offices closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the most sought-after politicos were Skyping into national television, just as the rest of us Zoom into staff meetings. “We saw a paradigm shift taking place before our eyes,” the satirist says. (He asked not to be named because he fears retaliation for his……

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The Sofia center office of DZI (State Insurance Institute) is a corner building that presents a clash of architectural styles. The building was constructed around 1926 as the head office for one of the first insurance companies in Bulgaria. It was designed in the Secession style with delicate ornaments that conveyed an elegant beauty. The pinnacle of the building’s design is the corner dome that houses a clock. There is a sculpture of a mother with her two children and……

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For the thousands of people around the world who’d once visited and admired the world’s largest treehouse in Crossville, Tennessee, the news came as an awful shock. In October 2019, a blaze consumed the singular construction. But for Horace Burgess, the treehouse’s architect, this is just how things go. He was well acquainted with how it feels to lose your own, self-built treehouse in an angry conflagration. Heck, he’d already burned one down himself. “It was just evil,” says……

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No trees feature more prominently in Native American folklore than evergreens. Pines are a symbol of reconciliation to the Oneida of New York state; spruce represents good fortune to the Salish tribes surrounding Puget Sound; cedars retain protective ancestral spirits for the Cherokee of the American Southeast. If evergreens are pervasive in folklore, they’re even more popular in Native American kitchens. The indigenous practice of steeping evergreen leaves is as simple as it is ancient, though it’s no relic…….

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One of the main attractions in the Swedish city of Västerås is the city’s central park, called Vasaparken after the famous Swedish king. This beautiful green heart is a popular place for locals and visitors alike. And it offers something not found in many other city’s green spaces: a tiny hotel located at the top of a tree.  Hotell Hackspett, or the Woodpecker Hotel, was the brainchild of Mikael Genberg, who also created the Utter Inn, a floating hotel……

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The key to drinking and diving is to make sure the diving comes first. It’s an order of operations that Edivo Vina has perfected. They’re Croatia’s first and only underwater winery, and if you want your very own hand-selected, barnacle-encrusted, underwater-aged bottle of vino, you’re going to have to dive for it. The alternative winery located in Croatia’s Peljesac peninsula is the brainchild of Edi Bajurin, who—it may not surprise you—combined his two favorite hobbies to create one unexpected……

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Most modern money is quite light. Bimetallism, a monetary standard based upon a fixed exchange rate of two metals, is long out of practice, and the weights of circulating coins are seldom over 10 grams, unlike the early 20th century when the silver dollar weighed a whopping 26.7 grams. But historically, heavy coinage wasn’t that rare. In the third century B.C., the early Roman Republic issued a series of bronze coinage today referred to as aes grave (“heavy bronze”), the……

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On its surface, Greenland doesn’t exactly live up to its name. It’s very cold and covered in a massive ice sheet that’s nearly two miles thick in places. But beneath that sheet there is a giant, rocky island that wasn’t always frozen over, with an undulating topography of valleys and river corridors, including one canyon as deep as the Grand Canyon in places and longer than its famous cousin—spanning the distance from New York to Washington, D.C., twice over…….

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