The Girl Fair: Matchmaking centuries before Tinder
Long before dating apps Romanian villagers would bring their daughters to a remote mountaintop in the hope of finding love.
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Europe
Bagpipes in Bohemia: A festival full of surpises
The world’s biggest bagpipe festival is not in Scotland but in an obscure, post-industrial town in the Czech Republic.
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The Merry Cemetery: Where folk art conquers grief
Anyone who tries to tell you death is no laughing matter clearly hasn’t been to Romania’s Merry Cemetery.
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Is this the world’s strangest parade?
The 500th anniversary of the death of one of history’s most original — and macabre — artists deserves a parade. But an ordinary parade just won’t do.
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Transnistria: How to visit a country that doesn’t exist
A Soviet time warp and unrecognised breakaway state, Transnistria is one of the strangest places in Europe.
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Bohemia’s bagpipe festival in pictures
Every two years the International Bagpipe Festival draws pipers from all over Europe — and occasionally from as far away as New Zealand — to a small town in the Czech Republic.
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Why you should visit Europe’s least touristy country
A lively capital, an ancient cave monastery, the world’s biggest wine cellars and a Soviet time warp await visitors to Europe’s least touristy country.
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Romania’s singing sheepdogs
One of my favourite experiences during my last visit to Romania involved a chance encounter with a shepherd, a pack of singing sheepdogs and a 19th-century-style road crash involving a horse-drawn cart.
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Inside the world’s second biggest wine cellar
The two biggest biggest wine cellars in the world are in … France? Italy? California’s Napa Valley? The former Soviet republic of Moldova? The answer might surprise you.
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Best and worst hotels
My pick of best and worst accommodation ranging from a flash eco-resort to a chicken coop.
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The far-reaching wake of the waka
What makes a group of Dutch students so passionate about Māori culture that they travel halfway around the world each year to take part in Waitangi Day festivities?
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The strange case of the giant underpants
How I ended up with a piece of the Czech president’s flag.
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A pilgrimage to the birthplace of beer
A 19th century uprising against bad beer, in what is now the Czech Republic, led to the invention of the golden lager we know and love today.
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God’s brewers
Belgium’s Trappist monks make some of the best beer in the world – but forget trying to watch these pious brewers at work.
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Hundertwasser in Holland: ‘Your loss is our gain’
How a ‘New Zealand monument’ designed by eccentric Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser ended up being built in Holland instead.
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The love boat
The author accidentally finds himself on a ship shuttling Eastern European sex workers to the brothels of Istanbul.
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North Wales in 48-and-a-bit hours
In just over two days the author stumbles over more castles than he can count, a very small house, a very long place name, some of the best scenery in Britain, and an astonishing 5000 years of history.
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On an Italian mountain high
In Italy’s Dolomite Mountains hiking doesn’t mean you have to go without the good things in life.
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No ordinary hole
The birthplace of the Industrial Revolution is more than slag heaps and old coal mines.
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Last bus to Shqipëria
Two weeks amid the post-communist shambles and spectacular scenery of Albania.
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