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Discovering Palma

When traveling to the island of Mallorca, you certainly will have some kind of a meet and greet with its capital city – Palma de Mallorca. In the center of its old town, the Gothic-style cathedral is situated, which can be seen from afar and is even more stunning close-up and from inside. Similar to Barcelona on the mainland, many modernist (Spanish Jugendstil/art nouveau) buildings are to be discovered. After your sightseeing tour, you can nap at the beach or at one of the city’s beautiful parks.

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Land of the Clansmen

For centuries, Scotland was the land of the Clansmen. The country was divided and governed by families like the MacDonalds, Camerons, or MacKenzies. These had their own tartans, traditions, and allegiances and were interlocked in a fight for influence and wealth. They had a deep connection and history with the land they occupied and an immense pride to be fierce fighters and survivors of the north. It was seldom, though, that they agreed on anything politically, it needed an outside force – a common enemy – to gather the concurring clans like in the wars led by national heroes like William Wallace (his monument is seen in the last picture), Robert the Bruce or lastly Bonnie Prince Charlie in the 18th century. That enemy, of course, was England. After the shattering battle of Culloden, in which the Scottish forces lost against the English king, the history of the clan ships ended. Though their traditions and history can be seen all over the country – the spirit of fierce warriors and the deep connection to their native land can be felt and is still there.

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Discovering Caledonia

The Romans used to call the country, which we know today, Scotland Caledonia. It was a strange and foreign land with dangerous and wild inhabitants at the Northern end of the Roman world. Two immense walls were built by the Roman emperors Hadrian and Antonius to secure Britain from the blue-painted warriors – or “Picts” – living in the northern lands. Also behind these barriers was a country of immense beauty and raw vastness.

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Travelling Scotland

In 2018, as in the years before, I had the chance to travel to Scotland for some weeks in August. It is one of these particular parts of the world that don’t cease to amaze and enchant through natural beauty, historical but lively cities like Edinburgh, and the general sense of tradition and heritage, which can be seen everywhere throughout the country. Follow me for a journey to the north!

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Perspectives on a Parliament and a Television Tower

Central Europe is particularly rich in famous landmarks. Two of my favorite structures in this region are the Parliamentary Building in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, and the TV Tower at Alexanderplatz in Berlin. From an architectural perspective, these two buildings have little in common. While the Hungarian Parliament is a neo-gothic administrative building, grandeur in size and very unusual for a gothic building equipped with a beautiful red coppola, the TV Tower in Berlin was meant to showcase socialist architecture and technology and was easily seen from Western Berlin. As different as these buildings are, they both were planned as and turned, in fact, out to be landmarks of their respective hometowns – though in another way than the architects envisioned. Germany today is reunited again; many structures from socialist times were torn down, and the TV tower became a signature building of the reunited city and a piece of historic futurism. The parliamentary building in Budapest, on the other hand, is the legislative building of the independent republic of Hungary today, which emerged from the Austro-Hungarian empire after World War I.

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