Tufts of cloud fill the sky over Maó. As if acting on a customised script, the weather is adhering to the purpose of this article – to show that Menorca is a lot more than crowded beaches with crystal-clear water, beach bars for nourishing one’s tan and idyllic bike rides with one’s shirt open or wearing a vaporous skirt. When quite the opposite condition sets in, it is every bit as pleasurable – cuisine, culture and scenery. It’s starting to rain in Maó.

The raindrops, the size of five-cent coins, batter against the formidable vessels moored in the port of Maó. The island thrives precisely because of that huge reservoir of water connected to the Mediterranean. It is one of the largest natural harbours in the world – no less than five kilometres long! – surpassed only by Pearl Harbour and New York. It is not the best of days to admire the harbour views so, how about having breakfast until the storm abates? Centrally located, ensconced in one of the Menorcan capital’s legendary cream-coloured streets, lies Es Llonguet, the perfect café for reading away the time and, needless to say, savouring the establishment’s sweets and savouries – the rubiol de carn (meat turnover) or the llonguet de camot (sausage roll) will restore your strength to continue on your way.

A stone’s throw from Es Llonguet, in an area known as the “Fossar dels Anglesos”, lies the Ca n’Oliver art centre. Located in this erstwhile private home dating from the late-18th century, an old house now open to the public, is the Centre d’Art i d’Història Hernàndez Sanz, a reminder of the island’s British legacy. There, you can go up to the rooftop with its views over the city – just as well it’s only drizzling now. Once back in the street, we realise that the rain has stopped; the cobbles gleam as if freshly varnished by the puddles of water. Time to visit the recently remodelled Mercat des Peix Antic, the ideal spot for enjoying an aperitif or having lunch. And, come to think of it, before heading for Ciutadella, drop in at the magnificent patio in the Hotel Jardí de ses Bruixes. Then off to another point on the island.

A 45-minute drive from Maó, Ciutadella, Menorca’s “cultural capital”, is famous for its Fiestas de Sant Joan and its magnificent urban beaches. It is not easy to find accommodation in winter, but Sa Vinyeta is always a good option. After dropping off your bags, take a stroll along the promenade of ses voltes (stone arches on either side of the street) as far as the Cathedral of Santa Maria de Ciutadella, a 13th-century Balearic Gothic construction. From there, go and warm yourself up at the legendary Bar Imperi, on the corner of the Plaça dels Pins. And, before hitting the sack – tomorrow you’re off on an excursion – call in at the Jazzbah, located next to the tiny old fishing harbour, celebrated for its rissaga (tidal range of up to two metres). Open all year around, this wine bar is one of the city’s cultural hubs, boasting a regular concert schedule and karaoke sessions once a month.

Dawn brings a warm day, despite yesterday’s rains. Winter in Menorca holds some surprises, in this instance a good one. Before setting out for Cala Pilar, an area of pebble coves on the north of the island, get some provisions for the bereneta (mid-morning snack). The Pastisseria Moll, one of the oldest pastry shops on the island, is your best bet. Once in Cala Pilar, after rounding part of El Camí de Cavalls, a 100-kilometre GR footpath ringing the entire Menorcan coastline, it’s up to each individual whether or not to take the plunge in the Menorcan sea in mid-March.

After completing this leg of the route and before getting back to the grind, the best thing is to refuel at the Hogar del Pollo, in the centre of Ciutadella. This tavern run by Matías, an Argentinian resident in Menorca, breathes aromas from the world over – with genuine Argentine beef, the best Galician delicacies, scallop and shoulder of pork as the major temptations, and at affordable prices. If after this winter tour of Menorca you are still thirsting for typical local produce, swap the Hogar del Pollo for a visit to Cas Merino, located just behind the old fish market in the Plaça la Llibertat. Be sure to buy some ensaimadas to take home with you – whether in summer or winter, you can’t leave Menorca without one.

Text by Yeray S. Iborra for Los viajes de ISABELYLUIS

Images by Commons Wikipedia

Prague is a monumental city, with great historic buildings that bring unique, elegant and refined atmosphere to the city. But a contemporary artist got to the city to turn upside down its classic harmony with some of his weird work.

Born in Prague, David Černý is a controversial, irreverent and disturbing artist who loves to provoke the audiences. And he does so! His sculptures, with a remarkable social criticism, against power and authority, disturbed some of his audiences.

David Černý started his career as a provoking artist when, along with his colleagues at the arts school, painted in bright pink a tank from the soviets at the garden of the German Embassy -a monument to Czechoslovakia liberation in 1945-. Černý was arrested for his colourful attack but now this tank is exposed at the Military Museum in Lešany, 20 kilometers away from Prague, ad a freedom symbol.

His work is all around the city where this artist was born. There are many, but this is a little route to the most shocking and remarkable work.

Quo Vadis?

His first work, Quo Vadis?, was located at the German Embassy in Prague (Vlašská 19, Malá Strana). In Quo Vadis? Černý reinterprets Trabant, the most common car at East Germany, putting legs instead of wheels. It’s a tribute to over 3.000 Germans from the East who invaded the garden of this embassy on summer 1989, short after the fall of the wall.

The dead horse in Saint Wenceslaus

We already said that Černý’s work is the opposite to the classicism of this city. Thus, the dead horse of Saint Wenceslaus is a good example of that, oppositely to the classic stature located in the square of the same name. Saint Wenceslaus is, indeed, a symbol to the national Czech identity, and saint patron of Bohemia.
The version by Černý of this statue is pretty close to the original, at Lucerna avenue, but the horse is upside down, death and with its tongue out.

Viselec

You should pay attention when passing by the centric street of Husava, at Staré Mesto. Actually, you should look at the sky if you don’t wanna miss it. Above, you’ll see the hanging stature, a human figure that looks a lot like Sigmund Freud.
As with most of the work by Černý, it’s open to interpretations and the artist was never willing to reveal the actual meanings.

Piss

Located by Franz Kafka Museum, at Cihelná 2b, 118. These are two figures that move thanks to an electric mechanism who are peeing in a small pool with the same shape as the Czech Republic as they write quotes, from famous local authors, with the effluent.
Next to this sculpture there is a phone number where you can send SMS suggesting your own quote to be written by this peculiar sculpture.

Miminka babies

About 216 meters high, Žižkov is the telecommunications tower in Prague and the highest building in Czech Republic. Right here, David Černý located his disturbing work of ten dark babies who climb the building while crawling.
This sculpture can be seen also from the park at Kampa island, near Charles bridge.

Klaus & Knizak

At Futura Art Gallery (Holečkova 789/49), you should go by the stairs to find two great figures that are the bottom half of a human body to put your head by the hole on their bum. Inside, a satirical video is projected featuring the former president of the Czech Republic until 2013, Václav Klaus, and the artist Milán Knížák, feeding each other while the song "We are the Champions" is played.
This is a critic to the Czech politics and also to the voyeur viewer who just observers their actions without taking part.

Shark

In 2005, this work was presented for the Bienal in Prague, but it was forbidden in other exhibitions in Belgium or Poland. This piece presents Saddam Hussein’s image captive, on his underwear and bound hand and foot, immersed in a tank of formaldehyde. The work is signed by Mahoma and was presented one year before Hussein was killed, in 2006.

Quo Vadis? by VitVit | Pink tank by Hynek Moravec| Miminka by Evrik| Piss by UkillaJJ

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By Monia Savioli from ilTurista.info

Berlin: Young, lively, trendy but cheap, organized, linked to an important past which doesn’t forget and doesn’t want to. You can’t define the city of Berlin just listing a limited number of adjectives and characteristics. That would restrict its beauty and what the city can offer to people.

Vueling launched the route Florence-Berlin on March, the 22nd increasing its new offer from Florence with furthers routes to London Heathrow, Copenhagen and Hamburg providing 160.000 new seats in addition to the already available flights to Barcelona, Paris and Madrid. There is an efficient bus shuttle service that connects Florence train station to the airport. From the train station, you can reach the airport in 20 minutes and by an about 90 minutes flight you arrive at the Tegel International Airport of Berlin.

The only clashing point is that the German airport is not connected directly to the city by underground, although the net is constantly increasing. It’s possible to reach the nearest station by taking a bus from the airport. You can ask for more information about the bus within the airport, where people speak English if you don’t know German (bus and taxi drivers often speak only German). If you want, you can also take a taxi since rates are cheaper than the Italian’s ones. The bus that brings you to the city is the 128 and leads to the “Kurt-Shumacher-Platz” underground station and the course lasts about 15 minutes. Once arrived to the underground station, you can use the same ticket to reach Friedfrichstrasse, the core of Berlin and the shopping road par excellence. There, you can take a room at the Melia Hotel, just close to Spree river and to the Metropol Theatre. Friedrichstrasse is a strategic point to chance upon the famous “Unter den Linden” boulevard, going into the core of the city visiting the main Berlin places that you should see in a 2-days-trip.

If you prefer walking, you can also visit the city with your own feet or you just ride the several bikes for rent. There are also buses for scenic tour working up to 6 p.m. that let you get on and off to visit the main important places.

One of these places, is “Charlie”, at the Friedrichstrasse. It originally was a checkpoint between the Mitte and Kreuzber districts. Mitte belonged to the East Berlin, run by Soviets in the past and Kreuzber to the West side of Berlin, run by Americans. The name of the place, Charlie, is pronounced as the third letter of NATO phonetic alphabet after “Alfa” and “Bravo”. Nowadays Charlie checkpoint is a bar where you can taste delicious drinks or drinking beer sitting on beach chairs with you feet on the sand. The headquarter of the old Gestapo is on the Niederkirchnerstrasse where you can find few empty tiled buildings. It’s situated next to a portion of the Berlin’s wall that is ruined and constantly reduced because visitors often steal pieces of wall as souvenir. In that place now there is a permanent photography exhibition called“Topography of terror” about Nazism. So it’s evident how the old and the young Berlin are living together, to bearing in mind a past that no one can’t forget, fixing it through feelings felt due to the almost holy silence you can find in those places as a sign of respect.

These are the same feelings and sensations you can feel within the Holocaust Memoirs, in the Cora-Berliner Strasse, where there are 2.711 anonymous grey stones with an irregular shape that are arranged within a field characterized by several bumps that gives you the feeling of a dark choking and light-living feeling at the same time.

The East Side Gallery, an almost 2 kilometres of the Berlin’s Wall on the Mulenstrasse (ex East Berlin) is now the longest open-air art gallery in the world and show you several visions about the years of the split of Berlin. The murals realized by international artists offer alternative points of view by illustrating characters and symbolisms of that period as the Trabant, the famous old Berlin car, drawn as it would break down the wall.

For the aficionados, it’s also possible to rent a “Trabi” to drive around the city or take one of the odd vehicles situated along the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of a reunified Germany and the access gate to the Tiergarten. This is a former shooting ground of the royal palace where you can find the Victory Column and the famous zoo.

There are also several nice flea markets along the boulevards where you can buy an endless quantity of stuff during the weekend, from jewelleries to art masterpieces or, for instance, mother-of-pearl-made spoon for enjoy your caviar. Is not all. Berlin is also the city of museums: from the biggest Hebraic museum in the world to the Egyptian museum, the National Art Gallery and several other ones.

Berlin is also the city of the big palaces, churches’ ruins as the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedachtniskirche, whose ruins keep the recollection of the Second World War bombing alive. At least, but not the last, Berlin is the city of the shopping centre as the Come KaDeWe, “Kaufhaus des Westens”: the most famous shopping mall in Germany and the biggest one in Europe with 60,000 cubic meters that are branched in 7 sector floors for products except the last one where you can eat at the self service restaurant. Other way, downstairs you can eat in several buffets as the one managed by one of the most famous international chef, Paul Bocuse. There is also a Lafayette store section. But the real fun, actually, is getting lost among the little shops and the street markets. Berlin offers also a lot of night bars, international top level restaurants, pubs, night clubs and alternative locals assuring fun to every kind of target of people.

Thrill-seeking people can even try bungee jumping from the top of the Hotels in Alexander Platz. In order to finish your trip, you can have a long and relaxing boat ride across the Spree river from where having a wide vision of the German capital to realize that Berlin is not just a touristic destination but a real city with its beautiful places and also its difficult realities as homeless people sleeping in sleeping bags along the streets of this great but cold city.

Por Monia Savioli de ilTurista.info

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By Iñaki Makazaga from Piedra de Toque

The most visited figure in Denmark and the main tourist attraction in the city of Copenhagen sits totally oblivious to the world at the end of a pier in the port (Langelinie). The Little Mermaid avoids all eye contact as she looks out to sea, almost with her back turned to her visitors. Perhaps this is because only she knows the true price of her fame (decapitated twice, mutilated three times and thrown out to sea several times) and the real story behind her own history. We decided to get on our bikes in search of answers and found the true face of Copenhagen: a city with a barbaric past that has now become a haven for peace.

We began our journey on the banks of the Sankt Jorgens Canal overlooked by the mansions reflected in its waters as we ventured out among the families, people enjoying sport and ducks picking at the grass. We pedalled along on the bicycles we rented from one of the 110 locations dotted around the city – one of the measures aimed at obtaining the title of ‘capital city with the best environmental quality’ in 2015. Every turn of our wheels left behind yet another tree as we travelled along the green corridor created by the canal. We took in the sights and decided to turn right at the third bridge to eventually arrive at the Botanical Garden and Museum (Botanisk Have) at 128 Gothesgade.

More than 20,000 different species of plant life now thrive in the grounds of these old city fortifications. The walls contain spacious gardens and the moat is full of aquatic and wetland plants, each with its own little information sign stuck in the ground nearby. We parked up the bikes at the entrance and walked in. It was March and there was a hint of change about everything as the snowy season began to loosen its grip. The earth was all churned up, the trees were leafless and the sky was grey. An enormous three-story greenhouse with four glass pavilions appeared in the distance where 1,000 varieties of cactus, coffee plants, pineapples and even palm trees are incubated and studied. We were overcome by temptation and bought two bags of seeds from the shop on the way out: one of Asian bonsais and another of red orchids. Maybe we thought we could take away our own part of the peace that reigns in this park and whose roots still soak up the blood of the people who fought to defend the city from enemy invasion.

We returned to our trail. We left behind the garden and the botanical museum to pedal our way through the areas surrounding Roseborg Slot, the royal palace built by Christian IV in 1606 as a summer residence that now also serves as a large museum. It houses thousands of objects related to the oldest monarchy in Europe and is full of paintings, furniture, weapons and jewels. The traffic light turned from amber to green and so we pedalled on.

The peace of the botanical gardens now changes to the hustle and bustle of central Copenhagen. The cars give way to cyclists between the buildings from which emerge the strong>spires of the Marmorkirken, a church inspired by Saint Paul’s in Rome and which was originally planned to be built using Norwegian marble. They soon realised there was a far simpler way to celebrate the 300-year reign of the family of Frederik V and the Norwegian marble was switched for Danish marble a century later in order to get the place finished. However, no expense was spared on the steps: 260 to reach the bell tower. The views of the city make the exhausting climb well worth it. We took the opportunity to check our map. We felt the call of the thriving city centre, with the pedestrianised Strøget street full of shops and terraces filling the cobbled medieval squares of Kongens Nytorv and Radhuspladsen. We left those for nightfall and continued towards the port where the Little Mermaid sat waiting for our visit.

We dismounted and walked the bikes for a while. We were in Nyhavn, the New Port, which was opened by soldiers between 1671 and 1673 so that ships could unload their goods in the city centre. It became the darkest part of Copenhagen for years, inhabited by sailors and ladies of ill repute. Cheap rooms, dark taverns, tattoo parlours and brothels. Nyhavn has emerged from its murky past and now offers one of the most attractive faces of the capital along the 300-metre stretch of port-front properties with narrow, colourful houses and pavements full of terraces. No matter how cold the weather is, a blanket, a heater and a candle embrace all visitors. Around the edge of the port can be found evidence of that era in the form of wooden ships such as the 19th Century lighthouse ship that has been converted into a restaurant. An anchor that belonged to a Danish frigate also recalls the maritime past and pays tribute to all those who lost their lives during World War II. We took photos of the brightly-coloured houses. Maybe Hans Christian Andersen himself looked out from one of them to look at the sky while penning his tales. The truth is that even the walls whisper their stories in this part of town.

Now back on our bikes we pedalled along the canal towards the sea with the humid wind blowing in our faces. The tide greeted us at the shore, together with a number of new pavilions. We entered the Citadel (Kastellet), another great fortification to protect against attack from the Swedes. The five-pointed star-shaped fort has also witnessed great swathes of history in this country. Used by Nazi troops as a main headquarters during World War II, it now belongs to the Danish army although the gardens and walls are open to the public. In the 19th Century, it was also used as a prison and small sculptures now speak of the horrors of war. A museum depicts the activity and names of the people who led the resistance against the Nazis. And the Little Mermaid, nowhere to be seen.

We kept on pedalling. It started to snow and a hoard of tourists announced we had reached another point of interest. At the end of the pier, resting on a rock and with her back to the tourists we finally met the star of one of the most famous stories written by Hans Christian Andersen. The very one who fell in love with a prince and who now waits for him to return looking out to sea. The snow continued to fall. The grey sky opened as if in slow motion: rain, snow, more rain.

Walt Disney tells us of a happy mermaid surrounded by seafaring friends who struggles to make her dreams come true. The reality proved to be much different. The colour of copper, alone, her nakedness constantly illuminated by camera flashes from the tourists. Yet she doesn’t smile. The thing is, Hans Christian Andersen wrote a different ending. The prince she gave up being a mermaid for ended up marrying another. The Little Mermaid died alone, without breaking the spell that would let her return to the sea without killing the prince. She preferred to wait, convinced that another ending would find her sooner or later. Like the Little Mermaid, Copenhagen has preferred to keep every palace, every fortification that speaks of its Viking and Barbarian past in order to convert them into gardens and museums that grow a new history of peace and tolerance. We joined the Little Mermaid and gazed out at the horizon in silence.

COPENHAGEN BY BIKE:

Time: 2 hours

Route: Sankt Jorgens Canal in Norrebro, Botanical Museum, Roseborg Slot, Marmorkirken, Nyhavn, Kastellet, The Little Mermaid.

Recommendations:

- Visit the museums mentioned: open from 10:00 to 16:00.
- Get a Copenhagen Card.
- Explore the city by bike and have lunch in the New Port after finishing the tour.

By Iñaki Makazaga from Piedra de Toque

Picture by Henrik Jessen

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