A city with narrow cobbled streets and magnificent but derelict buildings is what you would normally think of when hearing about Lisbon, but the Portuguese capital is gradually turning into a huge gallery for innovative street art. On my way to downtown Baixa last year, I passed by something that surprised me, huge cranes were standing next to a block of once beautiful but now derelict buildings. A few days …
Did you know that Rio de Janeiro isn’t the capital of Brazil? Mistaking the capital of Samba for still being the capital of Brazil is a common mistake. Ever since I read Jaclyn’s post on abandoned futuristic monuments from former Yugoslavia, I’ve been thinking about Brasilia, Brazil’s capital since the 1960, which in itself is one of the most monumental and futuristic places on earth. Brasilia, the wet dream of city …
Last year, BBC asked: “Is this the greenest music festival ever?” This year, I went there to have a look for myself, uniting two of my main interests: music and the environment. My first pleasant surprise came when a girl in an electric car pulled over saying; “Hei, are you going to Øyafestivalen? I’m here to give you an environmental friendly ride for free.” The green part already started with transportation, where …
The days when the word “hostel” made you think about travel bums cramped up in tiny bunk beds with dirty showers, are over. This is the age of the travelette, where backpacking in heels is no longer an oxymoron, and the hostels are hip and fresh. Nowadays the gap between these low budget accomodations and certain boutique hotels can be very slim, providing you with a high quality stay AND …
When you go to Berlin, there are a few places you need to cross off your to-do list. Ever since the first time I went to Berlin in 2006, I kept hearing the same story over and over again. Bar25 is closing, this is the last party – WE HAVE TO GO! In 2010, one of the few bars that could take on the legendary club Berghain in popularity and …
Beautiful mountains, fjords and tiny islands out in the open sea. Those are the pictures we are used to see of my dear Norway. A few days ago, before the bombing in Oslo and the shooting at Utøya last Friday, I never expected my homeland to be the center of attention as a result of terror. As the Norwegian author Jo Nesbø put it in his article The Past is …
Laying in the sun on a beautiful beach, hour after hour? What might sound like paradise to some people, to me is torture. Give me a surfboard, a pair of running shoes, a yoga mat and a bike and I will have the time of my life. This is why I never went on a classical package holiday, and I would probably bore my ass off, if I ever went. …
Which city is the best place to live in the entire world? According to the British Monocle magazine‘s annual Quality of Life survey, you should move to Helsinki as soon as possible. After a visit to Finland during the cold and dark winter, as a part of an high school exchange project 10 years ago, I had mixed feelings about the country and thought of it as a bit grey and …
Growing up in a small town as a child, I never really thought too much about where the vegetables at the supermarket came from. Even though I had spent parts of my holidays in the Norwegian mountains and at the seaside, harvesting my own food was limited to picking berries from bushes and going fishing with my dad. Throughout the years, I’ve become more and ore aware of the means of …
The Travelettes have been writing together for quite some time and during an evening at our Berlin-based Travelettes office we figured it was about time that we went on a small excursion together. When Yvonne from Just Travelous revealed that the abandoned entertainment park Spreepark would be opened for the public this weekend, it was an opportunity we couldn’t miss out on. Since it closed its doors in 2001 the …
