Having a look at its actual landmass, Tuvalu is the second smallest nation in the world. Some of its islands are so tiny and narrow that you can literally spit from one side to another. The heart of Tuvalu is the Funafuti atoll being embraced in the east by the main island Fongafale.…
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What does the Island Kingdom of Tonga have in common with a high voltage cable? Correct, both things are pretty much isolated. The 136 islands of Tonga are the only Polynesian nation that never got colonialized by the west. The archipelago being called “The Friendly Islands” lies at the 10.8km deep Tonga trench, a fault where the Pacific plates submerges the Australian, which is at the same time also the International Date Line; a place where you can meet the new year as being one of the very few first people on the planet.…
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Berlin’s underground line 3 runs through the city’s southwest, between Nollendorfplatz station and its terminus Krumme Lanke. It connects the campuses of the Berlin university ‘Freie Universität’ with the western city centre. Its present course is 12.1 kilometres long and exists since 2004. In particular the stations being located on Wilmersdorf territory were given quite an aesthetic appearance to remain as icon for the former wealth of this neighbourhood…
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Berlin’s U1 line runs east-west, from Warschauer Straße to Uhlandstraße, from Friedrichshain district to Charlottenburg. More than the half of its course U1 rides everything but U (that is underground) and the majority of its route leads through Kreuzberg district. That neighbourhood gets shaped by U1’s elevated railway trail to such an extent, that the interaction between train and district even inspired a musical to become written.…
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When in the year 2019 the U55 merges in the U5, then U4 officially will be Berlin’s shortest underground again. Its course starts at Nollendorfplatz square, ends at Innsbrucker Platz square and measures solely 2.9 kilometres leading through Berlin’s Schöneberg district. It was the once autonomous town of Schöneberg that launched U4 as Germany’s first communal subway and even today, in a reunified Berlin, it is hard to imagine things without this metro line as it connects the western city centre with the S-Bahn ring…
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Berlin’s underground line U2 heads straight through the entire city, from Pankow to Ruhleben, making stops at the current eastern as well as city centres, that is Alexanderplatz and Zoologischer Garten, but also passing by the actual historic but also new city centres, that is Klosterstraße and Potsdamer Platz. Today this orange-red metro line is one of Berlin’s most trafficked one.…
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When it comes to discovering New Zealand there is no question that James Cook played the most important role, but it was the sailor Abel Tasman from Dutch East India Company who spotted the archipelago being located in South Pacific Ocean as first European ever and even some 100 years earlier than the Brit did.…
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As a small boy I was pretty much impressed by the Soviet War Memorial being located in Berlin’s Treptower Park and even today that place has quite some impact. However, nowadays such a visit is generally voluntary than back in the days, as the whole school had got to show up there.…
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Many of Berlin’s places of interest, no matter if built for “perpetuity” or perpetually not being accomplished, are often hard-wired to a single name. Ulbricht has his TV Tower, Wowereit his BBI airport desaster and Honecker dreamed of a 100 years lasting wall. In the 1930’s such dreams year-lasting-wise even had one more zero in the end and threw Germany as well as the rest of the world into turmoil.…
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The Doubtful Sound at the south island’s west coast is one of the large impressive fjords New Zealand has on offer. Unlike Milford Sound, that is usually more known to visitors, it is more winding, has even a couple of islands and its steep slopes are entirely uninhabited unlike Norway’s fjords.…
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