Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany

On the Romantic Road in South Germany, Rothenburg ob der Tauber is one of those charming old towns that seem to be straight out of a fairytale. Indeed, it inspired many books and movies like Walt Disney’s Pinocchio. It was the perfect choice for a day-trip from Munich, so the next day we hopped on a train for a three-hours ride to Rothenburg.

In the centre of the Old Town is Marktplatz, a cobbled square lined with beautifully preserved Medieval buildings. At the heart sits the Rothenburg Town Hall that dates back to 1250. Small shops selling Christmas decorations all year long and pastries gather along the Old Town. We also visited a few churches on our way to the famous Burggarten, a beautiful garden at the other side of the town.

The outside walls guard the idyllic town of lovely houses with wooden bay windows, red roof tiles and blooming flower on the balconies.

Barcelona, Spain

For our last destination of our Eurotrip, we decided to treat ourselves with a few days in fiery Barcelona. We were hoping to soak in the Spanish sun and finally get a taste of summer. But that didn’t happen, the weather was unusually cold for the beginning of April. It didn’t deter us from enjoying the burgeoning city of Barcelona. So, the first night, we strolled around Sagrada familia in search of the best paella, a traditional Spanish seafood dish.

The next morning, we crossed the city by foot from Sagrada familia, el Barri Gòtic to la Barceloneta beach. Barcelona's history began where the Barri Gòtic is today, in between the Rambla in the west and Via Leietana in the east. 

The famous Old Town or Gothic Quarter is a fascinating mix of old traditions and new modern and contemporary Catalan cultures. As one of the oldest areas in Barcelona, the neighbourhood is famous for its fantastic architectural heritage inspired by the Roman and medieval times. The mazes of narrow streets s filled with trendy bars, clubs and Catalan restaurants make the Gothic Quarter a must visit while in the city. The main sights in the Gothic Quarter are the cathedral and Placa Reial. 

Barceloneta beach, a former fishermen's town, stretches on around one kilometer of golden sands, lined with bars and restaurants. Although disappointedly cold, I couldn’t hide my excitement when I saw the blue water. It felt amazingly good to sink my toes in the sand, breathing in the salty sea winds. It was a great place to take a break from walking and just sitting down, watching the waves and the people surfing it.

In the evening, we looked for a place to fill our hungry stomachs at Las Ramblas, a vital tree-lined pedestrian boulevard connecting Plaça de Catalunya in the centre with Port Vell. It is packed with restaurants, terraces, buskers, street artists, mimes and flower shops.

The next day was a hunt for all the architectural treasures of Barcelona: La Pedrera, Park Güell, Palau Güell, and Casa Batlo.

Casa Mila or la Pedrera was stunningly impressive by its organic curving facades, mass of undulating stones and its iron vine-like balconies. This sculpted artwork explores the irregularities of the natural world through its soft forms and shapes in rough materials.

While Parc Güell is almost on the city’s outskirts, it is relatively easy to reach with public transportation. It is known as one of the masterpieces of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. Park Güell is certainly the most impressive park in Barcelona. The paths guide you slowly through enchanting landscapes: mosaic dragon, a forest of 86 stone columns that seem to bent by the weight of time, twisted stonework columns, and so on. It’s a sort of a game for the eyes and mind. From the terrace, you get one of the most beautiful views of Barcelona, with Gaudí’s work in the foreground, and the city in the background.

A few days in this Catalonian metropole was definitely not enough to experience every part of it. However, this small glimpse into the capital tipped us to another side of European culture and history. It was a wonderful way to end our Eurotrip with amazing memories and experiences. Looking forward for new adventures very soon!

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest, a vibrant capital of Hungary, is bisected by the Danube river. The Chain Bridge joins the Buda district with the Pest part, on the other side of the river. The Gothic Revival to Neoclassical architectures were quite interesting to see as cultural and historical statements of the Hungarian traditions. Budapest was a great surprise for us because of its distinctive taste of the European vibe.

On the first day, we visited the heart of the city walking by the Parliament, the St-Stephen's Basilica and, the Liberty Square. The Parliament is honestly breathtaking. With its Neo-Gothic architecture, it is just over 100 years old. As for the Roman Catholic basilica, it is third largest church building in the country. It has two bell towers, which give fantastic views on the city landscape.

On the next day, we walked to other important landmarks: the Buda Castle and the Fisherman's Bastion, located on the other side of the river. The impressive castle is a historical palace complex of the Hungarian kings in Budapest. Built in the thirteenth century, it overlooks the city from its elevated position atop Várhegy.

Fisherman's Bastion is a famous panoramic viewing terrace with its eerie turrets and spires. Built in a neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque style, it is situated around Matthias Church.

At night, we decided to spend our remaining Forint on a few drinks at a famous ruin bar called Szimpla Kert. As it was strongly recommended by many friends, we had to see it and we were not disappointed. The complex is filled with random mismatched knickknacks, colourful lights and lots of foliage covering walls and ceilings, as in a proper ruin bar. Each space has it own themes and bar. The place oozes of kitsch, vibrant, alternative vibes that make Szimpla Kert so famous.

In our next visit, I’m looking forward to visit the famous Széchenyi Medicinal Bath in Budapest, the largest medicinal bath in Europe. We had a great experience in Budapest, it was such a treat for our travel craving.

Prague, Czech Republic

Prague is charming small city located in the West side of Czech Republic. The city is divided by the Vltava River. It's known for its Old Town Square, the heart of its historic core, with colourful baroque buildings, Gothic churches and the medieval Astronomical Clock, which gives an animated hourly show. It is located between Wenceslas Square and Charles Bridge.

Main attractions include Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, the Jewish Quarter, Petřín hill and Vyšehrad.  Charles Bridge is a historic bridge that crosses the Vltava river. Back in the 19th century, it was the most important connection between Prague Castle and the city's Old Town and adjacent areas. It is adorned with 30 baroque-style statues. The statue of John of Nepomuk is notably famous for its plaque featuring the falling priest. Stopping to rub the plaque is supposed to bring good luck and ensure your return to Prague.

Prague Castle is a castle complex dating from the 9th century. Nowadays, it is the official office of the President of the Czech Republic. It was a seat of power for kings of Bohemia, Holy Roman emperors, and presidents of Czechoslovakia. The surrounding buildings hold a stunning and colourful architecture with a distinctive charm.

Berlin, Germany

Berlin held very high expectations from me since the beginning. After Amsterdam, we arrived late at night in a very cold and windy Berlin. In order to not waste precious time, we decided to take a stroll around Postdamer Platz, a public square in the center of Berlin, and we stumbled upon the Sony Center Forum.

Next to it was the Institute of Film and Video. The complex includes many shops, restaurants, a hotel, offices, cinemas and more. All the buildings stand underneath one textile and glass roof covering a public space at the center.

The next morning, we went to Gendarmenmarkt to visit the French Cathedral, Konzerthaus and Neue Kirche. A self-guided tour in the 18th century Neue Kirche allowed us to take a peek inside the parliamentary democracy of the Bundestag.

In the evening, we walked south to see Checkpoint Charlie, an important landmark of a crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War. Then, we travelled towards the Tiergarden to see the famous Brandenburg Gate, Reichstag Building and Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Walking through the Memorial was an interesting experience. According to Peter Eisenman, who designed the project, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason.

Located in the South of the city, the Jewish museum holds impressive designed spaces envelopping its visitors in a confusing ambiance. The point is to create discomfort and portray the helplessness of the Holocaust;s victims and the dark moments in the Jewish history.

Berlin truly holds an important message about what happened during the atrocities of both World Wars and the Cold War. It is also a bustling center for culture and art in Europe through its many galleries and museums.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Charming Amsterdam was quite a surprise for me (the high prices were the bad surprise, the lovely canals were the good surprise). It seems to be a town where everything is shrinked: the streets are tight, which explain why most people use bikes to commute around, and, the buildings are quite narrow as well. The small scale makes the city more cosy, in a way, and, easy to walk through it.

The first day we walked to the city center to see Dam Square with the National monument and the Royal Palace. Strolling around the many canals we stumbled upon the Bloemenmarket, a huge flower market. Next on our list was to go up North and visit Saint-Nicolas church, Heineken brewery, Central stations and the Eye museum.

In the South part of the city, the Museum Quartier reveals many great institutions like the Rikjmuseum, Van Gogh museum and Moco. To take a break after a long day of walking, I stopped at Vondelpark just before the sunset.

At night time, the most famous part of the city lights up in red neons. Walking through the Red light district, cafés (not coffee shop) advertise their many brands of weed and marijuana-derived products. Of course, the main attraction were these windows revealing prostitutes in lingeries. Although I never understood the hype behind this, I still don’t get why prostitution is actually a touristic attraction. Crowds of tourists watching sexualized girls as if it was a casual thing kind of blew my mind. But that’s my own opinion.

We decided to spend the last day at Zaanse Schans, a Dutch town in the North of Amsterdam. This rural neighbourhood is famous for its historic windmills and distinctive green wooden houses. Small shops sell cheese, chocolate and many souvenirs for tourists. This last stop in the Netherlands was a nice break from our hectic travelling schedule, before hoping to the next destination.

Brussels, Belgium

Our first destination of our Eurotrip was Brussels. It felt strangely like home to me because of the familiarity of the French language, maybe. The city seems to be full of young people hanging out in plazas at night while others prefer to mingle in the multiple bars of the city center. When looking at the cityscape, you notice the random façades and roofs on a same street. It seems a bit chaotic, but everything fits together somehow.

We were lucky to have such a comfortable and very hygge room in a quiet neighbourhood of St-Gilles. I spent my first day strolling around la Grande Place, galeries St-Hubert and so on. We ended up at Kanal Centre Pompidou, an art and cultural institution in the North of the city. This former Citröen garage host many exhibitions mixing visual arts, medias, architecture, large-scale installations, etc. The space, by itself, was quite fascinating to look at, where every structural elements is visible.

Another great art venue we visited was Wiels. It showcases exhibitions from contemporary artists from all over the world. The building was a former brewery converted into the present modernist industrial art center.

We spent the next day visiting the Hotel de ville, St-Michel and St-Gudula church, Palais royal and all the touristic spots. When we started to feel hungry, we decided that mussels and fries would be the perfect option. And so, we sat down at Chez Léon for a Pils beer, garlic mussels and some fries to share. The service wasn’t so great, but the food forgave the lack of hospitality.

The Royal Galeries St-Hubert is a good place to find gifts. Walking underneath these glazed arcades, a long perspective with a repetition of arches, pilasters and windows appeals to our eyes. A serie of notable chocolate shops, as Neuhauser and Mary, handmade dentelle stores, tea salons invite passerbys inside.

At the end of the day, we watched the sunset at Mont-des-Arts after a stroll around Parc de Bruxelles. During our whole stay in Brussels, the March weather was very nice and sunny. We enjoyed how people appreciate the cultural and gastronomical focus of the city. Even though it was so short, we will definitely come back for more.

The Refugee and the Role of Art

The Refugee

Today, Europe and North America are sinking into crisis. Both continents are no longer able or want to accommodate millions of refugees because of its own internal conflicts. Immigration, refugees and racial issues are part of an important debate. People are creating deeper boundaries between them because of ethnicity, religion, cultures and beliefs. We constantly question our identity as a human race. To which group do we belong to and identify with? What if there’s none?

The focus is set on the journey from refugees’ persecutions in their home countries to camps. The hardest challenge is going through the process of being legally recognized as a political refugee or asylum seeker. This is the most mediatized part, ironically, creating a gap between our societies and the refugees. People turn a blind eye on the crisis because they feel disconnected from that reality. When in fact, there’s not really an us versus them. In case of persecutions or natural disasters, we would most probably do the same: to abandon our homes and risk our family’s and our own life to find a safer place to live no matter what could be the cost.

This crisis can be a daunting, disheartening, and confusing sequence of events to understand. People define themselves based on different factors, such as education, values, occupation, economic status, and religious affiliation. Having to flee the communities in which they were raised, refugees have to change many of these elements to acculturate into new societies. To turn from an individual with a recognised name, career, family ties and community connections, into the category of the “refugee” or the “immigrant” is unsettling. There’s a feeling of displacement, dissolution and non-belonging. After being uprooted, it is difficult to find that place of inclusion or acceptance.

The experience of being a refugee is one’s of invisibility, anonymity, lost of anchors, of home, of their identity, being unwanted, vulnerability and the hope or lost of hope. The reality of refugee camps is the removal of human basic rights.

The Role of Art

The insight and awareness created when viewers interact with the refugee experience in artistic spaces are important precisely because they have the power to shift political attitudes and preconceived mentalities, which are based solely on medias and stereotypes.

It shows the audience facets and aspects of the refugee’s experience in more than statistics and facts. To understand the crisis, the stories are crucial elements. It has the power to connect people in deeper levels than logic and reasons. Through art and people reaching out to refugees, they are no longer invisible or mere numbers or statistics.

Alfredo Jaar: It is difficult

Alfredo Jaar is a much celebrated artist, architect and filmmaker. His work shines a light on global injustices like homelessness, immigration, refugees’ crisis, genocides, etc. He brings attention to the invisible, the people that the media, the governments and general public don’t want to see. His works range from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Norway’s immigration policies, to homelessness in Montreal.

Through his installations, he juggles between video, photography and elements of theatre. Jaar is an artist who believes in the power of the image to change minds and ideas. He uses the visual to portray traumatic events in new insightful perspectives.

He uses art as a tool for social change and as a platform for dialogue. According to him, art is what we want it to be. He clearly emphasizes on the importance of cultural and historical context when creating a project. The point is to not act in the world before understanding it.

One project that resonated with me the most was on the topic of refugees.

As the EU won the Nobel prize for peace, it also became a fortress against immigrants. Many xenophobic and nationalist political parties in Europe are growing stronger. The immigration crisis is nothing new. As Jaar says, it’s only that the faces were black so they were invisible and nobody cared. For him, it’s about giving a new visibility to the refugees crisis.

One of his work is called The Gift. A white cube is given by volunteers to random people in the streets. When opening it, the instructions tell them to turn the cube inside out, revealing a reconstructed image of a beach near Bodrum, and a message to help MOAS. The Migrant Offshore Aid Station is an organisation working with drones to survey the sea. As the EU regulations do not allow anyone to approach refugees boats unless there’s a clear distress or the boat is sinking, MOAS found a way to go around that law using drones to send signal to Rome’s Maritime Rescue, from where the message is then transmitted to MOAS’ boats in order to save the refugees.

Valencia, Spain

Valencia was definitely the highlight of my trip around Europe this year. For ten days, I had the chance to experience it during the Fallas, an annual traditional celebration in commemoration of St-Joseph. During these festivities, the city’s streets get transformed with food trucks, tents, colourful artworks and crowds of locals and tourists. I was spoiled enough to be invited at a friend’s home during my stay, which allowed me to experience his daily life as a local and the best places to visit.

To name few of the highlights of Valencia, the Turia gardens and the Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias are a must when visiting. As a former river, it was reconverted in a sunken garden stretching from one end of the city to the other. As you walk through it, it reveals a serie of small parks, recreational public spaces, sports facilities, resting areas and the famous Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias, designed by Calatrava. As the noisy car traffic crosses above the old river, people wandering underneath it don’t bump into the traffic.

The Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias is an art and science complex composed of Europe’s largest aquarium, an oceanographic park, a planetarium, a science museum, a performing art center, and much more. The impressive futuristic design of the architectural ensemble justify its reputation as one of the twelve treasures in Spain.

Around the city center, the most important touristic places were the Mercado central (Art Nouveau public market), Lonja de la Ceda (old silk warehouse), San Nicolas church, the Catedral (Roman Catholic parish church), the Miguelete tower (Cathedral with a Gothic-style octagonal bell tower) for a great view of Valencia, etc.

In between the festivities, we visited green parts of the city like Monforte garden with its neoclassical natural landscape and the Botanical garden with its many collections of plants from all around the world. To rest from the noise and activities of the city center, these gardens are good places to relax.

Albufera was a great spot to see the sunset. Located around 11 km south of the city, it is freshwater lagoon and estuary on the Gulf of Valencia.

Starting March 15th, the main attraction was the Fallas, where monuments are burnt at the end of the festival. Each neighbourhood of the city has an organised association, called the Casal faller, with a specific artwork built over the previous year. Traditionally, people would throw everything that is considered to be old and not useful anymore, onto a bonfire every year. By doing so, the gesture symbolized a new start.

During those five days and nights, crowds in the restaurants spill out into the streets and explosions can be heard all day long from morning until late at night. Small children to elderly people are throwing fireworks and noisemakers in the streets. 

Mascletà

Mascletà, a coordinated fireworks show, takes place at 2:00 pm every day of the festival at the Plaça de l'Ajuntament. As during the day the fireworks are barely visible, the show is more about the noise. The louder, the better.

Nit del Foc

At night, the sky is filled with light and colour during Fallas thanks to the impressive firework displays. The spectacles bring crowds of people. The fireworks reach its peak at the Nit del Foc, a unique firework display celebrated in the early hours of the 18th. 

The traditional dress worn by "falleros" (men) vary from black trousers and jacket or decorated shirt with different patterns. Women’s handmade dresses can be very expensive, from 2,000 Euros to more than 20,000 Euros. The work behind the production of these intricate pieces of clothing is quite impressive. They are accompanied with traditional hair style and gold or silver jewelries.

Ofrenda

All the Fallas associations of Valencia parade through the city from their neighbourhood to the Plaza de la Virgen for a flower offering to the Virgen de los Desamparados, patron saint of Valencia. The bouquets of flowers become part of an impressive 15-metre high structure representing the Virgen’s cape.  

The Cremà

On the final night of Falles, the monuments are burnt as huge bonfires. La Cremà, the climax of the whole event, is quite an astonishing event to witness. Flames can go up to 20 meters high and the heat of the fire can easily damage the surrounding buildings. For security reasons, emergency services and firefighters are controlling the fires throughout the city that particular night.

Needless to say that Valencia was an amazing travelling adventure for me, from the fiery festival to the city’s historical treasures, Calatrava’s futuristic design and the local experience. I particularly appreciated the slow-paced rythm of living. People take time to enjoy life, and to cultivate the strong bonds in the community. Another destination to return to, very soon.