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Meet the 11 buildings some CNN writer found the most bizarre. Strangely, I suspect that gentleman did not dig very deep and only browsed a couple of mainstream webpages to come up with this uninteresting top 11. See for yourself...

Always interesting to point at culture shock in travel writing, you'd expect the authors to be a litlle bit less narrow-minded than the average joe, and that makes you think how thick some yankees must be. On another hand, I have met an old Texas couple and a 27-years old Tennessee rural on...

Seems like the total costs of the London Olympics rose to 10.3 €bn. http://engtechmag.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/london-2012-olympics-the-total-cost-an-annotated-graphic/

I think that if I had been told when I was 13 that I would visit Poland, Hungary, (now former) Czechoslovakia, and a bunch of Warsaw-pact countries, I would have laughed. As for Mitterand, that great swindler, I think it's difficult to interpret what he really thought, as he experienced the...

I will definitely spend my old days somewhere in Spain or Italy. Quality of life is not all about a fat paycheck...

What I have noted is that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have seen a shift of power from governments to the financial and business world. The notion of a politician having a clout on the international scene is now a thing of the past. Warren Buffett has more influence than the US...

I believe it is due to the fact that Islam is political, politics and religion are intertwined in the muslim world, where in Germany, democracy and religion are pushed apart as much as possible. Having been living in Berlin for some time now, I think Germans in general are very uncomfortable...

Spot on... I've been a hotel receptionist for 10 years now, I come to the same conclusions.

I have to disagree, for Matera is one gem of a city that deserves to be visited. There's more to Italy than Rome and Florence, but you need to dig a bit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matera

As a New-Yorker, you could probably make a similar list with California or redneck states. It's all about different lifestyles, and for having lived in Spain several years, I can only add they know how to live there...

The Economist stated in last week's issue that the scheduled 2,4 bn GBP costs skyrocketed to an "estimated" 9,3 bn GBP. In my opinion, still a pretty conservative figure. Enjoy the party, fellow Brits, the hangover is going to be brutal, to say the least... http://www.economist.com/node/21559326

Hi Selçuk, I believe you can find all possible info in any good tourist guide (I am fond of the DK eyewitness series, it gives you an idea of what you visit, and the structure of the book is easy to follow). The one thing I recommend you to do is to get a bike for a couple of days and go to...

I was looking for some ideas concerning my coming holidays and bumped into that website that I had never heard of: http://www.best-of-european-union.eu/ Sounds funny to associate the EU to travelling, but it turns out the shortlists for "most beautiful places in ABC" have some decent ideas to...

I think that retrospectively, the French must be relieved they don't host the Games. The costs associated to the organisation are colossal and would be a huge burden on a already stricken economy. What saddens me a bit is the over-coverage of security issues. It seems that all the media are...

I agree with Nasturtium, why wait for another 4 to 5 years? If your plan is to travel, get on the road as soon as you can. However, keep in mind that Europe is in trouble now, getting a job now is not easy, even as a waiter, and being a non-EU citizen, you'll have some interesting time dealing...

Thanks for listing, Maciamo, I will keep that in mind when I next travel to France. I had the opportunity to see St Cirq from the Lot, as I went down on a kayak, the view is stunning, no wonder it's a favourite in France. I visited Beynac, it's an amazing place. The castle, where Luc Besson's...

I really had no idea about how intricated the question was before the start of the thread. Your argumentation has its points, taking into account the tumultuous history of the region and its Dutch, French and Spanish occupations that might have helped into cristallizing the dialects. I am...

Hi Moesan, I am sadly not a specialist in linguistics, but I have a basic knowledge, and your last post seems to me a little bit of a shortcut, I'd even call it a motorway. Consider Celtic languages were not written, as Latin has been since the Romanization of Gaul, and you'd agree that modern...

Moimelop, the best reference I have ever seen is a catalogue guide to an exhibition held in 1991 in Venice at the Palazzo Grassi that featured all specialists of the Celtic studies world. It has been recently re-printed in french but is sadly extremely rare and expensive in english. It is...

I agree with Zanipolo that the whole "Celtic" thing is very unsettling if you start digging. The problem is that a lot of our research is based on classical texts, that can be quite vague to translate and prone to exaggeration and clichés. To answer to LD's question to the best of my limited...