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Excursion to the beautiful iced rocks of Horin-Irgi or Cape Kobyliya Golova on frozen Lake Baikal. Photo: Shutterstock

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Siberia's cold is unfathomable. It wraps its savage fingers around my neck and crushes the tips of my fingers. It grates my lungs with every razor-sharp intake of breath. It freezes my brain so I can no longer comprehend what the Old Believer, an Orthodox priest, is saying. His black cassock is rigid with cold, his beard a cascade of icicles, his words a warm spill promptly vaporised on the chilled air. What on earth possessed us to come to this most infamous of outposts, this far-flung emptiness where people have been sent to die – or to live, improbably – and in this least humane of seasons?

Nine days and more than 5000 kilometres earlier, we're oblivious to what awaits us as we bathe in the weak sunshine that's broken briefly through a snow shower and is casting long shadows and buttery columns along a charming Moscow prospect. The temperature is a mere minus-four degrees – a veritable summer compared to the frozen perdition we will face down the line.

Still, the cold here is impressive. We snap-chill a bottle of wine in the snow that's powdering our hotel windowsill. We blink away whirling snowflakes and wrap scarves around our tender noses while queuing to see Lenin's corpse lying waxy and wan and warmer-than-the-living in his sombre mausoleum. As we walk back from a supermarket one evening, I slip on black ice and am hauled to my feet by two men even as I am falling, even as the contents of my shopping bag are rolling downhill.

Frozen waves at lake Baikal. Photo: Alamy

"Spasibo!" I cry out in response – thank you – and they nod nonchalantly. They are well-practised in the rescue of random ice-trippers, these men.

What are we doing here, in the darkest depths of a Russian winter? Attending to priorities: it's my birthday in early January (a significant one), and to celebrate I'm taking the train from Moscow to Vladivostok. What a pity I wasn't born in June.

I'm joined in my Arctic wanderings by 10 family members – an audacious gang of parents, young adult children and a couple of brave boyfriends (the cold is the least of their worries, I imagine). Swaddled gamely against the extremes, they lug small libraries with which to occupy their minds on this interminable journey, and mental fortitude with which to face off against the infernal cold.

COLDER BY DEGREES

At midnight we board the train at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Railway Station, stopping just long enough in the bitter freeze to acknowledge the monument marking the starting point of the fabled Trans-Siberian railway. The route arcs in a broad south-westerly sweep, traversing 9288 kilometres and seven time zones before terminating in Russia's Far Eastern naval garrison, Vladivostok. It is the longest railway line in the world.

The Ural Mountains are cloaked in darkness when we pull into Yekaterinburg in the early hours of the morning. For 33 hours we've peered out from our compact, four-berth compartments at the uncoiling landscape, at fluorescent cities dimming into canvasses of black ink; at forests glittering with diamond snowflakes; at swathes of farmland gradually solidifying into cities then disintegrating again into empty fields of snow. Overzealous heating has shielded us from an ever-changing climate; we step off the train into an incomprehensible minus-18 degrees.

It's New Year's Eve. Yekaterinburg is lit up like a carnival, the Iset River is a boulevard of ice. The Gosudarstvennyy Akademicheskiy Theatre stands like a baroque wedding cake on a bed of snow. Inside, we queue at the coat racks where patrons throw off heavy swaddling to reveal glamorous frocks forced into hiding by the cold. We join them in jubilantly bravo-ing a performance of The Nutcracker, a Christmas spectacle manifesting onstage in vivid counterpoint to the frosted scenes outside. "Zazdarovye!" we cry at midnight, farewelling the old year with shots of vodka and welcoming the new with flutes of champagne.

FROM TSARS TO SAINTS

Yekaterinburg is a city of death and rebirth, of constructivist architecture built on the foundations of the Bolshevik Revolution and the execution of the Romanovs here in 1918. Though writers passing through on their way to Siberia recalled an unpleasantly industrialised settlement, Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was deeply impressed by the spirit and ideas of the people, says local guide Olga Taranenko.

"They decided to destroy everything that reminded them of the old regime, and construct a new city."

But the new has been replaced with the old: churches have been re-consecrated and the once-reviled Romanovs – Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and five children – canonised. A cathedral stands on the site where the family died, its red granite walls "reminding us of the bloody events", Taranenko says. Even their once-secret burial site outside the city is now sanctified, a cluster of buildings comprising a monastery dedicated to the Romanov saints. Their remains were removed from here and interred in St Petersburg in 1998.

St. Basil's Cathedral and Spassky Tower on Red Square in Moscow on a summer evening. Photo: Shutterstock

IN SIBERIA

It takes 63 hours to reach Ulan-Ude, capital of the autonomous Republic of Buryatia. We sail from Europe into Asia, crossing oceans of snow, passing railway stations licked with bright paint and fitted with neon signs alerting us to the temperature: minus-22 at Omsk, minus-20 at Barabinsk where we emerge from the train's swelter into a cold so strident it cleanses our stale bodies and shocks us awake. We buy pierogi stuffed with cabbage and potato at a platform kiosk and watch as a railroad engineer crawls beneath the train, lies upon the snow-caked tracks and fiddles imperturbably with the frozen undercarriage.

Somewhere near Novosibirsk four men appear in our compartment doorway and sing us a song. They're from Perm, and are on their way to Lake Baikal to ice-skate. We applaud their cheerful ditty, though we've understood not a single word.

"You write about Baikal?" asks one of them, spying my notebook. I nod; he punches the air with his fist. "Baikal you will love," he says. ''Thank you for visiting in its most beautiful season."

Sledding across the ice of Lake Baikal. Photo: Alamy

On the second day of this leg I awake to flooding, late-morning light. I've missed the Yenisei River and an endlessly evolving landscape. We're fast-forwarding through time, gaining hours as we race away from the sun. Our group sprawls across several compartments, locked in games of chess, trapped inside books, embroiled in conversations or hypnotised by the Siberia scrolling by through ice-rimed windows. At mealtimes, the youngsters squeeze into the parents' compartment for makeshift feasts we've cobbled from shops and stalls along the way: bread and cheese and salami, instant mash, caviar sold by platform hawkers for a handful of rubles.

On the third day, I wake before dawn. We've halted in Irkutsk; I climb from the train into an ethereal gloom. The train recedes along the tracks, its outermost carriages erased by the silvered fog. It's minus-36 degrees, and today I turn 50. Never have I've felt so cold, nor so joyfully alive.

A LAKE FROZEN IN TIME

All day long the train crawls along the south-eastern edge of Lake Baikal. The water sloshes sluggishly, turns gradually to slush and then to solid ice as we curve northwards along the lake's eastern shoreline. Opposite it, fields slope into gullies, snowy whitecaps ripple the plains, fog cushions the tree-line like some mammoth exhalation. We see runnels protruding like ribcages from beneath thin coatings of ice; buckwheat might still be farmed here, says our guide Ksenia Martynova, though after the collapse of the Soviet Union many of Siberia's farms fell into ruin, too.

Temple of St. Sergius of Radonezh – the Monastery of the Holy Imperial Passion-Bearers. Photo: Alamy

Lake Baikal is the low-point of our journey; the temperatures plumb those unfathomable depths, tearing the breath from our lungs and freezing the blood in our veins. It's the high point of our journey, too, for this place is so otherworldly, so far beyond our imaginings, it stuns us into wakefulness and renewed gratitude for the world. So extraordinary is this shared experience, it will bind our family forever.

We disembark at Buryatia's capital Ulan-Ude, a city that embodies the great collision between Europe and Asia, Russia and Mongolia, Christian Orthodoxy and Buddhism. Stray dogs wag their tails, oblivious to cold, it seems; residents stride along streets wreathed with glacial condensation.

"The real Siberian is not the person who doesn't feel the cold," says local guide Goldan Lenkhoboev. "It's the person who dresses properly for it."

Our own polar-wear has served us well until now, but the cold seeps into our marrow in the village of Tarbagatay, where Fr Aleksei shows us around the ethnography museum he's curated. It's a flimsy, unheated space filled with artefacts belonging to Old Believers – Orthodox Christians who were exiled or fled from European Russia in the 17th century in the wake of church reforms, and whose way of life has changed little since then. The cold here is so piercing I can barely focus; it's a visceral reminder of the conditions into which Fr Aleksei's people – and so many others – were once cruelly banished.

We've seen not a single tourist on our journey so far, and now we have the whole of Sukhaya village to ourselves – except for the young Russian men doing burnouts in their Ladas on the ice-slicked shores of Lake Baikal. This fabled body of water – the world's deepest lake and the largest freshwater lake by volume – extends beyond the village in a brumous mass. It has put up a valiant fight against the deep freeze: waves heave and buck and petrify midair. The ice splinters beneath our boots, and when we skate on it the next day we notice air bubbles and water lilies trapped beneath its surface.

On Orthodox Christmas Eve, January 6, we drip sweat inside the banya (traditional sauna) at our guesthouse, submit to Martynova's birch whips – said to improve lymphatic flow – then run outside and smother ourselves in snow. Finally, we're learning to embrace the cold.

THE END OF THE LINE

It's another 62 hours from Ulan-Ude to Vladivostok. The frostbitten landscape flicks past our windows like a slideshow. It's inconceivable, from within the confines of this overheated compartment, that the conditions unspooling outside might kill us if we immersed ourselves in them unprotected; the snow-draped fields are beaches of silica, the larch trees jaunty filigrees against a blue sky. Young marines bound for the naval city run for the train, their breath puffs of smoke on the chill air; the temperature is slowly rising: minus 20, minus 15, minus 10, the neon signs say. A cook comes around sporadically with freshly made pierogis; we lie in wait and clear her tray in exchange for a few rubles.

At Khabarovsk the railway doglegs southwards. We will the train to slow down, but at dawn it pulls into Vladivostok. This is a revelation of a city, we will discover, a place of bright skylines and frozen bays, striking harbours and exceptional restaurants. But we're not yet ready to greet it. We linger on the platform – pleasantly bracing at just minus-eight degrees – and pose for a photo beside the monument marking the end of our epic journey. We've travelled 9288 kilometres – a full third of the world's circumferential span. And there's not one of us who wouldn't climb back on that train before it returns to Moscow, and do it all over again.

Catherine Marshall travelled with assistance from Intrepid.

THE TRANS-SIBERIAN IN NUMBERS

9288 kilometres total length, from Moscow to Vladivostok

1916 the year Moscow and Vladivostok were connected via the railway line

7 number of time zones crossed

60 average speed at kilometres per hour reached by the train

1/3: span of the globe covered by the railway line

7 days it takes to complete the journey, without getting off along the way

16 major rivers crossed by the railway

87 towns and cities the railway passes through

FIVE OTHER JOURNEYS WORTH TAKING IN EXTREMES

DEATH VALLEY IN SUMMER

If you visit the US's Death Valley at the height of summer, you might find out just how hot hot can get: 56.7 degrees as measured in 1913, the second hottest temperature on record. As long as you take all the necessary precautions (such as keeping hydrated and ensuring you have mobile contact) you can enjoy the landscape at its most primordial and without the shoulder-season crowds. Or enter the annual midsummer Badwater Ultramarathon, which starts at 85 metres below sea level and ascends 4000 metres across 217 kilometres and three mountain ranges.

VICTORIA FALLS DURING PEAK WATER

You'll need to take a raincoat if you visit this world wonder in the wet season, when islands upstream from the falls – accessible by boat in the dry season – are drowned by summer's deluge. View the spectacle of hundreds of millions of litres of water a minute gushing into the great cataract separating Zimbabwe from Zambia. Peak water, as it's called, runs from around March to June and (in good news for the bottom line) precedes peak season.

AMERICAN MIDWEST DURING TORNADO SEASON

Eye-of-the-storm itineraries exist for those who dream of observing springtime twisters up-close in a region of the American Midwest known as Tornado Alley. Journeys centre on midwestern states such as Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Nebraska during May and June. Sightings aren't guaranteed, but participants are likely to see supercell storms and the impressive lightning shows that often accompany them. See stormchasing.com

ICEFIELDS PARKWAY IN WINTER

In winter practically everything is iced over along this 230-kilometre-long route linking Lake Louise and Jasper in Alberta, Canada: lakes, waterfalls, peaks, forests, glaciers and bitumen. Winter tyres or snow chains are essential. Travel cautiously, dress warmly and stop regularly at lookouts for views of glacier-licked valleys and snow-laden forests. Bears will be hibernating but you'll see bighorn sheep, elk and caribou – and possibly wolves.

KAKADU IN THE WET

Most people assume the NT is off limits during the wet season: too damp, too sticky, too hot. But the wet season is a wild and magical time when waterfalls overflow and floodplains brim with water, intensifying the landscape's lushness and attracting numerous birds. Some roads are closed during the wet (which runs from around November to May) limiting access to sites, and animals are more dispersed; but visitors will have the park almost all to themselves – and it will cost as little as half of what it would in the high season.

FIVE MORE GREAT COLD WEATHER JOURNEYS

EUROPE'S CHRISTMAS MARKETS

These festive markets have been brightening winter-darkened cities since the 16th century. Cities such as Prague, Vienna and Berlin are transformed into charming bazaars selling an assortment of artisanal food, arts and crafts and merry experiences. The markets draw crowds onto light-spangled streets – and help draw travellers who might otherwise visit during the continent's unbearably busy summer season.

QUEBEC'S WINTER CARNIVAL

The people of Quebec City have turned their iciest month, February, into a celebration of all things winter: ice slides, outdoor cinema, dance parties and ice-skating, night parades, snow baths, dog sledding and a canoe race in which competitors paddle along the St Lawrence River through masses of ice.

ANTARCTICA

Strictly speaking, a visit to Antarctica is a summertime jaunt, since this is the season when pack ice melts enough to allow cruise ships to pass through. Nonetheless, the landscape is still a magical realm of ice – pack ice, sea ice, icebergs, glaciers and that icy water in which brave adventurers can take the briefest of dips.

GLACIER EXPRESS

This storybook voyage between Zermatt and St Moritz began as a steam train journey ferrying well-heeled holidaymakers between these glitzy Swiss ski resorts. The 275-kilometre route transports passengers through a winter wonderland filled with dazzling mountain peaks, soaring passes and snow-filled valleys.

HARBIN'S ICE FESTIVAL

Residents of this this northern Chinese city harness its unfathomably cold winters during the International Ice and Snow Festival, creating elaborate ice sculptures – including recreations of famous landmarks like the Great Wall of China. Brave festival-goers can join swimmers for a ritual dip in the frozen Songhua River.

TRIP NOTES

traveller.com.au/russia

russiatourism.ru/en

FLY

Etihad flies to Abu Dhabi twice daily from Sydney and Melbourne and once daily from Brisbane and Perth, with onward connections to Moscow. See: etihad.com. Korean Airlines flies several times a day from Vladivostok to Seoul, with onward connections to Sydney and Brisbane. See koreanair.com

TOUR

Intrepid Travel's 15-day Russia Expedition: Winter Trans-Siberian Adventure is priced from $3055 a person twin share and has many departures beginning from December 2019. Private group bookings are also available. See intrepidtravel.com.au

KEEP WARM

Appropriate winter gear is essential for this journey. For the coldest outdoor excursions, layer clothing in the following sequence: thermal vest and leggings, jeans or thick pants and a long-sleeved shirt, thermal jumper, polar jacket and waterproof shell, tube scarf, beanie, glove liners and waterproof polar gloves. Snow boots paired with warm socks are essential – Sorel and Colombia are highly recommended. Pack lightweight clothing for the train; it will be warm and quite possibly overheated.

STAY SANE ON THE TRAIN

Compartments are compact but comfortable, with two bunks sleeping four people each; clean bedding is provided. There are two toilets with hand basins and cold water at the end of each carriage. A provodnista or provodnik (female or male carriage attendant) is in charge of each carriage; they keep it clean, provide passengers with beverage glasses and ensure the samovar is filled with hot water. It's a good idea to buy a few snacks, teabags or sachets of coffee from them as they receive a small commission from sales and appreciate the custom.

There are regular stops of various durations; schedules are posted in the carriage. There are often kiosks on the platforms or in the stations selling bottled water and food. Some food should also be bought at supermarkets prior to departure since not all trains have dining carriages. The trains are well-used by locals, many of whom will approach foreigners for conversation. Take small gifts from Australia to share with them.

from traveller.com.au

#Travel Guide

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By BBC's The Travel Show

5 April 2019

BBC's Travel Show brings you the latest insider travel news, a wealth of destinations, amazing experiences and features and practical hints, tips and advice for your holidays.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

BBC Travel – Adventure Experience

#Discover - Experience

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Escape the rat race on Macedonia’s serene Lake Ohrid. Photo: Alamy

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Lake Ohrid, Macedonia

This secret lake in the southern Balkans is a rival to its Italian or Swiss counterparts.

THE EXPERIENCE Lake Como too crowded with Clooney-watchers, and purse strings too tight for Lake Geneva? Try Lake Ohrid. Considered too beautiful to belong to one country alone, it is the jewel of both Macedonia and neighbouring Albania. Even though the western Balkans are as calm as they've ever been, the main occupants of the lake's many, many cafes and sultry beach clubs are predominantly bikini-clad eastern Europeans and expatriate Macedonians, including Macedonian-Australians. The UNESCO World Heritage-listed lake's three-million-year-old waters run deep – they plummet to 300 metres – and are genuinely crystal clear.

The best place to base yourself is Macedonia's major lakeside town, Ohrid, with its cobbled streets, geranium-lined windows and two-toned Byzantine monasteries set on the water's edge, all crowned by a 10th-century castle. Each July, this fortress's gloriously crumbled ramparts and amphitheatres host the month-long Ohrid Summer Festival, which draws opera singers, orchestras and actors from around the world.

IDEAL FOR Lovers of European history and spectacular lake views.

PRICE Intrepid's Western Balkans Uncovered trip costs from $2925 a person; intrepidtravel.com; exploremacedonia.com.

– Belinda Jackson

LIKE THIS? Croatia's Plitvice Lakes are fed by cascading waterfalls and the national park that surrounds them regularly appears on lists of Europe's most beautiful; croatia.hr.

Hong Kong, China

Districts that remain undiscovered by tourists are coming into their own.

THE EXPERIENCE The original home of the world's cheapest Michelin-starred restaurant, Tim Ho Wan, Hong Kong remains one of the world's great foodie destinations. Still relatively tourist-free, the Sham Shui Po district in Kowloon is the perfect place to eat like a local and try dishes such as pineapple buns (which contain no pineapple), walnut cookies (which contain no walnuts), rice rolls, and egg noodles with shrimp roe.

Hong Kong Foodie Tours leads small groups through the area, stopping off at a different venue for each dish. But you'll also discover local culture at markets, traditional medicine stores and the buildings that house the city's infamous "cage homes". The recently relaunched Ovolo Central hotel is in a great location while offering some respite from the bustling crowds of downtown. It also features a new vegetarian restaurant, a rarity in Hong Kong.

IDEAL FOR Foodies and shoppers.

PRICE From $HK2035 ($365) a night; ovolohotels.com. The Sham Shui Po food tour costs from $HK770 ($138); hongkongfoodietours.com; discoverhongkong.com.

– Craig Platt

LIKE THIS? Macau is a short ferry ride from Hong Kong and offers more than just casinos. The Portuguese influence from its colonial days can still be seen in Macau's architecture and, especially, its food – a Macanese egg tart is a must-try; visitmacao.com.au.

Mak Kwai Pui, the co-founder of Tim Ho Wan in Hong Kong. Photo: Supplied

Britomart, New Zealand

Britomart has shed its seedy past to become one of Auckland's swankiest enclaves.

THE EXPERIENCE Venture down the once-insalubrious cobbled lanes and streets of Britomart and you'll fi nd buzzing restaurants like Amano from the happening Hip Group, plus chic galleries and legendary ice-cream from Giapo. It's also home to local fashion legends Karen Walker, Zambesi and Trelise Cooper, as well as the SO/Auckland hotel, housed in the former Reserve Bank building. Designer Benny Castles has incorporated a volcanic theme that runs throughout the decidedly unconventional 130-room hotel. This extends from the staff's burnt-orange jackets teamed with sneakers through to the wallpaper and neon art installations. Need a drink? Visit the whimsical Mixo Bar, with its impressive "Mega Chandelier" by Marcel Wanders, or head to the rooftop Hi So Bar and gaze over your cocktail towards Rangitoto Island.

IDEAL FOR Design and food aficionados.

PRICE From $NZ469 ($450) a night; sofitel.accorhotels.com; britomart.org.

– Sheriden Rhodes

LIKE THIS? Try the Oasia Hotel Downtown Singapore in the lovely, gentrified Tanjong Pagar port district; oasiahotels.com. visitsingapore.com.

San Francisco, USA

The California city is still a hub of artsy cool, but is constantly reinventing itself.

THE EXPERIENCE All hail hilly San Francisco. Not just for its many architectural icons – the Golden Gate Bridge, the Coit Tower – and its host of historic bohemian neighbourhoods such as Haight-Ashbury, but for its rising status as a destination with a gold standard in museums, galleries and international cuisine. Blending old and new as effortlessly as the city itself is the Proper Hotel in the historic mid-market area, an easy walk to upmarket Union Square, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Asian Art Museum.

Proper guests beat the queues snaking around the block every Friday and Saturday night and catch the lift straight up to its chic rooftop lounge, Charmaines, for some of the best cocktails and views in the city. Built in 1906 and meticulously restored in 2017, the Proper is now one of the hippest places in the city; book well in advance.

IDEAL FOR West Coast culture vultures.

PRICE From $US365 ($515) a night; properhotel.com; sftravel.com.

– Greg Callaghan

LIKE THIS? Try San Diego, with its compact CBD bursting with museums and galleries, Mexican-influenced cuisine and one-third fewer rainy days; sandiego.org.

The rooftop lounge, Charmaines, at San Francisco's Proper Hotel. Photo: Proper Hospitality

Myeik Archipelago, Myanmar

Experience amazing underwater encounters in an unspoiled and under-the-radar tropical location.

THE EXPERIENCE The temples of Bagan and the floating gardens of Inle Lake have joined the ranks of Asia's top attractions, but Myanmar still has a few surprises up its sleeve. Foremost among them is the Myeik archipelago, a collection of 800 islands in the Andaman Sea that is a magnet for divers. Live-aboard boats are a popular choice for those keen to plunge in and meet nurse sharks and manta rays amid colourful corals. For those who would rather sleep on terra firma, the eco-chic Wa Ale is the lodging of choice.

Guests stay in tented beach villas or treetop houses and can choose from a range of individual excursions that includes jungle hikes and kayaking through mangroves, as well as snorkelling and diving. Don't miss the opportunity to meet the local Moken people, also known as the sea gypsies. These nomadic seafarers possess extraordinary skills, including the ability to free-dive to remarkable depths.

IDEAL FOR Scuba divers and Robinson Crusoe wannabes.

PRICE Rates at Wa Ale from $US400 ($563) a person a night twin share, including full board, transfers and select activities; waaleresort.com; tourism.gov.mm.

– Ute Junker

LIKE THIS? The Philippines island of Palawan ticks all the most compelling tropical-island boxes thanks to its white-sand beaches, lush jungles and soaring mountains; experiencephilippines.org

Vienna, Austria

The reigning "world's most liveable city" is an irresistible mix of history and hot spots.

THE EXPERIENCE Vienna's reputation for the traditional – ballroom dancing, quaint coffee houses, Christmas markets and grand architecture – precedes it. But there's also a hipness to the Austrian capital that manifests in cool neighbourhoods, galleries and boutiques, and an eclectic (and often electric) nightlife. The new Park Hyatt Vienna plays to both sides of that coin. Dubbed the pearl in the group's crown, this art deco palace started life a century ago as the Bank of Austria's HQ and pays elegant tribute to that heritage.

The cavernous former banking chamber also houses a popular restaurant and bar with a separate entrance that invites the city's nightlife inside. The spa and swimming pool occupy the old bank vault, and the building's scale and elegance continue into its 143 rooms, including 35 suites ranging in size from 35 to 170 square metres, Austria's largest.

IDEAL FOR Ball and concert attendees, high-end shoppers and cocktail sippers. PRICE From €430 ($689) a night; hyatt.com; wien.info.

– Andrew Ireland

LIKE THIS? Try Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme in Paris, a favourite of locals and visiting celebrities, where the real luxury is discretion; hyatt.com; en.parisinfo.com.

Taketomi Island, Japan

The home of Japan's newly anointed Dark Sky Park is a cultural treasure lost in time.

THE EXPERIENCE In the countdown to the Rugby World Cup later this year and the 2020 Olympics, all eyes are on Japan, which is what makes this destination in the East China Sea so appealing. More than just geography separates it from mainland Japan. For centuries, this tiny island was part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, a peace-loving nation which adopted Buddhism from the Chinese while also inventing karate. Hoshino Resorts quietly inserted itself into this timeless landscape in 2012 with its "village" of 48 Ryukyuan-style bungalows and program of traditional arts and crafts.

There are bullock cart rides through bougainvillea-shaded villages and traditional weaving with local artisans in this "blue zone" – the term for places where many people live longer lives (often beyond 100). Finish the day with a degustation dinner served against a backdrop of glittering constellations.

IDEAL FOR Slow travellers, astronomy fans, been-there-done-that types.

PRICE From ¥51,600 ($654) a night; hoshinoya.com; visitokinawa.jp.

– Belinda Luksic

LIKE THIS? Try Fogo Island in Newfoundland, where the striking Fogo Island Inn was designed in harmony with the island's traditional way of life; newfoundlandlabrador.com; fogoislandinn.ca.

Take a bullock cart ride through shaded villages on Japan's Taketomi Island. Photo: Courtesy of Hoshino Resorts

Downtown New York City, United States

The historic heart of the city is now its most vibrant part.

THE EXPERIENCE Anchored by two stunning architectural landmarks – Santiago Calatrava's Oculus transportation hub at the World Trade Centre site, and Renzo Piano's new Whitney Museum of American Art under the High Line – the in-between of below 14th Street is an urban wonderland teeming with essential restaurants, galleries and sights. On the Lower East Side, a newly invigorated art scene pulses on weeknights. Come the weekend, Tribeca's dining scene hums. And the tiny boutiques and European-inspired cafes of the West Village are charming just about all of the time.

The Four Seasons Downtown, housed in one of the city's tallest and most interesting residential towers and designed by Robert A. M. Stern, is an appropriately chic home base. It boasts one of New York's biggest indoor pools, a destination spa beloved by locals and, from the Gotham suites on the 24th floor, large step-out terraces. Plus, a short walk away from its front door is almost every useful subway line.

IDEAL FOR Foodies, barflies and art appreciators.

PRICE Four Seasons Downtown rooms start from $700.

– Amelia Lester

LIKE THIS? Hong Kong's frenetic energy is a close approximation and the Upper House a superb urban retreat; upperhouse.com.

The Four Seasons Hotel, Downtown New York. Photo: Christian Horan

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.

from traveller.com.au

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By Christopher P Baker

3 April 2019

“The Younger Brother is damaging the world. He is on the path to destruction. He must understand and change his ways, or the world will die,” Luis Guillermo Izquierdo lamented as he walked beside me, his cheeks swollen with a wad of coca leaves that he slowly masticated.

Ritual flute music drifted through the forest from some unseen source as Izquierdo – a mamo, or enlightened spiritual leader, of Colombia’s Arhuaco indigenous people – led me to the sacred natural pool Pozo de Yaya for a ritual cleansing. He removed his sandals, lowered himself onto a rock and sat cross-legged beside a fast-running stream. Izquierdo bade me remove my shoes and step into the water. Then he handed me a piece of thread representing the umbilical cord tethering me to Mother Earth, and in a warbling falsetto told me to pour my thoughts into the thread.

The Younger Brother is damaging the world – he must understand and change his ways, or the world will die

Hair as thick and whorled as a flokati rug flooded over Izquierdo’s shoulders from beneath a woven white conical hat, worn in reverence to the snow-capped peaks of the sacred Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains. He was dressed in thick, snow-white trousers and a matching serape (shawl) of maguey fibre, tied by a belt at the waist. He reminded me of a Star Wars Jedi – a wise member of the noble protective order capable by mental training of tapping into the metaphysical ‘Force’ in search of peaceful and righteous solutions. The metaphor seemed appropriate.

“We want the Younger Brothers to know more about our culture. In that way we can stop him destroying the world,” said Izquierdo, referring to the modern world beyond the realm of the Arhuaco.

View image of The Arhuaco are descended from the ancient and advanced Tairona civilisation (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

You may also be interested in: • A flourishing culture believed extinct • The descendants of Alexander the Great? • The last guardians of a python spirit

The Arhuaco are (with the neighbouring Kogi and Wiwa, or Malayo) one of three virtually indistinguishable remnant groups of the ancient and advanced Tairona civilisation. Brutally subjugated by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th Century, the survivors retreated into the pyramidal Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta that explode upwards from the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Their homeland – the world’s highest coastal mountain range – comprises every distinct climatic ecosystem in Colombia, from coastal wetlands and equatorial rainforest to alpine tundra and glacial peaks. Declared by Unesco in 1979 as a Biosphere Reserve of Man and Humanity, the mountain range was named as the most irreplaceable ecosystem on Earth by Science journal in 2013.

The Arhuaco-Kogi-Wiwa community (pop. about 90,000, according to non-profit organisation Cultural Survival) is one of the world’s last uncorrupted indigenous civilisations to have survived culturally intact since the time of the Aztecs and Incas. They call themselves the ‘Elder Brothers’, are ruled by a mamo priesthood and maintain an ancient cosmovision (a conscious, cognitive interpretation of the world) based on a worship and custodianship of Mother Nature.

The mamos believe themselves uniquely possessed of a mystical wisdom. Much like how the Tibetan Dalai Lama was trained from toddler age to understand the meaning of life and help others achieve enlightenment, Izquierdo, like fellow mamos, spent his entire youth in intense spiritual training. Chosen by divination and sequestered for 18 years from birth to adulthood within dark confines near the summit of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, they’re inculturated in their societal values until they master a cosmic consciousness that they believe permits them to commune with the planet directly. “They learn to work as hidden-spirit midwives to all life, keeping it in balance,” explained Alan Ereira, a documentary filmmaker and founder of the Tairona Heritage Trust.

View image of After the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, the Tairona retreated to Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

“The thoughts of our ancestors are embedded in every rock and other element in which humans have contact,” said Izquierdo, who holds to Arhuaco belief that we exist in a conscious universe where all material things have life and awareness. It’s unfathomable to them that ‘modern man’ does not believe the Earth consciously experiences the harm we inflict on it.

“They cannot understand why it is that we do what we do to the Earth,” said Wade Davis, an anthropologist and former National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence who spent many years studying and living among the Arhuaco.

Surrounded by almost impassable jungle (and in recent decades caught in the crossfire between the Colombian Army, Farc guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries), this ‘lost’ indigenous people lived for five centuries in almost complete isolation and obscurity, steadfastly guarding their territory against outside intrusion. Despite this isolation, their consciousness and cosmovision charges them with the responsibility of maintaining the harmony of nature and the universe on behalf of all mankind.

The thoughts of our ancestors are embedded in every rock and other element in which humans have contact

Three decades ago, the Arhuaco realised that the sacred Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta snow caps – for them, the literal heart of the world – were melting. The páramos (high-altitude savanna) were drying up. Amphibians and butterflies were disappearing. In 1987, concerned that climate change was impacting the cosmos, the Arhuaco came out of centuries of isolation to send us, their ‘Younger Brothers’, a message. They established Organización Indígena Gonawindua Tayrona to represent the community at a governmental level, and invited Ereira to film From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers' Warning.

But their aching exhortation of ecological disharmony and potential disaster fell on deaf ears. Two decades later, they called Ereira back to make a sequel: Aluna. “They had to do better, driven by fear of what they see will happen next,” Ereira said.

As the world accelerates towards calamity, the Arhuaco’s self-awareness as wards for the Earth’s ecological welfare has taken on a sense of urgency.

View image of The Arhuaco maintain an ancient cosmovision based on a worship and custodianship of Mother Nature (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

While in Bogotá researching a National Geographic guidebook to Colombia, I was introduced to Arhuaco political representative (and future Senate candidate) Danilo Villafañe Torres. Known as ‘El Canciller’ (the Chancellor) and ‘Gran Hermano’ (Big Brother), Villafañe inherited the mantle of tribal leader at age 23 from his father, Adalberto, who was killed in 1996 by drug traffickers for opposing illegal coca plantations on Arhuaco land. Villafañe invited me to visit the ‘heart of the world’ in the care of Izquierdo.

“Brother Christopher is here to share our message with the Younger Brothers,” Izquierdo said to the border guard. He dipped his hand into a beautifully hand-woven zijew (shoulder bag) and withdrew a handful of coca leaves. The guard did the same. They exchanged leaves as a symbol of sharing and goodwill.

We were attempting to enter the Resguardo Arhuaco. Occupying a vast tract of land on the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the community’s autonomous territory was granted legal recognition by the Colombian government in 1983. (The Kogi occupy their own resguardo on the northern slopes; the Wiwa, to the south-east.)

The sullen guard scrutinised me with disdain.

Izquierdo – known by the honorific Mamo Menjavi – spoke again, more authoritatively. I heard the words ‘National Geographic’. At that, the custodian smiled, and the massive gates swung open, creaking on their rusting hinges.

View image of The Arhuaco are one of the last uncorrupted indigenous civilisations (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

The ravine-slashed, boulder-strewn drive up the mountain from the village of Pueblo Bello would have challenged a goat. Few vehicles ever make this journey into the heart of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. I felt honoured. Permission for bunachis (outsiders) to visit Nabusimake, the ‘capital’ of the Arhuaco resguardo, is rarely given. To be allowed entry to Nabusimake’s sacred walled inner sanctum is almost unheard of. ‘The entrance of non-indigenous is prohibited’ reads a sign above the thatch-topped entrance gate. For the lucky few who make it inside, photography is forbidden.

But the mamos held council the evening of my arrival and granted me permission to enter. The next day, I clambered up a narrow ladder beside the gate to photograph the hallowed hamlet, nestled in a small pine-scented plateau cusped by a mountain meniscus.

Huddled together against a rough mud-and-stone wall, three teenage girls giggled nervously, unsure whether to pose or flee. Younger children scattered. Women withdrew at my approach. The men – aloof, expressionless and haughtily proud – avoided eye contact, impervious to my presence as I walked a cobblestone thread between worlds. They eased past, mysterious as ghosts. Several wore cowboy hats and other sartorial accoutrements that set off their white Arhuaco attire.

Izquierdo smiled serenely. By contrast, he seemed pleased by my presence.

View image of Permission for outsiders to visit Nabusimake, the ‘capital’ of the Arhuaco resguardo, is rarely given (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

Indefatigable and inspired, the self-assured mamo is at the forefront of a third wave of Arhuaco initiatives that represent a huge leap beyond the unheeded warnings from their mountain refuge. Izquierdo champions opening up the resguardo for ethno-tourism and autonomous economic empowerment, such as the sale of Arhuaco crafts to the Younger Brothers.

Since 1995, various Arhuaco communities have organised themselves into cooperatives to produce and sell export-quality organic coffee. But as climate change pushes coffee production to cooler, higher mountain slopes, they’re now working to supplement coffee earnings with those from selling cacao. And as spiritual leader for Puerto Bello (the gateway village at the base of the mountains), Izquierdo has promoted the cultivation of sugarcane locally to produce panela (unrefined, organic raw brown sugar) for export.

"The idea is also to let the world know more about our culture," Izquierdo said. "We want to carry the message that it is not simply to cultivate, but to cultivate with conscience," he added, referring to organic farming, without harmful pesticides and other inputs, in harmony with Mother Nature.

View image of Concerned about climate change, the Arhuaco came out of centuries of isolation to send the world a message (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

By integrating into the cash economy, the Arhuaco are gaining cultural recognition while deriving income to buy back, parcel by parcel, ancestral territory owned by Younger Brothers, Izquierdo explained. The ultimate goal is for the Arhuaco to control more than 190,000 hectares (almost half a million acres), reconstituting ancestral territories like a rombacabeza (jigsaw puzzle), piece by piece.

I watched, fascinated, as Izquierdo moistened a wooden stick with saliva and dipped it into a poporo (a gourd filled with lime from powdered seashells), a carry-over from pre-Columbian civilisation. Izquierdo extracted some lime, wiped it on a wad of coca leaves to enhance the coca’s stimulating effect, and stuffed the wad in his mouth.

The thick limescale, the hard residue that builds by incremental degree with each wipe around the rim of the gourd, is a living library of every thought underlying every stroke of the stick. For the Arhuaco, an individual’s every thought or dream is literally recorded by the metaphorical action of poporeando (dipping into the poporo). “We write our thoughts with it. It’s a record of a man’s entire life,” Izquierdo said.

View image of Several members of the Arhuaco community champion opening the resguardo for ethno-tourism (Credit: Credit: Christopher P Baker)

Equally, every knot in their intricately crafted zijews and clothing represents a thought or memory. I watched men perched on low wooden stools weaving cloth on ancient looms, deep in concentration as their deft fingers wove together the material world with that of spirit.

The idea is also to let the world know more about our culture

Every aspect of Arhuaco life is permeated with the symbolism of weaving. “Their central metaphor is a loom,” Davis said. The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the very spindle from which the all-knowing Mother’s thread unwinds, turning possibility into reality, dreams and memory. The power of embedded thought is the very weft to the warp of their cosmovision.

Suddenly the meaning of the maguey thread that Izquierdo had handed me became clear. My experience with the Arhuaco was indelibly printed in that metaphorical umbilical cord. A cord uniting the past and present, the spiritual and material worlds, and my understanding – my thoughts, dreams and memory – of the Arhuaco’s cosmovision to be shared with the world.

Our Unique World is a BBC Travel series that celebrates what makes us different and distinctive by exploring offbeat subcultures and obscure communities around the globe.

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travelworldnetwork · 5 years

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Lyaness is the reincarnation of top-rated Dandelyan.

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It's on the banks of the River Thames, in the heart of London, that you'll find the best bar in the entire world.

Actually, that is no longer true. Last year Dandelyan was voted top of the pile on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which is compiled by the same team behind the World's 50 Best Restaurants. Yet, no sooner had it seized the crown, than Dandelyan's management decided to abdicate in comprehensive fashion. Having reached the top, it apparently had to stop and at the time of writing the bar is closed pending a rebirth as Lyaness. It's not just changing decor or menu, it will be an entirely new concept.

It was the newly won title that drew me there at the start of the year, and I was not disappointed. Located in the bowels of the Mondrian London (now rebranded as Sea Containers London), Dandelyan had won a slew of other awards before being recognised as the planet's best in 2018.

The same week of the announcement, founder Ryan Chetiyawardana, aka Mr Lyan, announced its demise. "We were so glad it was relevant when it was around," he said. "It would be a disservice to these amazing people, and to what we have created together, to continue when we think the landscape and the conversation has shifted. It makes sense to burn it down, start afresh, and rise again as something brighter, shinier and more fitting."

On the chilly evening I visited, Dandelyan was packed, every table booked with people who were either tall or beautiful or both, and who had spent a good deal longer getting ready than I had. The music was loud but not enough to impede conversation. The art deco-inspired decor was nicely finished without being too showy, and the table service was slick and personable without being sycophantic or servile.

All of which is to say, there was absolutely nothing wrong with Dandelyan and its drinks menu was one of the most interesting I'd ever seen.

The drinks were inventive to the point of being downright weird. As Heston Blumenthal is to food or Willy Wonka to chocolate, so Dandeylan was to cocktails. Consider the Nano G&T, which paired gin with white pepper and peach, then mixed it with brackish tonic, inspired by unclean water in areas suffering from desertification.

Dandelyan's final concept had been to study the "make-up of plants to create innovative, memorable cocktails and new experiences." This was done through "an exhaustive study of "how plants grow, reproduce and defend themselves, then extracting these qualities – a nose-to-tail approach to flora."

That may sound highfalutin and if all you want is a cold beer on a hot day, then I suggest Dandelyan would not have been the bar for you. That said, the bar wasn't so fancy as to not serve a decent bit of pub grub – the chicken marinated with balsamic and Worcestershire sauce was especially satisfying.

Surprisingly, given the accolades it had won – and especially given the prime real estate in a notoriously expensive city – the prices were, if not reasonable, then not outright exploitative. The Concrete Sazerac (concrete-filtered cognac, fermented Peychaud's Bitters and absinthe) I had as my second drink cost around $20 and it featured an edible chocolate stone.

When it came time to leave, I might not have fully believed Dandelyan was the best bar in the world, but I wouldn't have been able to name anything that got so many things right, nor anywhere that made me smile quite so much at its daring.

For someone who'd just discovered the bar, its death seemed untimely, but the prospect of something even fresher replacing it seems incredibly bold and, in its own way, thrilling.

TRIP NOTES

traveller.com.au/england

visitengland.com

FLY

Etihad, Emirates and Qantas all offer daily flights to London via their respective hubs from both Melbourne and Sydney. See etihad.co; emirates.com; qantas.com

DRINK

Lyaness is located on the ground floor of Sea Containers London, formerly Mondrian London. See seacontainerslondon.com/food-drink/lyaness/

Jamie Lafferty was a guest of Dandelyan.

from traveller.com.au

#Travel Guide

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travelworldnetwork · 5 years

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Valletta has been acknowledged by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1980. Photo: Alamy

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Malta can feel like a nation designed for pub quiz questions. Which country was governed by knights for almost 300 years before being surrendered to Napoleon? What is the nearest Commonwealth nation to Britain? What is the smallest nation in the EU?

It's not just the smallest country in the EU – Malta is one of the very smallest anywhere in the world. Small enough that it would fit into New South Wales more than 2500 times. Its population, however, is roughly only 17 times smaller. Malta may not be huge but it's simultaneously one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

Of all its pockets of humanity, nowhere is quite so full of life as the current capital, Valetta. As well as being Malta's seat of government, it was one of 2018's European Capitals of Culture although given its tiny size and limited accommodation, organisers hoped the extra tourists would take a look at the entire country through a cultural lens.

To walk its narrow lanes now, to see its busy restaurants and bustling bars, Valetta feels both modern and ancient. Photo: Shutterstock

Why did Valetta pursue this cultural construct handed down by the EU? While some destinations seek to put themselves on the map and others try to get the public's perception of them to change, the Maltese used it as an excuse to give Valetta a much-needed spring clean.

Walking the stone streets and feeling the Mediterranean breeze, it's hard to imagine that not so very long ago Valetta was rundown enough for many locals to consider leaving. It was perceived as unsafe and many of its businesses foundered. That, despite the city being acknowledged by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site as far back as 1980.

To walk its narrow lanes now, to see its busy restaurants and bustling bars, Valetta feels both modern and ancient, something like a younger, more functional version of a mid-sized Italian city. It's casually cool but also polished and clean – the idea that it was a borderline ghetto seems genuinely impossible.

Quite where Valetta ends and the neighbouring towns begin is difficult to identify – so compact is the architecture and so ill-defined are the borders – until you stumble north to Spinola Bay. This could be any neighbourhood, anywhere in the Med, ravaged by mass tourism.

When Valetta was planned by the Knights of St John almost 500 years ago, they took into consideration the climate and built high structures to provide as much shadow as possible. Nonetheless, it can feel breathless in July and August, when the streets seem to constrict in the relentless heat.

Having walked as much as I could handle in the capital, I decide to take a trip west to Malta's second largest island, Gozo. Ask the anyone here where they're from and Malta might be their second answer: first and foremost they are Gozitans with a proud and distinct heritage, attitude and – though my ears couldn't decipher it – accent.

A short ferry ride from the mainland, past the small almost completely uninhabited island of Comino, Gozo has just 33,000 of Malta's total population. Its largest settlement is Victoria in the centre of the island. Here grandmas sit outside their houses fanning themselves and awaiting the latest gossip; in town, generational gold dealers haggle over the latest arrivals. Above, the Cittadella dominates the town. The oldest parts were built more than 3500 years ago but the majority of what stands today was reconstructed in the early 1600s.

Too soon, my whirlwind tour of the island is over and I make my way back to the ferry and, eventually Valetta where the city is gearing up for another night of celebration – saints' days are causes for parties across town on these sticky August nights.

I feel as though this kind of thing has been going on in peace and prosperity forever, but I am assured that isn't the case. Thus the Maltese government's will to implement change via the Capital of Culture project seems like an endorsement of this EU initiative.

Next stop: Gozo. Photo: Alamy

And its next big project now that Valetta's fanfare has died away? Gozo.

TRIP NOTES

Jamie Lafferty was a guest of Visit Malta.

traveller.com.au/malta

visitmalta.com

FLY

Getting to Malta requires at least two stops. Etihad and Emirates offer relatively efficient routes through code share arrangements. See etihad.com; emirates.com

STAY

Located in a historic building in the heart of Valetta, the Palais le Brun was opened in 2018. palaislebrun.com

from traveller.com.au

#Travel Guide

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By Shafik Meghji

1 April 2019

“Stay at least 200m away from the whaling station – it’s filled with asbestos and the roofs could literally blow off,” warned expedition leader Nate Small, as we stepped gingerly out of our Zodiac and into the fizzing surf at Stromness Bay, South Georgia. I picked a careful route across the grey-pebble beach, eyeing warily the growling fur seals and slumbering elephant seals, their gargantuan bodies emitting a series of burps, bellows and rumbling bass notes.

At the far end of the bay, set against a mountain slope and surrounded by bog land, was a cluster of dilapidated, rusty, corrugated iron buildings. Huge sections of the roofs and walls were missing, and those that remained rattled incessantly in the near gale-force wind. It looked as if a natural disaster had struck. I stopped at an ‘Asbestos – Keep Out’ sign and peered through the encroaching mist, my extremities numb from the sub-zero conditions. It was a struggle to picture the station as a thriving community, yet a century ago Stromness was part of a highly profitable – and brutal – industry that transformed South Georgia into the whaling capital of the South Atlantic.

View image of Stromness, South Georgia, was once part of a highly profitable – and brutal – industry (Credit: Credit: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy)

You may also be interested in: • The city that lit the world • A strange life at the end of the world • Is this the world’s last paradise?

Earlier in my trip, Seb Coulthard, expedition guide and on-board historian for Polar Latitudes, told me how Ernest Shackleton arrived in Stromness in 1916 following his epic 1,300km escape from Elephant Island, one of the South Shetland Islands that lie just north of the Antarctic Peninsula, after his ship was trapped and later crushed by pack ice. For the polar explorer, the whaling station represented civilisation, but today nature is slowly reclaiming it. Fur seals sheltered beside a blubber cooker, king penguins waddled past disintegrating warehouses and skuas (aggressive, dark-brown seabirds) washed themselves in meandering streams that once ran with the blood of tens of thousands of whales.

A rugged, inhospitable land of glaciers, mountains and fjords, South Georgia is one of the most remote places on Earth. This sub-Antarctic British overseas territory in the South Atlantic is around 1,400km from its nearest inhabited neighbour, the Falkland Islands, and is only accessible by sea. Like me, the majority of the nearly 18,000 people who visit each year are on Antarctic cruises. The island spans 3,755 sq km – less than a fifth of the size of Wales – and around half is covered permanently by ice (though, as a result of climate change, its glaciers are drastically retreating).

Despite its isolation and harsh environment, South Georgia was once a vital part of the global economy. First sighted in 1675, this uninhabited island was claimed for Great Britain by James Cook in 1775. His accounts of abundant seal populations aroused the interest of sealers from the UK and the US. In little more than a century, South Georgia’s fur seals were hunted to the verge of extinction. By the early 1900s, sealing was no longer economically viable, but it was quickly replaced by an equally bloody industry.

View image of South Georgia was once a vital part of the global economy, but today it’s being reclaimed by nature (Credit: Credit: Shafik Meghji)

The day after my visit to Stromness, my ship sailed south through 75-knot winds to King Edward Cove. Scattered with shipwrecks and mini icebergs, backed by forbidding mountains and obscured by drizzle, this sweeping bay was the location of South Georgia’s first whaling station, Grytviken. Today it is the site of the island’s main settlement, home to the majority of the 15 to 30 people, mostly scientists and government officials, who live on South Georgia at any one time.

After paying my respects to Shackleton, who is buried in Grytviken’s small cemetery, I was taken around the decaying whaling station by Finlay Raffle, a curator at the site’s museum. We walked through an industrial landscape of squat towers, warehouses, power plants, mazes of inter-connected pipes, and huge blubber and bone cookers, everything thickly covered with rust. Along the shoreline, ships and boats in varying stages of collapse were pushed up at odd angles by the tide. Chunks of whale bone carpeted the muddy ground.

In 1902, Norwegian polar explorer Carl Anton Larsen stopped in South Georgia and chanced upon a beautiful natural harbour. After the discovery of several sealers’ try-pots – used to render oil from blubber – the area was named Grytviken (‘Pot Cove’ in Norwegian). “They moored not far off from where your ship is today,” Raffle said. “The only difference was when they looked out over the water they saw hundreds of whales in this bay alone.” With the northern hemisphere whaling industry in decline due to the decimation of whale populations, Larsen spotted a business opportunity. He returned to Grytviken in November 1904 and set up a whaling station, which swiftly prospered. By 1912, there were six other whaling stations on South Georgia, including Stromness.

View image of Grytviken, South Georgia’s first whaling station, is the site of the island’s main settlement (Credit: Credit: Shafik Meghji)

Narrowly dodging a pair of fur seals, who blended in remarkably well with the rusty machinery, we approached an old whale-catcher. With its steam-powered engine, reinforced hull and mighty harpoon gun, the whaling ship Petrel could capture as many as 14 whales on a single trip. Back at Grytviken, the animals would be winched onto a slipway, the ‘flensing plan’. “It was very slippery with all the blood and oil, so the men wore boots with nails in them to grip properly” Raffle said. “They had a flensing knife – a long, almost hockey stick with a sharp, curved blade, which they used to cut the blubber away.” The whole process took 20 minutes per whale.

Initially the whalers were only interested in the blubber, but later regulations forced them to use the whole of the carcass, Raffle explained, pointing out gory rotating blades and a 24-tonne blubber cooker. Although the meat and bone-meal were sold as animal feed and fertiliser, whale oil was the real prize. “The best oils went into food products like margarine and ice cream,” he said. “The second grade went into soap and cosmetics, and the worst was used in industrial processes.” Whale oil also provided glycerol, used in the manufacture of explosives, and high-quality lubricants for rifles, chronometers and other military equipment. As a result, demand soared during World War One and Two.

There were 450 men at Grytviken in its heyday, working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, in temperatures that could plunge below -10C. Larsen was keen to look after their spiritual needs, building an impressive neo-Gothic church. But, said Raffle said, the pastor “was the least employed man on the station”. The cinema, windswept football pitch and ski jump – now just a few bits of broken timber protruding from a hillside – proved rather more popular. The community store, or ‘slop chest’, also provided distractions. “Tobacco was the most popular item but the men also bought lots of cologne,” Raffle said. “Larsen didn’t allow alcohol, so they drank cologne instead. They also had illicit stills, and even got boot polish, squeezed it through bread, and drank the drippings, which apparently also had alcohol. Anything to pass the time.”

View image of The whaling ship Petrel could capture as many as 14 whales on a single trip (Credit: Credit: David Tipling Photo Library/Alamy)

Raffle left me at the former manager’s house, a simple, white-washed building that has been turned into the site’s museum. The displays inside contain some stark figures: 175,250 whales were processed on South Georgia between 1904 and 1965, when the industry collapsed due to over-hunting and developments in the petrochemicals industry. If you consider the Antarctic region as a whole and include the many ‘factory ships’ that processed whales on board, almost 1.5 million whales were killed between 1904 and 1978, when hunting of the species eventually ended.

Whale populations haven’t recovered. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) says blue whale numbers in the southern hemisphere have fallen from as many as 200,000 to the ‘low thousands’; fin whales have undergone a similar decline. There are an estimated 60,000 humpbacks in the southern hemisphere, but this is also far lower than the pre-whaling era. In September 2018, IWC plans for a South Atlantic whaling sanctuary were rejected by pro-whaling countries. Japan later announced it will resume commercial whaling for the first time in three decades, prompting global outrage.

It’s a bittersweet irony in that it was a terrible, brutal industry, yet nature took its sweet revenge by reclaiming it

The plight of the whales is undeniably bleak, but in other respects, South Georgia has become an improbable model of conservation. One of the world’s largest marine reserves, the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands Marine Protected Area, was created here in 2012 to protect more than one million sq km of the surrounding waters, while seal numbers have bounced back: the island now has 98% of the world’s Antarctic fur seals and roughly 50% of its elephant seals.

South Georgia also has 30 million breeding pairs of seabirds. During my visit, I spent a morning at St Andrews Bay in the company of 400,000 king penguins – one of four penguin species found on the island – and an afternoon on Prion Island, an important breeding site for wandering albatrosses. Last year, South Georgia was declared rodent-free after a pioneering eradication programme, which the authorities hope will allow birds like the endemic South Georgia pipit and South Georgia pintail to flourish.

View image of South Georgia is now home to large populations of fur and elephant seals and around 400,000 king penguins (Credit: Credit: Shafik Meghji)

Despite the profusion of wildlife, it was the island’s whaling heritage that remained foremost in my mind as I sailed out of Grytviken. “When you walk about these stations all you see are these rusting boilers, blubber cookers and bone saws,” Coulthard said. “It’s a bittersweet irony in that it was a terrible, brutal industry, yet nature took its sweet revenge by reclaiming it. It’s a reminder that nature doesn’t need human beings; we need nature.”

This trip was made possible by Polar Latitudes. Trips to South Georgia are also available through Quark Expeditions, One Ocean Expeditions and National Geographic Expeditions, among other operators.

Join more than three million BBC Travel fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

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Sites such as Treptower Park provide a glimpse into the Berlin's anguished soul. Photo: Shutterstock

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On a relaxed, blue-sky afternoon a gaggle of teenage boys in T-shirts and torn jeans are showing off their skateboarding skills. Clattering down the granite steps of Berlin's Treptower memorial they whoop for joy before racing back up to the top.

"I think this is a stupid place to skateboard," says my guide, Kathinka Minthe, curtly. "But it probably makes good Instagram pictures, right?"

As a child of the Cold War, Kathinka is acutely aware of the solemn significance of Treptower Park, which commemorates the 80,000 Russian troops who died in the ferocious Battle of Berlin in 1945.

Designed by the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky, the nine-hectare park on the banks of the Spree, was completed in May 1949 and expresses the belligerent, unyielding mood of the world's first communist superpower. Photo: Shutterstock

"Treptower Park is the largest Soviet war memorial in Germany – you won't see anything like this anywhere else in western Europe," she says. "But it's also a military cemetery. The ashes of 7000 Red Army troops are buried here."

Designed by the Soviet architect Yakov Belopolsky, the park, which covers nine hectares on the banks of the Spree, was completed in May 1949 and expresses the belligerent, unyielding mood of the world's first communist superpower.

"As a statement of architectural propaganda it's very powerful, don't you think?" says Kathinka.

Visitors to the park are first greeted by a three-metre-tall sculpture of Mother Russia grieving for her fallen sons before turning into an avenue of weeping willows leading to a jagged, geometric arch guarded by the bowed figures of two Soviet soldiers. The two pillars, built in red granite, represent the Soviet flag.

From here a series of tiered lawns and sarcophagi lead to the Herculean 12-metre figure of a Soviet soldier set atop a small man-made hill. The soldier, modelled on Sergeant Nikolai Masalov, carries a child in one arm and in the other a massive sword piercing a shattered swastika; to underline their triumph over the Nazis, the Soviets used granite from Hitler's shattered New Reich Chancellery to construct their sprawling war memorial.

While the iconography of death employed at Treptower Park will be familiar to anyone who has visited military cemeteries elsewhere, there is something peculiarly unsettling about memorialising a political ideology that inflicted so much suffering on the German people.

In Stasiland, Anna Funder details the apparatus of repression employed in the German Democratic Republic from 1949 to the fall of the Berlin Wall. "At the end, the Stasi [State Security Service] had 97,000 employees," she writes. "But it also had over 173,000 informers among the people."

While much of Berlin's Cold War past has been obliterated – only fragments of the Wall survive and Checkpoint Charlie is a crude facsimile – Treptower Park has a guaranteed future; under the terms of its unification Germany is required to pay for the upkeep of all three Soviet war memorials in Berlin – the others are in the Tiergarten and Schönholzer Heide.

"Every so often there's a debate in the newspapers about the Soviet memorial in the Tiergarten," says Kathinka. "Because it's flanked by two T-34 tanks people think it's too militaristic and want it deconstructed, but that's never going to happen."

The 12-metre figure of a Soviet soldier set atop a small man-made hill is modelled on Sergeant Nikolai Masalov and carries a child in one arm. Photo: Shutterstock

Dealing with Berlin's communist legacy is no less challenging than coming to grips with the scale of atrocities perpetrated by the Third Reich. Earlier, I'd spent 40 minutes exploring the city's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a vast labyrinth of concrete slabs and passageways. Both experiences left me feeling unsettled and drained.

For a non-German, Berlin remains a city of unfathomable complexity and unimaginable suffering. Sites such as Treptower Park provide a glimpse into the city's anguished soul, but provide no answers and little solace. "No other city has repeatedly been so powerful and fallen so low," writes historian Rory MacLean. "No other capital has been so hated, so feared, so loved."

Trip Notes

FLY

Etihad Airways flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Berlin's Tegel Airport, via Abu Dhabi. See etihad.com

Treptower Park has a guaranteed future: under the terms of its unification Germany is required to pay for the upkeep of all three Soviet war memorials in Berlin – the others are in the Tiergarten and Schonholzer Heide. Photo: Shutterstock

STAY

As its name suggests, the Adina Apartment Hotel Checkpoint Charlie is walking distance from some of Berlin's most famous Cold War landmarks and has pleasant one-bedroom apartments from $250 a night. See adinahotels.com

VISIT

Berlin Private Tours (berlinprivatetours.com) offers escorted walking tours of Treptower Park and other Cold War and Nazi-era monuments. Entry to the park, about seven kilometres from Alexanderplatz, is free.

traveller.com.au/germany

Mark Chipperfield was a guest of TFE Hotels and Rail Europe.

from traveller.com.au

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A wall of surstromming. This canned herring is fermented for so long and is so potent that it fizzes on opening. Photo: Mo Styles

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I'm sitting in Sture, a dark restaurant in Malmo. Run by chef Jonas Dellow, it marries French techniques with New Nordic cuisine making it very Michelin friendly. The service is slick, the presentation flawless. More importantly, the food itself is delicious – the barbecued pike perch being the best version of that fish I've ever had. Malmo may not quite be Copenhagen in its culinary prowess, but it's no slouch, either.

As I wipe the last of the dessert from my chin, chef Dellow comes out for a quick chat. We shoot the breeze for a while, but in spite of myself, I have to confess to him that I'd actually encountered two of the items from his superlative tasting menu earlier in the day – foie gras and beef tartar. He seems vaguely interested in this, but laughs nervously when I tell him that as well as being on his tasting menu, they're both items in the Malmo's new Disgusting Food Museum.

Less than 10 minutes' walk from Sture, the museum was opened last year as a pop-up, but has proved so wildly popular that it has now had its future secured for 2019. A second iteration has also opened in Los Angeles.

French snails. Photo: Mo Styles

This Swedish original is situated in Slaghuset, an old slaughterhouse that later became a sort of industrial-themed nightclub, before lying empty and finally being repurposed. As museum director Andreas Ahrens jokes, there's always been something disgusting going on here.

Before arriving, I had assumed the main idea was the culinary equivalent of an Edwardian freakshow. Come see the horrors of the Orient! Gaze on the hideousness from darkest Africa! And, among the 82 exhibition items, there are some that do fall into that category. The Sardinian casu marzu is a wheel of pecorino with live maggots boring their way through its centre; the mouse wine is the colour of a deep rose, with dozens of hairless, blind baby mice making a macabre seabed.

Exhibits like that have led to accusations of animal cruelty from people presumably too horrified or impatient or stupid to actually take-in the rest of the exhibition. Despite its name, and despite how much people laugh and learn while they are there, the Museum of Disgusting Food is actually a cleverly disguised sustainability museum.

"We really wanted to find a way to get people to come, but it couldn't just be a sustainability museum – if we'd done that, it would just be preaching to the choir," explains Andreas. "Instead we wanted people to come, to have fun, but to learn without us aggressively pushing an agenda."

An original list of 300 potential items came down to about 80. Almost every week it gets suggestions from visitors, but Ahrens is pretty happy with its current roster. It is designed to be controversial: "We want everyone who comes here to see something on display and say 'this shouldn't be here!' When people see something they eat often, they'll hopefully have the thought that 'well if this is normal for me, then everything here is normal for someone'. Each item we have is either a delicacy or commonly eaten around the world."

There are many selections that, having come from so close to home, feel a little insulting. I am Scottish and the sight of haggis makes me want to lift the little "chieftain of the pudding race" from its plinth and recite a soothing Robert Burns poem to it.

While Scots occasionally grumble about their national dish being here, Andreas tells me that the visitors most likely to complain are Australian. They do not seem to much mind witchetty grubs being on the wall, and few people gripe about Musk Stix but the inclusion of Vegemite is a persistent bugbear.

"They get really upset when they see it," says Andreas. "I've heard that people have been on morning shows, sitting on the sofas complaining that we have it here. I think they're half joking. I hope."

At the start of the museum, the different classifications of disgust are defined – some are conceptually disgusting, some visually. Others may cause revulsion through how they smell or taste. Then there are those, such as the mass production of beef and pork, which are so illogical, so obviously damaging to us and our planet, that disgust seems like the only sensible response.

The Sardinian casu marzu is a wheel of pecorino with live maggots boring their way through its centre. Photo: Anja Barte Telin

Disgusting would be about the gentlest term to describe le gavage, the force-feeding of geese to hyper-fatten their livers, a video of which is on show in the museum. (That night, when I'm served foie gras in Sture, I can't really enjoy it because of what I'd seen and resolved to stop eating it in the future.)

Having looked around the entire exhibition, I make my way over to Andreas' counter where he has laid out a sampler of about 10 dishes that had been found in the museum. Behind, a chalkboard lists the days since the last time someone vomited during this bizarre tasting menu.

It starts with dried insects, which are so devoid of flavour as to seem a little unremarkable. Next comes some pungent Swedish caviar and a slimy piece of durian. Both are actually quite tasty. These are followed by century eggs, with their pungent reek and rotten look. "We had a father and son who almost puked from these," says Andreas with what sounds like vague disappointment. "They were crawling around on their hands and knees – really they were so close, but they held it in."

After the eggs comes a selection of cheeses that are each sharper and harder to cope with than the last. The best one, if there is such a thing, is the su callu sardu. The disgust here again comes from the method: a baby goat is allowed to suckle before being slaughtered, after which its stomach is removed and the new milk allowed to mature inside the belly.

Towards the end of this strange menu, things step up a notch with the notorious harkal, a rotten shark from Greenland. The smell feels something like being punched and tear-gassed at the same time, but the portion is so mercifully tiny that I'm able to swallow it down without much drama.

The closest I come to throwing up comes from the final item, an especially virulent stinky tofu. "Really this is the worst one I could find," beams Andreas. For what feels like two days afterwards, the burps from this dreadful meal seem to haunt me.

When I visit, the notorious surstromming is unfortunately (or blissfully) out of stock. This canned herring is fermented for so long and is so potent that it fizzes on opening. It's so violently pungent that Swedish law forbids it from being opened inside. There's an anecdote about a landlord being taken to court for kicking out a tenant who had been eating it in his rented apartment. The tenant was going to win until the defence opened a can of surstromming at which point the judge threw the case, and the fish, out of court. Of the 30 or so vomits that have happened inside the museum, more than half have been caused by this foul dish.

Happy to have dodged that bullet, I shake hands with Andreas and make a move towards fresher air, but before I go, he wants to show off a new item that will hopefully take pride of place in a month or so. What is it? "Beaver anal-gland liquor," smiles the Swede. Of course it is.

TRIP NOTES

Traveller.com.au/sweden

malmotown.com

DISGUST

The Disgusting Food Museum is open Wednesday-Sunday and is a short walk from the train station. The tasting menu at the end is optional, but in case you're feeling queasy, your ticket is printed on a sickbag. disgustingfoodmuseum.com

DELIGHT

For food at the opposite end of the culinary scale but within a pleasant stroll of the museum, head to Sture. Substitutes for foie gras are available if you happen to be visiting post-tour. restaurantsture.com

FLY

Qatar Airways and Emirates offer daily flights to Copenhagen from Sydney and Melbourne, via their respective hubs. From there it's a short train ride over the famous bridge to Malmo. See qatarairways.com, emirates.com

Jamie Lafferty was a guest of Malmo and the Disgusting Food Museum.

from traveller.com.au

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By Eliza Apperly

29 March 2019

At the end of a quiet, suburban cul-de-sac in north-eastern Berlin, Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer quickly ushers me into his garage. He casts a watchful glance down the road, as if to check I’ve come here alone.

“I’d ask you not to mention the precise location,” he said. “The neighbours all know what I do, but I don’t want any outside trouble.”

Inside, the garage smells of fresh cement, with lingering wafts of strong coffee and cigarettes. There’s a back door open onto a garden, letting in a wash of late-afternoon sun. A large-scale map of Germany is pinned to the far wall. In the corner, there’s a simple workbench, where Friedrichs-Friedländer has left a hammer, a set of metal stamps, and a sheet of paper bearing a series of names, dates and the word ‘Auschwitz’.

For the last 14 years, Friedrichs-Friedländer has hand-engraved individual Holocaust fates onto small commemorative plaques called Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones’. Each plaque is a 10cm brass square affixed on top of a cuboid concrete block that’s installed into the pavement directly before a Holocaust victim’s last known, voluntary residence.

View image of Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones’, are commemorative plaques honouring victims of the Holocaust (Credit: Credit: Zoonar GmbH/Alamy)

You may also be interested in: • A French village committed to deception • Anne Frank’s American pen pal • How Crete changed the course of World War Two

There are now more than 70,000 of these stones around the world, spanning 20 different languages. They can be found in 2,000-plus towns and cities across 24 countries, including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Together, they constitute the world’s largest decentralised memorial.

For all this international reach, the Stolpersteine are highly individual in form. The project’s motto is ‘one victim, one stone’, referencing a teaching in the Talmud, the book of Jewish law, that ‘a person is only forgotten when his or her name is forgotten’.

Each plaque’s inscription begins ‘HERE LIVED’ in the local language, followed by the individual’s name, date of birth and fate. For some, this is exile to another country. For others, it is suicide. For a few, it is liberation from a concentration camp. But for the vast majority, it is deportation and murder.

You won’t fall, but if you stumble and look, you must bow down with your head and your heart

The project began in 1992, when Cologne-based artist Gunter Demnig first laid plaques in this format for Sinti and Roma victims of the Holocaust, who during that time were commonly referred to as ‘Gypsies’. He called the plaques ‘stumbling stones’ as a metaphor. “You won’t fall,” he recently told CNN. “But if you stumble and look, you must bow down with your head and your heart.”

For Demnig, the immediacy of each location – directly in front of a victim’s last known home – is critical to the memorial’s impact. “When people see the terror started in their city, their neighbourhood, maybe even in the house they are living in, it all becomes quite concrete,” he said in a recent interview with Deutsche Welle.

By 2005, the Stolpersteine project had expanded so much that Demnig could no longer both make and install each plaque. That’s when he asked Friedrichs-Friedländer to take on the production.

“I knew within five minutes we could work together,” Friedrichs-Friedländer said. “For me it is the strongest form of Holocaust memorial you can have. You bring the names back.”

View image of Each plaque is highly individual, featuring the person’s name, date of birth and fate (Credit: Credit: Adam Berry/Alamy)

Friedrichs-Friedländer is a burly, softly spoken man who moves with quiet, methodical purpose around his garage, which is not open to the public. He works alone, in silence, six days and at least 50 hours a week. As he sits down for a quick coffee break, he rubs bloodshot eyes. It is nearing 16:00, and he does not eat lunch.

“I need the blood in my brain,” he said, “not in my stomach.”

Friedrichs-Friedländer engraves each plaque by hand – stamp by stamp, letter by letter, fate after fate. Although there’s now a minimum nine-month waiting list for a Stolpersteine, he vehemently rejects mechanising the process.

“As soon as you bring in a mechanised element, it becomes anonymous,” he said.

View image of Michael Friedrichs-Friedländer engraves each plaque by hand (Credit: Credit: Aleksandra Koneva)

To date, Friedrichs-Friedländer has engraved more than 63,000 Stolpersteine in more than 20 languages. The work is regularly traumatic. His eyes water as he describes a set of 34 stones for a former Jewish orphanage in Hamburg. The children were all between one and six years old.

“With the youngsters it always hits particularly hard,” he said.

As much as the plaques serve to commemorate individual lives, the Stolpersteine also trace the malign mechanics of deportation. Multiple stones in front of the same building show how the Gestapo returned to the same house again and again, splintering neighbours and family members along the routes to Treblinka, Theresienstadt, the Riga ghetto and Kaiserwald, and Auschwitz.

“I’ve done stones for families of 20 members,” said Friedrichs-Friedländer, “all sent in different directions, deported on different days.”

But when the Stolpersteine are laid before a building, “families are reunited,” he explained, brought back together in front of the home they once shared.

View image of Since 1992, more than 70,000 Stolpersteine have been installed in 24 countries around the world (Credit: Credit: Sean O’Connor)

The Stolpersteine also foster relationships between present-day residents of a building or street. The majority of stumbling stones are researched and funded by local neighbourhood initiatives.

Dietmar Schewe, a retired school principal in Berlin, recently coordinated a set of stumbling stones with his neighbours. “It was really the first time our apartment building felt like a community” he said.

Likewise, the stumbling stones can reunite a victim’s surviving family members. Those who undertake the research required to produce a Stolpersteine must make contact with as many of the victim’s relatives as they can find – both to secure their approval and to invite them to the stone-laying ceremony.

For me it is the strongest form of Holocaust memorial you can have

Schewe welcomed 25 visitors from Israel to the Stolpersteine ceremony in front of his building.

“It was very harmonious, as well as very emotional,” he said. “We were able to show our visitors exactly which apartment their family members had lived in. It felt like a small but important encounter with the lived environment of their relatives.”

Friedrichs-Friedländer tells me of another installation ceremony in Cologne, where 34 relatives gathered from different countries around the world. “People have discovered relatives they never knew they had,” he said.

Such is the power of the Stolpersteine that a number of schools in the German-speaking world have now integrated the project into their curriculum, with students grouping together to research local Holocaust victims. It’s another important motivation for Friedrichs-Friedländer, who describes his own youth in Germany as a series of unanswered questions. “Teachers, parents… nobody wanted to tell you anything. It was as if the Third Reich never happened.”

View image of The majority of Stolpersteine are researched and funded by local neighbourhood initiatives (Credit: Credit: dpa picture alliance/Alamy)

As dusk settles outside, Friedrichs-Friedländer turns on the garage light, casting a soft glow over a pallet of finished stones ready to be delivered to districts across Berlin. Their freshly stamped inscriptions are like pristine telegrams, each bearing details of a life stolen or undone.

Soon, Friedrichs-Friedländer will lock up the garage for the night, take a walk, buy some groceries and have dinner with his family. He tries hard not to bring his work home with him, but it can be a struggle.

One must be present – one must suffer

“There are awful days when all I can do is cry,” he said. But the whole point of the Stolpersteine is their humanity – the emotional connection they require with the life and fate of each victim.

“One must be present. One must suffer,” Friedrichs-Friedländer continued. “If I ever get used to the work, if it ever becomes routine, I’ll stop.”

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Malta is famous for pastizzi, a filled, savoury pastry that is the national go-to. Photo: Alamy

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THE MEAL PLANNER

THE EXPERT

CHRIS BONELLO, Executive Chef, Zagame Corporation

Born to a farming family in Malta, Chris Bonello has an innate connection to seasonal produce. Under the ex-Vue Group executive chef, MPD Steak Kitchen in Berwick was named AHA Victoria Restaurant of the Year in 2018. Bonello was named Chef of the Year. See mpdsteakkitchen.com

BREAKFAST

Caffe Cordina is one of my favourite spots to enjoy a Maltese pastizz or a qassata. Tucked away in an old palazzo, Caffe Cordina takes me back to my childhood, when I watched my grandmother make homemade pastries in her kitchen. Malta is famous for pastizzi, a filled, savoury pastry that is the national go-to. I can always count on receiving friendly service and traditional handmade goodies at Caffe Cordina. See caffecordina.com

Chris Bonello has an innate connection to seasonal produce.

SNACK

The Pulled Meat Company is one of my favourite places to get pulled meat ftajjar (traditional Maltese stuffed flatbread) and home-made agnolotti. If you are feeling adventurous, give their rabbit belly burger a try. Rabbit is a very popular protein in Maltese cooking – I grew up eating it each Sunday for lunch. We would usually have rabbit stew, cooked with white wine and garlic, or sometimes my mother would use the meat to make traditional Maltese sausages, which were delicious. See issuqtalbelt.com/portfolio-item/pulled-meat/

LUNCH

One of my childhood friends heads up the kitchen at Marina Club, which makes the experience extra enjoyable for me, as I know each meal is made with passion and seasonal produce. They always have a great menu selection and steak cut variety, including tomahawk, T-bone, flap meat, prime, rib eye and short rib. Enjoy with a bottle of wine or cold, long cocktails. It's on the waterfront and opposite the famous three cities, making it one of my favourite places to take in panoramic views of Valletta – and enjoying a steak while I'm at it. See marinaclubvw.com

APERTIVO

I love spending the late afternoon at Trabuxu Wine Bar, exploring the impressive wine list and grazing on an impressive charcuterie board that includes cured meats and homemade parfaits, all sourced locally and served with traditional crunchy sourdough. If you're hungry, and can't wait till dinner, try the rabbit spaghetti. The rabbit is cooked in garlic and white wine with bay leaves, thyme, basil, oregano, tomatoes and Three Hills passata, which is made in Malta and distributed globally. Once the rabbit is cooked, pasta and peas are added to absorb all the flavours. See trabuxu.com.mt

DINNER

Palazzo Preca is the perfect place to go if you want to impress your fellow dining guests. Chef and owner, Ramona Preca is the driving force behind this award-winning restaurant in a 16th century palazzo on Strait Street. I would recommend the locally-sourced grilled swordfish with olives, capers and mixed herbs. The swordfish – or pixxispad in Maltese – is sourced from local fish markets and is presented in a signature style. See palazzoprecavalletta.com

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Squished between Europe and Asia, the Georgian capital of Tbilisi is a city in bloom, set in a dramatic valley through which the Mtkvari river flows. Photo: Shutterstock

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THE ONE WALK

Squished between Europe and Asia, the Georgian capital of Tbilisi is a city in bloom, set in a dramatic valley through which the Mtkvari river flows. Starting in the city's main Freedom Square, wander the cobblestoned streets of the old town, passing an intoxicating architectural mix of Orthodox churches, ornate art nouveau buildings and the colourful 19th century wooden houses that tumble down the hill. But do it soon, because Tbilisi won't stay crowd-free for long. See crooked-compass.com

THE ONE VIEWPOINT

Take a cable car (or, if you're feeling energetic, hike) up to the 4th-century remains of the Narikala Fortress, then walk along the clifftop path lined with pomegranate juice sellers to the iconic Mother of Georgia statue. You'll get panoramic views over the old town in front, and the botanical gardens sweeping into the valley behind. See gnta.ge

THE ONE RESTAURANT

If you're itching to peek inside one of the colourful wooden houses you've been seeing around town, you can do so at Keto & Kote (Zandukeli Dead End, 3, Tbilisi 0179), a hilltop restaurant set within one of them. Inside you'll find high ceilings and chandeliers, and a menu filled with Georgian classics including kinkali soup dumplings and oozy khachapuri cheese bread.

Traditional houses in Tbilisi's Old Town. Photo: Shutterstock.com

THE ONE WINERY

Georgia is the oldest wine-producing country in the world, with use of the kvevri, the UNESCO-protected traditional earthenware winemaking vessel, dating back 8000 years. Georgians are said to drink an average of two litres of wine a day, and you can attempt to match them at Iago biodynamic vineyard in Chardakhi village, just a short drive out of town. Its wines can be found on the list of unique wines of the Ritz Hotel in London. See iago.ge

THE ONE HOTEL

Set above the old town, Terrace Hotel is an elegant, 26-room property with pared-back interiors, high ceilings, tall windows and spectacular views over the city. It's a 20-minute walk to the main Freedom Square. The breakfast served on the rooftop terrace restaurant is particularly impressive. See theterracetbilisi.com

THE ONE BATHING EXPERIENCE

After a day of furious sightseeing, Tbilisi's famed Abanotubani sulphur baths are the place to be. You'll likely smell their eggy aroma before you see the elegant domed brick structures they lie beneath. Once inside, choose between public and private bathing options in the mineral-rich springs, in which Alexandre Dumas and Pushkin are both said to have bathed. Consider adding a sauna or massage session.

THE ONE SNACK

Don't miss trying a sausage-shaped churchkhela candy from a street stall. Made with grapes, nuts and flour, locals call it the Georgian Snickers. In reality, it's more like eating a candle, but still it must be sampled.

THE ONE MONASTERY

Set on a hilltop above Mtskheta, Georgia's religious centre and one of the country's oldest cities, the UNESCO-listed Jvari Orthodox monastery dates back to the 6th century. A half hour drive out of Tbilisi, it has excellent views over the ancient city below.

THE ONE MONUMENT

One of Tbilisi's most emblematic structures is its clock tower. That might sound boring but it was built by Georgian puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze, and it looks like something out of a fairytale. Grab a glass of cha cha Georgian brandy at one of the cafes in front of the topsy-turvy creation while you wait for the hour to strike: an angel will pop out of the top of the tower to hit the bell, while below a puppet show depicting the circle of life begins.

ONE MORE THING

Georgia's true delights, it has to be said, lie in its countryside. Once you're done exploring Tbilisi, book in a four- or five-day trek through the stunning Svaneti region. You'll discover tousled meadows filled with yellow and purple wildflowers, and dotted with ancient villages characterised by the region's emblematic stone watchtowers.See crooked-compass.com

Nina Karnikowski travelled as a guest of Crooked Compass.

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Tolosa market: 800 years of tradition. Photo: Shutterstock

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For almost 800 years the farmers of Tolosa have spent their Saturdays doing exactly as they do today: rising early, while it's still cold and dark outside and loading their trucks – once their horses and carts – in the growing dawn light. They then journey into town past old farmhouses still quiet, tendrils of smoke drifting from stone chimneys, livestock beginning to stir.

It's market day. The farmers trundle in from the Basque countryside, from the beautiful hills that hold the key to the rich produce they have to sell, to the fruits and vegetables, to the meat, to the eggs, to the cheese. They've made their way to the same spot, to the place by the river that is now called Tinglado, a covered marketplace surrounded by white archways, where produce is spread across tables, and where the crowds will eventually descend.

This is one of Spain's oldest farmers markets. It predates the current Antipodean fascination with the concept by about, well, 800 years. As soon as the town of Tolosa was founded in 1256, when it was just a rough collection of farmhouses in a spectacular valley surrounded by steep, green hills, farmers began gathering on Saturday mornings to sell their wares.

So much of what makes the Basque Country unique, and so amazing, is on sale here.

The sun is shining the day I arrive in Tolosa, having made the much easier (and later) half-hour drive from San Sebastian, the popular Basque coastal enclave. They say you should never go shopping when you're hungry, so I've called past a local bar on my way to the market to grab a slice of tortilla and a coffee, passing over a few coins for the privilege, before making my way through Tolosa's ancient streets, along its narrow, cobbled walkways shaded by hanging laundry and Basque flags on the path towards Tinglado.

So much of what makes the Basque Country unique, and so amazing, is on sale here today by the river in Tolosa. The first thing I spot is cheese, most locally produced using milk from the sheep whose woolly forms dot the surrounding hills, sold in blocks or wheels. You see labels for Idiazabal, Larraitz etxegarai, bleu des Basques. If you show interest in the cheese, someone will scrape some off for you to taste, to help you decide what's good, and what's better.

It's busy in Tinglado today, the covered space reverberating with the sound of Euskera, the Basque language, with "kaixo" and "eskerrik asko" instead of hello and thanks. This is Basque heartland, the farmers dressed in flannel, the shoppers' heads topped with berets.

I eventually move past the cheese to see what else is being sold. There are tables filled with pork products, with cured bellies and local bacon, with chorizo and with local sausages txistorra, with cheeks, with legs. There's bread, too – mountains of it baked today and meant to be consumed within hours. There are fresh vegetables, of course: root vegetables – because it's winter – all the potatoes and leeks and onions you've ever seen. There are farm-fresh eggs displayed in big baskets from which shoppers can select. There's local honey. There are packets of dried beans including the famous alubias de Tolosa, black beans used to make hearty pork stews.

There are more markets taking place in other parts of Tolosa today, too: flowers and plants at Verdura plaza; textiles at Euskal Herria plaza. The whole town has a carnival feel as people wander and shop and stop for food and drink, and laugh and chat on the street.

This is culture. This is tradition. It's no wonder it's lasted so long.

TRIP NOTES

Ben Groundwater travelled at his own expense.

traveller.com.au/spain

tourism.euskadi.eus

The whole town has a carnival feel as people wander and shop and stop for food and drink, and laugh and chat on the street.

FLY

Singapore Airlines flies twice a week from major Australian cities to Barcelona, via Singapore, with onward connections to Bilbao. See singaporeair.com

STAY

The Hotel Maria Cristina is San Sebastian's only five-star hotel. Rooms from €366 a night, excluding special deals. See marriott.com

from traveller.com.au

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By Kalpana Sunder

26 March 2019

It was a wet, windy day on Pietermaritzburg’s railway platform, located an hour from South Africa’s port city of Durban. The 19th-Century, Victorian-style red brick station, with a corrugated iron roof, lace filigree and wooden ticket windows, was quiet. I pulled my coat closer around me and imagined how it would have felt to have stood here on one fateful night more than a century ago.

On 7 June 1893, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, then a young barrister, was on his way from Durban to Pretoria on behalf of his client, a merchant named Dada Abdulla. When the train came to a stop in Pietermaritzburg, Gandhi was ordered by the conductor to move from the first-class carriage (reserved for white passengers) where he was sitting, to the van compartment for lower-class travellers. When Gandhi refused, showing the conductor his first-class ticket, he was evicted unceremoniously from the train.

This incident changed the course of his life

A plaque on the platform marks the approximate spot where he was pushed from the train carriage with his luggage. “This incident changed the course of his life,” it reads.

Gandhi spent that cold winter night in the station’s tiny, unheated waiting room. “My overcoat was in my luggage, but I did not dare to ask for it lest I should be insulted again, so I sat and shivered,” Gandhi later wrote in his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.

View image of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was evicted from a train in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa (Credit: Credit: Kalpana Sunder)

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Gandhi had relocated to South Africa from Bombay in 1893 after accepting a year-long contract position with an Indian business firm based in Natal in the north-eastern Transvaal region, which had been settled by Boers (descendants of 17th-Century Dutch and Huguenots colonists) after Britain established the Cape Colony further south.

Transvaal’s Indian population had been growing for several decades before Gandhi had arrived. In an 1860 agreement with the government of India, the Transvaal government promised to help settle Indian immigrants in exchange for indentured labour in the region’s sugar fields. But even after serving their indenture, Indians were not fully integrated into society: regulations implemented by the white-minority government subjected new Indian citizens to extra taxation.

After arriving in South Africa, Gandhi was quickly exposed to racial discrimination: just days before boarding the train to Pretoria, he had excused himself from a Durban courtroom after the judge demanded that Gandhi remove his turban.

View image of Gandhi was forced to spend the night in Pietermaritzburg station’s waiting room (Credit: Credit: Kalpana Sunder)

But that moment on the Pietermaritzburg train platform marked the turning point, the catalyst, when Gandhi made the momentous decision to fight the racial discrimination he experienced. “It would be cowardice to run back to India without fulfilling my obligation,” he wrote in The Story of My Experiments with Truth. “The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial – only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. I should try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process.”

“This was his epiphany, when iron entered his soul – until then he was mild-mannered and meek,” said Shiney Bright, a local tour guide.

This was his epiphany, when iron entered his soul

After the Pietermaritzburg incident, Gandhi refused to submit to bigotry, choosing instead to peacefully oppose discriminatory policies, organising strikes and marches to counter biased voting regulations and intolerable working conditions. He believed that by staying in South Africa, he could observe the real nature of racial oppression and effectively combat it. Out of this emerged the concept of satyagraha. Meaning ‘holding on to truth’, satyagraha employs non-violent tactics to win over an opponent’s mind and create a new harmony between both sides of a conflict.

In 1907, when the Transvaal government passed the Asiatic Law Amendment Act, an ordinance requiring the registration of its Indian population, Gandhi organised his countrymen in non-violent protests. Although his resistance led him to be imprisoned on four separate occasions, Gandhi was ultimately successful in negotiating with the white-minority government. As a result, the Indian Relief Act was passed in 1914, eliminating an extra tax on Indian citizens who had not renewed their indentures and recognising the validity of Indian marriages.

After his return to India in 1914, Gandhi employed satyagraha to protest Britain’s mandatory military draft of Indians during World War One; and again after World War Two to negotiate India’s independence from Britain, which was officiated in 1947.

View image of Out of the incident at Pietermaritzburg emerged the concept satyagraha (Credit: Credit: Dinodia Photos/Getty Images)

Gandhi’s displays of passive resistance significantly influenced the path Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela. “The values of tolerance, mutual respect and unity for which he stood and acted had a profound influence on our liberation movement, and on my own thinking,” Mandela said as he accepted the honour of the Freedom of Pietermaritzburg, which was also posthumously bestowed on Gandhi. “They inspire us today in our efforts of reconciliation and nation-building.”

Today, Pietermaritzburg station is a pilgrimage site for Indians who come to pay homage to Gandhi at the spot where he was evicted from the train. During his 2016 visit, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in the museum’s guestbook, “An event at Pietermaritzburg altered the course of India's history”.

The small waiting room now houses a museum dedicated to telling the story of that night in 1893 and the two decades Gandhi spent in South Africa. Informative panels and interactive displays line the walls, and black-and-white photographs of Gandhi in his barrister’s robe adorn the window. I sat on a wooden bench in the centre of the room and contemplated that formative night.

“The Indians I take to visit the train station often leave in tears,” Bright said.

View image of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “An event at Pietermaritzburg altered the course of India's history” (Credit: Credit: RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP/Getty Images)

With its grand Victorian-era buildings like the iconic red-brick city hall, KwaZulu-Natal province’s capital city looks much like it would have when Gandhi’s train rumbled into the station. As I watched the silhouettes of passers-by outside the window, my own eyes teared as I imagined Gandhi on a hard bench much like the one on which I was sitting, steeling himself for the struggle that would define his life and the lives of millions of others. Surrounded by his image, I was overwhelmed by thankfulness for what he had done for my country and my people.

In June 2018, to commemorate the 125th anniversary of this incident, India’s external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj visited Pietermaritzburg, retracing Gandhi’s journey from Pentrich in an old-fashioned carriage like the one Gandhi would have travelled in. Upon her arrival at Pietermaritzburg station, Swaraj inaugurated a statue of Gandhi that stands at the entrance to the platform.

Titled ‘Birth of Satyagraha’, the double-sided statue crafted at the Mahatma Gandhi Digital Museum in Hyderabad, India, features Gandhi as a young lawyer wearing a suit and tie on one side, and an older, bespectacled Gandhi dressed in a traditional Indian dhoti, on the other. The two-day event included a re-enactment of Gandhi being thrown off the train, as well as a banquet at the local city hall, which was lit up in the colours of the Indian flag.

View image of Pietermaritzburg station is now a pilgrimage site for Indians who come to pay homage to Gandhi (Credit: Credit: Kalpana Sunder)

South Africa is now home to the largest Indian population on the African continent, and their influence on the country is palpable. Today, second- and third-generation Indian South Africans operate businesses, serve in government and play for South Africa’s professional sports teams – and it all began one fateful night at Pietermaritzburg Station.

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As part of the celebrations for its 100-year anniversary, British Airways has begun painting four of its aircraft in retro designs. This 747 has been given the BOAC livery from 1964 to 1974. Photo: Stuart Bailey

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There's a wonderful monochrome image of a BOAC de Havilland Comet 4 over Sydney Harbour. The harbour bridge is prominent, but look closely and you'll see there's no Opera House. That's because the photo was taken 60 years ago and the first British jet flew into Sydney's Mascot in 1959 before construction began on the Opera House. That flight slashed the journey time from London to Sydney from 47 hours to 36.

Four years earlier, the British Overseas Airways Corporation, one of the many forerunners of British Airways, had introduced a "tourist class" service on its Lockheed Constellation between Britain and Australia, introducing less wealthy travellers to airline travel.

Apart from Qantas, no international airline has had such a long-standing relationship between Australia and Europe as British Airways. So, as the airline celebrates its "centenary", let's mark some of the key moments in its evolution and its place in Australian travel, with much thanks to BA's official historian.

One of the flying boats that pioneered the post World War II route from Southampton to Rose Bay, Sydney.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

British Airways didn't exist until 1936 and for most of the 20th century Britain's national carrier flew under a succession of other names, most notably BOAC and British European Airways. Yet the airline dates its birthday back to August 25, 1919. This is believed to be because Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij – better known as KLM – is generally considered the world's longest surviving airline. Its first flight from London's Croydon airport took off to Amsterdam, with a British pilot at the controls of a leased British plane, on May 17, 1920.

WORLD'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL PASSENGER SERVICE

Regardless, it's accepted the world's first scheduled international service took off on August 25, 1919, at 9.10am, from London's Hounslow Heath bound for Paris, piloted by "Bill" Lawford. The only passenger was an Evening Standard reporter who had paid Britain's first commercial airline, Aircraft Transport and Travel, 20 guineas for the privilege (though the flight also contained several "brace of grouse destined for the tables of discerning Parisians").

According to the reporter's exclusive after the de Hallivand's arrival at Le Bourget, the trip involved much "hedge-hopping" and "wave-hopping" as Lawford (in an open cockpit!) followed the railway lines and cross-Channel ferries, due to poor visibility, before rising to the maximum height of 4000 feet (1220 metres) over France.

Still, the first international commercial flight, was deemed a huge success, flying "at express speed" and taking a mere 2½ hours to cover 350 kilometres.

LONDON TO AUSTRALIA … IN JUST 12 DAYS

Aircraft Transport and Travel was joined by a plethora of privately-owned British airlines offering international journeys with flying aces from World War I as pilots. But the Brits struggled because rival European airlines were subsidised by governments. In 1924, British airlines were rationalised and Imperial Airways (the real forerunner of BA) was created with a mandate to develop routes to the furthest reaches of the British Empire: South Africa, India and Australia.

Fast forward to April 13, 1935, and Imperial and Qantas launched its ground-breaking, 20,500-kilometre service from London's Croydon airfield to Brisbane. The journey took just 12 days, leaving London at lunchtime on a Saturday, and arriving the following week at Brisbane – after 32 stops. Part of the trip, Paris to Brindisi, was completed by rail. Mussolini's fascist government refused permission for a foreign airline to fly over Italian airspace.

DON'T MENTION THE WAR

BOAC started operations on April Fool's Day 1940, during Britain's "darkest hour" as Imperial merged with British Airways. During World War II, BOAC and Qantas joined forces, particularly on the Horseshoe Route between Auckland and Durban that kept wartime correspondence flowing throughout the "empire".

Immediately after Germany's surrender, the two airlines combined on two different services. On May 31, 1945, the first post-war flight from Britain to Sydney left Bournemouth. A year later, they introduced a twice-weekly flying boat service between Poole harbour and Sydney's Rose Bay, which took just five days, via Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Burma and Singapore. And before May 1946 was out, the first post-war BOAC/Qantas land service began using converted Avro Lancaster bombers cunningly disguised as Lancastrian passenger planes.

The Lancastrian only accommodated nine passengers seated along the side of the fuselage like parachutists. But it did contain what it is arguably the first "flat bed" in commercial aviation – a bunk in what would now be considered the overhead locker. The switch over location between BOAC and Qantas staff was Karachi.

The De Havilland Comet's first arrival in Australia (before the Sydney Opera House was built).

ONWARDS AND UPWARDS

In December 1948, the elegant four-engine Lockheed Constellation began a weekly service that slashed flying time between Britain and Australia. A poster from that era, advertising Australia to Britons, shows outback stockmen watching the Constellation soar above them in a gum-strewn blue sky.

The Constellation record was itself smashed in 1953 when British European Airways, usually confined to Europe, entered the London-to-Christchurch air race to publicise the British-made Vickers Viscount V700's speed between "short legs" (19,900 kilometres in less than 41 hours). But it was the Comet that introduced the "jet age" to Australia, quickly followed by Boeing's 707, which BOAC used on Australian services from 1962. Another poster, showing a blonde female surfer striding towards the Pacific is from that period, circa 1965.

Over the next 30 years British Airways purchased 36 Boeing 747s – the original "jumbo jet" – more than any other airline and several flew to Australia. But BA's Concorde, which flew at 2180km/h (cruise speed) from 1969-2003, never had a chance to test the record to Sydney.

FIVE FAMOUS BA FLIGHTS

1938

After meeting Hitler following the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain emerged from his British Airways flight from Munich, proclaiming "Peace in our time!"

1942

Winston Churchill was the first British PM to fly across the Atlantic when he travelled to meet US President Roosevelt. His BOAC Boeing 314 flying boat flew from Plymouth, via Bermuda and Norfolk, Virginia, then on to Washington DC.

1952

After the death of her father, King George VI, Princess Elizabeth left Kenya instead of continuing her royal tour to Australia. She arrived on a BOAC plane at Heathrow as Queen Elizabeth II.

2005

British PM Tony Blair was aboard a British Airways 777-200 when it set a new record for the world's longest non-stop commercial flight from Brussels to Melbourne – 17,157 kilometres in 18 hours 45 minutes.

2011

Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh flew the first non-stop flight from Perth to London aboard a BA 777 after a Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference. Now Qantas flies the 14,498 kilometre non-stop route in about 18 hours and plans a non-stop flight from Sydney to London by 2022.

SEVEN FAMOUS BA UNIFORMS

1922

Daimler Airway was a subsidiary of BSA (Birmingham Small Arms Company, known for its engines and motorcycles). Swallowed by Imperial, and thus BA, it employed the first "cabin boys" to serve passengers.

1967

Until the 1960s, male and female BA flight attendants wore military-style uniforms. That changed when the first made-to-measure uniforms for the 1500 female "stewardesses" employed by British European Airways were designed by Sir Hardy Amies, the Queen's couturier.

1967

Meanwhile, BOAC introduced paper "mini-dresses" for stewardesses flying to the West Indies. Meant to be discarded after each flight, legend has it sometimes they didn't last that long, with "high-spirited male passengers tempted to take a cigarette lighter to see what would happen".

1969

To celebrate delivery of its first Boeing 747s, BOAC awarded Clive Evans the commission of designing its new female uniform, beating Mary Quant. It chose between Caribbean blue or coral pink for its summer uniform, which was made from Terylene and cotton so it could be washed in a hotel sink and left to drip-dry overnight.

1992

Roland Klein's distinctive red, white and blue vertical stripes had been considered a great success, but Paul Costelloe produced what many regard as the signature BA outfit: a classically tailored single-breasted suit with a silky print blouse or dress and a distinctive upturned boater.

2004

Julien MacDonald, whose outfits had been worn by Nicole Kidman, Kylie Minogue and many other celebrities, was tasked with designing outfits for 25,000 staff of different body shapes and sizes.

2019

Ozwald Boateng is BA's new designer. His top secret uniforms, now for 32,000 staff, will be unveiled before the "centenary" on August 25 this year.

FIVE OLDEST INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES (without changing names)

KLM: 1920

Its first flight, from London to Amsterdam, used a British pilot at the controls of a leased British plane.

Qantas: 1920

Originally it went by the name Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services, but what Aussie ever called it that? Its first international passenger flight in 1935 was from Darwin to Singapore.

Delta: 1928

Now the world's second-largest airline, Delta began in 1924 as a crop-dusting service but became Delta when it started taking passengers. It's first international flight in 1953 was from New Orleans to Caracas via Havana.

Aeroflot: 1932

Founded in 1923, its first international passenger service was from Moscow to Stockholm in 1937.

LOT Polish Airlines: 1929

Its first international route, Warsaw to Vienna, flew in 1929 but LOT ceased operations during World War II.

from traveller.com.au

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