studentsineurope

Toward the end of my semester in Ireland, I started to get a little bored. I had become well acquainted with the bars and clubs of Cork and I had been to most of the local sights like the Rose Garden at Fitzgerald Park, the small-but-entertaining Cork Museum, and the Crawford Art Gallery. But I [...]

Ireland isn’t know for its fine cuisine, and to a certain extent this is an accurate assessment. To be fair, the comfort food is great. Shepherd’s pie and Irish stew are fantastic and I had some great fish chowders while I was staying in seaside towns. Irish soda bread or black currant scones with fresh [...]

This open-air museum seems in a strange place.  Substantially far from the capital of Budapest, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the statues are rather randomly placed in a large open field.  Why aren’t these statues situated closer to the centre of town so that tourists can have easy access?
In fact all these artifacts date [...]

Sometimes you just see something a little amusing.  Here is shot of one such occasion I had in Berlin, the capital of Germany.  Here we can plainly see what could be called nothing more than a toddler’s bike left out in the street, in the middle of the night, attached to a street sign with [...]

Graffiti is illegal in many places and considered a problem in many more.  By and large the major issue with graffiti is with the ‘tagging’ and quick, relatively uncreative pieces that can be seen plaguing public walkways and private properties alike.  Graffiti is very hard to control and councils and governments around the world are [...]

St. Wenceslas is no stranger to Czech statues.  As the patron saint of the country, St Wenceslas is depicted in artwork throughout the country.  The saints of Europe are an important part of the history of almost every single country on the continent and are featured heavily in much of the storytelling.
This particular statue shows [...]

Now that the Roman Forum is pay-per-view, the Pantheon is my favorite free monument in Rome. The piazza in front of the Pantheon is a great place to sit and relax for a while, and the Pantheon itself is a beautiful building and an amazing example of ancient engineering.
The most impressive thing about the Pantheon, [...]

Over the course of 33 years, ending in the early 20th century, a French postman named Ferdinand Cheval gathered stones every day on his mail route to build himself “The Ideal Palace” (Le Palais Ideal) near his village of Hauterives.  We aren’t talking about a little stone igloo – this man created a rather large and [...]

For anyone who visited the Eternal City two or more years ago, it will come as a shock that you now have to pay to enter the Roman Forum. This isn’t exactly breaking news – the site was already closed to the non-paying public when I passed through Rome a year ago. But if you’re [...]

Switzerland’s capital displays a colorful statue - in the middle of one of the major streets – that on closer inspection depicts an ogre devouring a naked baby.  That’s right, a monster eating a baby!  Not your usual European example of religious artifacts and tales.  Perhaps the Swiss aren’t as neutral as we all think!
The original [...]