A website charts out all that is weird and wonderful in the world.

By Steve Korver

Attention, jaded travellers who are convinced that everything exotic has long become familiar to them. The website Atlas Obscura — “a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica” — should get you all worked up enough to hit the road again. Their Canadian listings alone should give you a taste of what’s in store: the Diefenbunker nuclear shelter in Ontario, the Gopher Hole Museum in Alberta, and the Downtown Hotel that serves Sourtoe Cocktails (a combination of champagne and an amputated toe) in the Yukon.  

When it was launched last summer, the website seemed to tap into something that was still missing from the internet and went immediately viral and contributors lined up to donate their own desperately odd destination — ones that have not yet been co-opted by package tours or beer ads.

Atlas Obscura’s mission statement is a noble one: it’s the place to look for: “miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper.” And who isn’t looking?

Two 26 year-olds, the film-maker Dylan Thuras and the science journalist Joshua Foer, came together after discovering a shared passion for the desperately obscure. They met three years ago organising a society meeting for Athanasius Kircher, the 17^th century Jesuit scholar and “last renaissance man” who is listed as the inventor of both the “vomiting statue” and the “cat piano”.

But their taste for the wondrous began much earlier: with travels across that most obscure and wondrous of countries: their very own US of A. Dylan Thuras recalls: “I was twelve and my parents took me on a family vacation around the mid-west which is filled with all kinds of bizarre places: Wall Drug, the South Dakota Badlands, and the most amazing and unbelievable was ‘The House on The Rock’. It was like entering a fantastical universe someone else constructed for you.” And indeed, its Atlas Obscura write-up does make it sound enticing. It’s a sprawling construction in Wisconsin that houses a collection of automated orchestras and a 200-foot model of a sperm whale.

Joshua Foer’s coming of age came later: “I was 19 and I bought a beat-up minivan and spent two months driving around the country. At the time, I’m not sure I could have told you why I was doing it, except that I was curious to know what the rest of America was like. I spent a lot of time trying to find wondrous and curious places. It was a life-changing experience.”

Both quickly realised that was no single, great resource for travellers like themselves. Until they realised the power of the Internet and user-generated sites. But while all are welcome to contribute, the listings are edited and fact checked. “We love these places and want to respect and honour them,” says Thuras.

So yes, it turns out that our Earth is still, as Thuras describes it, “a very big and very weird and interesting place, and there are plenty of things left to be discovered by the traveller.” Isn’t that wonderfully reassuring?

 

The editors of Atlas Obscura Editors give their top wacky destination tips — as of September 2009 (since “our favourites are always changing”).

 Dylan Thuras:
1. “The Root Bridges of Cherrapungee in India take at least ten to fifteen years to build. Locals guide tree roots over a river and have them take root on the other side. Some of these living bridges are over a hundred feet long and strong enough to support fifty people. There’s even a double-decker one.”

2. “The Gates of Hell is a 328-foot wide hole in the desert that has been on fire for thirty-eight years after a Soviet drilling rig accidentally drilled into a massive underground natural gas cavern, causing the ground to collapse and poisonous fumes to be released. To head off a potential environmental catastrophe, they set it on fire.”

3. “The Relampago del Catatumbo is a near-constant lightning storm over a river in Venezuela. For almost half the nights of the year, for ten hours at a time, there’s almost constant lightning. Weirdly, it is silent because all the electrical activity happens way up in the air. It’s just insanely cool.”

Joshua Foer:
1. “The other day someone posted an absolutely frightening place that I have no interest in ever visiting: Snake Island off the coast of Sao Paulo, Brazil that is filled with venomous pit vipers: one snake per square meter. Try to picture that…”

2. “The Tempest Prognosticator (a.k.a. the ‘Leech Barometer’) is an ingenious weather-prediction device that debuted at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851. Leeches get really worked up before a storm, so if you attach bells to them you’ve got yourself a pretty good barometer. A full-scale working model can be viewed at the Barometer World Museum in Devon, England.”

3. “I long to visit New Zealand to see the Electrum, the world’s largest Tesla coil, in action. It stands four stories tall and zaps out three million volts. It’s absolutely beautiful.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We just returned from a profound week in Moscow reinvigorating our Yuri Gagarin project. We met some profound cosmonauts, space psychs, arctic survivalists and regular good ol’  folk — all of whom knew how to toast us into submission. A big story is coming out of this and we shall return soon! So stay tuned… Space is indeed the place!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to the European Cultural Foundation, I interviewed two very inspiring folks: Borka Pavićević (pictured) and Stefan Kaegi. They were the winners of the Routes Award for Cultural Diversity 2009 for their work in theater championing the voices of the “other”.

Borka, in particular, has long been a hero of mine ever since I first visited ex-Yugoslavia. As the founder of Belgrade’s Centre for Cultural Decontamination, she has fought the good fight against a steady stream of nationalists, gangsters and populist pricks. The Centre was one of the first places I went when I felt dirty from sitting behind Mira Markovic, wife of Milosevic, on a flight between Amsterdam and Belgrade in 2001.

I went to the awards ceremony in Brussels a couple of weeks ago and certainly had a couple of culturally diverse moments. It was at the Royal Flemish Theater and when we arrived early, my friend and I went to the next door cafe to kill some time. The waitress refused to talk Dutch with us — which we thought ironic since we were at a Dutch-language theater for an award’s ceremony dedicated to cultural diversity. 

After the ceremony I went over to introduce myself to Borka and she greeted me very warmly thanks to some common friends (ah, I do miss the Balkans sometimes…). She asked me if I had ever met Princess Margriet of the Netherlands. I hadn’t so I shook the princess’s hand. Then Borka wanted to introduce me to  some Belgrade journalist — “you actually probably know him, he’s the one that they tried to blow up with not one but two bombs.” But just as I was about to shake his hand, a plate of oysters came by and the crowd — royalty, journalists, etc — swooped in. It was a moment of true diversity. The oysters were dang tasty as well.

But really, read the interviews:
Borka Pavićević
Stefan Kaegi

If artist Pieter Paul Pothoven was a rock, he’d be Lapis Lazuli, the blue rock used to make that extremely colourfast pigment ultramarine favoured by Vermeer. Pothoven has just returned from the remote Hindu-Kush mountain range in North East Afghanistan where he visited the mines from which this iconic rock originates.  

So when did this rock start to roll for you?
Since graduating from Rietveld Academy three years ago, I’ve been researching various subjects related to the Middle East. For example as a pseudo-biologist, I recorded bird and frog sounds in marshes in Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Israel. I guess I was attracted to the romance of hiding in war zone marshlands.  

I’ve also always been fascinated about the idea of fleeing and caves, especially those in Afghanistan (Bin Laden in Tora Bora and all that) and as mysterious holes from which evil seems to escape — if we are to believe the media. Then I heard about these caves where for the last 6500 years they’ve been mining the highest quality of Lapis Lazuli as probably the world’s oldest still-existing commercial mining venture. So immediately I wanted to go…  

Was there was a magical moment where you connected the paintings of Vermeer with a cave in Afghanistan?
Well, I immediately liked the idea that this blue is very colourfast — uninfluenced by light. Here you have this stable blue coming from a rather unstable country. However when I returned, conservators of the Rijksmuseum and the Mauritshuis told me about the “ultramarine sickness” that has the pigment fading somewhat due to acids in the air. But it’s nothing like the other blues available. Just look at Rembrandt who used the cheap stuff and all his blues went brown.  

Tell me more about the stone’s history and magic…
They can tell the age of the mines because of artefacts found from as far back as Babylonian and Mesopotamian times. The death mask of Tutankhamen includes Lapis Lazuli, Cleopatra used it for eye shadow, and many think that they are also the “sapphires” referred to in the Old Testament. As for spiritual healing, it is said to be good for wisdom and beneficial for your throat chakra — whatever that means. Maybe it’s good for smokers?  

In painting?
Since the early Renaissance it has been coming to Europe via the silk route to what is now Lebanon and then over the sea — that’s why it’s called ultramarine (“from over the sea”) — to Venice where it was grounded down and then sold through the rest of Europe. It was extremely expensive, often more so than gold. In the Renaissance, it was only used in paintings to highlight Jesus or the Virgin Mary but by the Dutch Golden Age, it had become a symbol for wealth. For example, Pieter de Ring’s Still Life with Lobster from around 1650 uses ultramarine for the tablecloth. It’s actually a painting without any meaning — it’s just about money.  

But Vermeer was the ultimate crackhead for the stuff?

He was totally obsessed. He even used it as an under layer. Even his white walls usually have some ultramarine under it.  

So how is Lapis Lazuli prepared into pigment?
Cennino Cennini in his Libro dell’Arte, a 15^th century handbook for painters, describes the procedure and it involves a lot of grinding. The funny thing is that he recommends giving the job to a young woman because they are home all the time and still have nice hands. He warns against old women doing it…

So why haven’t we heard more about this great story?
The primary written sources are extremely rare and often contradict each other. And usually it’s only mentioned and not described in any detail. The area is also very hard to get to: physically and bureaucratically.  

It is Afghanistan after all… And in a place where neither the Russians nor the Taliban ever influenced?
Yes and as a mine, it has always been protected. I guess from our perspective it is run by corrupt warlords but they just see themselves as old soldiers protecting their investment. In fact selling Lapis Lazuli across the border in Pakistan was one of the “documented” ways the Mujahadeen supported their fight against the Russians. But of course most of their money came from abroad, for example from the CIA.  

So how did you manage to get there?
I had an army of angels on my shoulder and a grant from the BKVK fund. Afghanistan is not part of the global village so you have to think hard. It took me three weeks to arrange by starting with one contact in Kabul and doing everything in small steps. For safety you should always have a contact or relative to fall back on in case something goes wrong. But it really came down to having bribe money and some very lucky contacts. The commander Assad Allah who is in charge of the area turned out to be the brother of the neighbour of my guide. I paid him 500 dollars — which was very inexpensive.

Small world!
Yes and suddenly everything was also much cheaper and easier.  

Tell me about the visit.
I only spent three days (plus three to get there and three to get back) because of tensions with the various people protecting their interests there. But thanks to being a “relative of the commander”, I was allowed. So there I was the only Westerner with just one guide and no protection. I was walking around with a money belt filled with 7000 dollars in a place where people earn two dollars for a twelve hour day. The village itself was a cross between a Neolithic settlement and a Hollywood Western town. The ground is covered with blue debris, and the villagers even use the rock for their huts which makes the village fade into the natural landscape. The mines themselves are death traps. I used my scarf as a dust mask. While I was making notes the ground trembled with dynamite explosions.  

So how did you get your collection back?
The Dutch army. And thanks to them I did not have to pay import or export tax. The diplomatic suitcase covered a lot of costs for me. So you could say this project is co-sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  

So, um, how did you manage that?
Every Wednesday the Dutch embassy in Kabul hosts a borrel for Dutch people. There I spoke with an Embassy guy who said “no problem, we can bring them back for you.” So I brought my 60-kilogram bag of rocks on the back of my bike. It was too heavy for him to bring himself so he found another guy who could arrange it with the army. It took four months, but I finally got them!  

What are you going to do now?
I’m digesting everything: old documents, maps, photographs, texts and, of course, the stones themselves. As a pseudo-geologist, I’m mapping the origins of ultramarine, the different kinds of Lapis Lazuli, and the mines where it’s excavated. After this, I’ll start grinding the stones which I guess will take some weeks…  

Great. Perhaps I’ll come back and score some off you. A story like this makes me hungry for more than just lobster.

Track down a copy (he’ll even send you one…) and check it out.

I interviewed the artist Pieter Paul Pothoven who has just returned from the caves of Afghanistan where he visited the mines supplying the Lapis Lazuli that formed the basis for Vermeer’s blue. What a story!  And a story I will probably post here once the hard copies run out…

 

 

 

 

 

My feature on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (and the 60th anniversary of the rise of Currywurst) is published today in the Globe&Mail. It was a hard one to write mostly because it is such a dense and telling tale. I  visited Berlin a few months after it happened and the images that still stick was of children playing in the watchtowers and the big bales of collected barbwire – forming 5-10 meter high tumbleweeds of rusting iron. So anyway I had to leave a lot of wacky facts out of the article in the name of readability. Luckily I have no such constraints here. Oh, and if you want more on ostalgia just check out my previous Globe&Mail feature on the 15th anniversary….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Funniest story I heard was from my esteemed hosts Mr and Mrs Cameron (who have been living the revolution in Mitte quite a few years now…) who told me of a group of West Berlin friends who found a hole in the wall and went for a look in East Berlin. When they returned they found the hole had been closed up — they were stuck! But luckily, for them the Wall properly fell the next day.

There are a few tricks for the visitor to differentiate between former East and West halves. East Berlin has much more animated and jaunty figures in their crosswalk lights. Linguists now also know that it just takes 29 years, the time the wall existed, for distinct dialects to develop.

By 1980 an estimated 100,000 West Berliners were living life in a subculture — via cafes, communes, squats and generally radical lefty politics. (Today the most affluent of this generation support some of the largest organic supermarkets in Europe.)

You know you are buying an authentic GDR postcard by its flimsiness — and by the fact that you are overcharged for it.

 

And in the world of currywurst:

 

 

 

 

I had some earlier thoughts on sausage. The mighty currywurst is apparently called the “white trash plate” in Cologne and Dusseldorf but “chancellor’s plate” in Hannover. Also interesting: Gerhard Schröder was known as the “currywurst chancellor”. And Volkswagon developed their own recipe that can only be bought in factory canteens. In 1982, the singer Herbert Grönemeyer sang passionately of his nightly desires for the mighty wurst (this YouTube clip is not for the queasy of stomach but boy does Herbert sing from the heart).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now for something completely different:
After all that heavy street food (especially since you’ll also have to pay tribute to the Turk, Mahmut Aygun, who invented the now universal Döner Kebab here in 1972), there’s nothing like Japanese noodles. Cocolo (Gipsstrasse 3, 0172 3047584, ) serves some of the best Japanese noodle soup on the planet. Owner Ollie not only cooks but also built everything — from the furnishings to the service to the kitchen — from scratch. Inspiring! Also, Restaurant Schoenbrunn is a lovely and fancy place to dine in Volkspark Friedrichshain. Aid digestion by climbing the nearby hills which were built from the debris of WWII.

For dessert, one can pop into a baker for a Berliner (more commonly known as a Pfannkuchen in Berlin itself), the pastry JFK accidentally referred to in his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech to half a million bewildered Berliners in 1963.

But to conclude: 
Mir ist alles Wurst!
Es geht um die Wurst!
Sei keine beleidigte Leber wurst!