Kapuzinergruft , Vienna Vienna is the most beautiful, elegant, sophisticated place for contemplating what awaits beyond the veil of death and in the darkest corners of our nightmares. Amidst the baroque architecture, string quartets and bustling coffee houses serving schnitzels and tortes to tourists and locals alike, you will find more skulls, trolls, and demons per square kilometer than any other place I've ever been. Anti-war and Anti-fascism monument, Vienna In some respects, this makes perfect sense. The Habsburg Empire, in its many iterations from roughly the 11th century until the end of WWI, encompassed huge swaths of Balkan, Carpathian, and Transylvanian eastern Europe. They likely absorbed the folklore of these lands, which was rife with fantastic beasts and horrific, undead revenants, as subjects and treasure were funneled back towards the seat of imperial rule in Austria. Still, that's not much of an explanation. Monstrous creatures are part of folklore around the...
Chevreuse, en province My latest favorite French expression is en province , which generally denotes everywhere in France that is not Paris. Example: "Habite-il en province?" (Does he live outside of the capital?) "Oui, à Marseille." (Yes, in Marseille) To say " en province" is like referring to rural areas in the US as the boonies or the sticks. Except that in France, it basically applies to the entire country, with the exception of 0.019% of France's European territory (105 km2 out of 543,940) where about 3% of its population lives. For a factual statement (a person or thing is or is not in the capital), it therefore packs an impressive and revealing degree of snobbery. No place else is in the world can capture the imagination or simultaneously embody so many different things--fashion, culture, gastronomie, industrial innovation, royal excess, revolutionary zeal, intellectual courage, imperial overreach, faded grandeur--as Paris. But why rub it in?...
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