culture

Get the authentic cultural experience on your next foreign jaunt. Wander like a local; here, there, and everywhere.

UNLISTED WONDER OF THE WORLD
QUICK INFO: Located at Thanjavor , Tamil Nadu , India. Dedicated To: Lord Shiva Thanjavur Temple Timings: 6:00 am – 12:30 pm & 4:00 pm – 8:30 pm (Everyday)
By Venu3 years ago in Wander
The single word that connects Denmark
Towards the end of each year, Dansk Sprognævn (the Danish Language Council) and P1 radio station select Denmark’s word of the year. Inevitably capturing the (sometimes unflattering) mood of the times, previous winners have included klimatosse (“climate idiot”) in 2019 and hvidvask (“money laundering”) in 2018.
By Joans3 years ago in Wander
The private language of Venice
Venetians have an uncanny ability to dodge, deflect, blend in, disappear in plain sight. Perhaps that's why so many travellers assume that “real” life in Venice was long ago trampled out of existence by hundreds of millions of tourist feet.
By Corsicari3 years ago in Wander
The origin of the word 'taboo'
It was sometime in early March when a passenger with Covid-19 landed at the world’s most remote commercial airport, disembarked into Easter Island’s sticky air and subsequently infected members of the small volcanic outcrop’s indigenous Rapa Nui community.
By Gay3 years ago in Wander
'Captain' Gallagher: The legend of Ireland’s ‘Highwaymen’
My mother first told me the tale when I was three years old. Somewhere, in a forest near her hometown of Swinford, Ireland, lay the buried treasure of a folk hero who gave power to the powerless. More than 200 years ago, while Ireland’s County Mayo was patrolled by British soldiers, controlled by English gentry and riven by poverty, one group of Irish men launched an unconventional revolt.
By Seamons Mahall3 years ago in Wander
The truth about British stoicism
The street cleaner was sitting at a small table outside Leadenhall Market in central London, his gaze fixed on a large mug of tea in front of him. I’d met the 60-something-year-old man a few weeks earlier on a previous visit to the market.
By Seamons Mahall3 years ago in Wander
Europe’s city of dawdlers and loafers
Bulgaria’s second city of Plovdiv is proud of its reputation for doing things its own way. As soon as you step off the bus from the capital of Sofia, you can feel the change in pace of life. People walk more slowly. They seem to have more time on their hands. The traffic is less hectic. As you walk to the city centre through the park, where old men gather to play chess and people lounge and chat in the shade of the old trees, Plovdiv immediately feels different. There’s a kind of insouciance to Plovdiv, something that is both immediately apparent and hard to put your finger on.
By Gay3 years ago in Wander
Why Germans love getting naked in public
After four years of living in Berlin, I’ve learned to embrace Germany’s anything-goes sprit and more casual approach to nudity than where I grew up in the Midwestern US.
By Seamons Mahall3 years ago in Wander
Japan's hidden world of temples
Koya-san is a sacred Unesco World Heritage site In 816 AD, a monk named Kukai wandered into the thickly forested slopes of Mount Koya (Koya-san) in Japan’s Wakayama Prefecture in hope of finding a suitable site to build a base for his newly founded Shingon sect of Esoteric Buddhism. He chose an 800m-deep valley surrounded by eight peaks, whose ridges resemble the petals of an eight-petaled lotus blossom. Twelve centuries and 117 temples later, Kukai’s spiritual wooded wonderland is a [Unesco World Heritage site](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1142) and one of Japan’s most sacred destinations – a place where the wafting aroma of incense, the chanting of shaved-head monks and the primeval air of forested cemeteries creates a spiritual experience like none other. (Credit: ncousla/Getty Images)
By Gay3 years ago in Wander
Teraanga: The word that defines Senegal
As I waited to board a flight to Dakar from New York, a woman draped in colourful fabric and a bright headwrap asked if she could use my mobile phone. Hesitating with a perplexed smile, I wondered about the odd familiarity to ask that of a stranger. While I wavered, a similarly dressed traveller presented her phone to the woman without a second thought. Experiences like this continued throughout my journey to Senegal, and I quickly realised that they weren’t bold requests from strangers. They were my introduction to teraanga.
By Seamons Mahall3 years ago in Wander
Santo Domingo: The city that kept slavery silent
Thick red-brick walls towered over me as I made my way inside the gated 16th-Century ruins of Hospital de San Nicolás de Bari in the heart of Santo Domingo’s Unesco-inscribed Colonial City. My guide, Maribel Nuñez, an activist and leader of Acción Afro-Dominicana, a non-profit organisation based here in the Dominican Republic’s capital, began telling the story of Micaela – “la negra del hospital”, or the black woman who lived here in the early 1500s and inspired then-Spanish governor Nicolás de Ovando to build this historic, first hospital in the Americas.
By Gay3 years ago in Wander
The forgotten Hawaiian islands in Canada
Located off a faded game trail on uninhabited Portland Island, the orchard waited. Though the trees were gnarled and twisted, moss-covered and forgotten, the apples were surprisingly crisp; tasting of the kind of nostalgia you don’t find in a modern supermarket apple. The orchard also held a story. But over time, as the forest encroached and the trees grew older, the story itself threatened to disappear.
By Seamons Mahall3 years ago in Wander