Sucha Beskidzka, Poland

Sucha Beskidzka  (before 1961 called only Sucha) is a town in the Beskid Żywiecki mountain range in southern Poland, on the Skawa river. It is the county seat of Sucha County. It has been in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999; previously it was in Bielsko-Biała Voivodeship (1975–1998).

Since the beginning of the 20th century Sucha Beskidzka has been a tourist centre for the Beskidy Mountains (part of the Carpathians). Here several tourist trails begin, which lead into the mountains. First trail was marked in 1906. In the town there are fine examples of old architecture: a Renaissance castle (16th century), named Little Wawel after the royal palace in Kraków (now it serves as a hotel with a restaurant); a church with a cloister (17th century); and an old wooden inn, called Rzym (Rome) (18th century).

Ethiopia

Ethiopia, officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Eritrea to the north and northeast, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south. With over 90 million inhabitants, Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country in the world, as well as the second-most populated nation on the African continent. It occupies a total area of 1,100,000 square kilometres (420,000 sq mi), and its capital and largest city is Addis Ababa.

On the picture: Ethiopian traditional house, gojobeit. Made of intricate weaving of bamboo or teff straw, sticks and mud, their structure becomes sturdy and undoubtedly beautiful.

Lüneburg, Germany

Lüneburg, also called Lunenburg in English, is a town in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is located about 45 km (28 mi) southeast of another Hanseatic city, Hamburg. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region. The capital of the district of Lüneburg.
Lüneburg is also called the "Salt Town", a reminder of the days when it was the centre of a major salt industry. As of December 2007, the town was the 120th largest in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Mauritius

Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) off the southeast coast of the African continent. The country includes the island of Mauritius, Rodrigues (560 kilometres (350 mi) east), the islands of Agalega, and the archipelago of Saint Brandon. The islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, and Réunion (172 km (107 mi) southwest) form part of the Mascarene Islands. The area of the country is 2,040 km2. The capital and largest city is Port Louis.

Siedlce, Poland

Siedlce is a city in eastern Poland. Situated in the Masovian Voivodeship (since 1999), previously the city was the capital of a separate Siedlce Voivodeship (1975–1998). Siedlce lies between two small rivers, the Muchawka and the Helenka, along European route E30. It is the fourth largest city of the Voivodeship, and the seat of a Roman Catholic Diocese of Siedlce. Siedlce is a local educational, cultural and business center.

Berlin, Germany

Karlsruhe, Germany

Berlin, Germany

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany

Neuschwanstein Castle is a nineteenth-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

The palace was intended as a personal refuge for the reclusive king, but it was opened to the paying public immediately after his death in 1886. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies and was the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle and later, similar structures.

Karlsruhe, Germany

Karlsruhe is the second-largest city in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in southwest Germany, near the Franco-German border. It has a population of 296,033. Karlsruhe Palace was built in 1715, and the city is now the seat of the two highest courts in Germany: the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal Court of Justice.

Karlsruhe Palace was erected in 1715 by Margrave Charles III William of Baden-Durlach, after a dispute with the citizens of his previous capital, Durlach. The city of Karlsruhe has since grown around it.

Berlin, Germany

Berlin, Germany

The Brandenburg Gate is an 18th-century neoclassical triumphal arch in Berlin, and one of the best-known landmarks of Germany. It is built on the site of a former city gate that marked the start of the road from Berlin to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel.

It is located in the western part of the city centre of Berlin, at the junction of Unter den Linden and Ebertstraße, immediately west of the Pariser Platz. One block to the north stands the Reichstag building. The gate is the monumental entry to Unter den Linden, the renowned boulevard of linden trees, which formerly led directly to the city palace of the Prussian monarchs.

It was commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791. Having suffered considerable damage in World War II, the Brandenburg Gate was fully restored from 2000 to 2002 by the Stiftung Denkmalschutz Berlin (Berlin Monument Conservation Foundation).

During the post-war Partition of Germany, the gate was isolated and inaccessible immediately next to the Berlin Wall, and the area around the gate was featured most prominently in the media coverage of the opening of the wall in 1989.

Throughout its existence, the Brandenburg Gate was often a site for major historical events and is today considered a symbol of the tumultuous history of Europe and Germany, but also of European unity and peace.

Berlin, Germany

Germany

Berlin, Germany

The Reichstag building in 1945.

Shiraz, Iran

The Nasīr al-Mulk Mosque or Pink Mosque is a traditional mosque in Shiraz, Iran, located in Goade-e-Araban place (near the famous Shah Cheragh mosque). The mosque was built during the Qājār era, and is still in use under protection by Nasir al Mulk's Endowment Foundation. It was built by the order of Mirza Hasan Ali Nasir al Molk, one of the lords of the Qajar Dynasty, in 1876 and was finished in 1888. The designers were Muhammad Hasan-e-Memar and Muhammad Reza Kashi Paz-e-Shirazi.

The mosque extensively uses colored glass in its facade, and it displays other traditional elements such as panj kāseh-i (five concaves) in its design. It is also named in popular culture as Pink Mosque due to the usage of beautiful pink color tiles for its interior design.

Iran

Qashqai are a conglomeration of clans of different ethnic origins, mostly Turkic, but also Arab, Kurdish, and Lori. They mainly live in the Iranian provinces of Fars, Khuzestan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province, Bushehr and southern Isfahan, especially around the city of Shiraz and Firuzabad in Fars. After assimilation politics since Pahlavi, almost all of them are bilingual, speaking the Qashqai language - which is a member of the Turkic family of languages and which they call Turki - as well as (in formal use) the Persian language. Majority of Qashqai people were originally nomadic pastoralists and some remain so today. The traditional nomadic Qashqai travelled with their flocks each year from the summer highland pastures north of Shiraz roughly 480 km or 300 miles south to the winter pastures on lower (and warmer) lands near the Persian Gulf, to the southwest of Shiraz. The majority, however, have now become partially or wholly sedentary. The trend towards settlement has been increasing markedly since the 1960s.

The Qashqai are made up of a number of tribes and sub-tribes including the Amele, Derre-Shuri/Dere-Shorlu, Kashkyoli, ShishBaluki/Shishbeyli, Farsimadan/Eymur, Qaracha, Rahimli and Safi -Khanli.