A wine cork looks like a simple finished product: a small piece of material that fits neatly into a bottle neck. On the tree, things begin much less neatly. According to the Portuguese cork industry association APCOR, a cork oak’s first bark is too irregular and too hard to make suitable wine corks. The first harvest is therefore a stage along the way, rather than the finish.
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Trieste’s coffee houses have a Viennese heritage. The harbour next to them explains why an Italian city became so closely tied to Central Europe.
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On Sunday 25 October 2026, the clocks in the Netherlands go back from three o’clock at night to two. But hadn’t that twice-yearly ritual already been abolished?
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On 23 September 2026 English Heritage opened the stone circle at Stonehenge at sunrise for the autumn equinox. What an equinox is, what the builders did align the monument on, and why the equinox draws visitors all the same.
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Arctic sea ice reached its smallest extent of the year on 12 September 2026, joint tenth lowest since satellite measurements began. In the Barents Sea near Svalbard, September ice is shrinking by 28.9 per cent per decade. What that means for polar bears, walruses and fjords.
Read the story →A street, a dish, a landscape. There is always a story behind it.
Every block in Barcelona's extension has cut-off corners. That is not decoration but a calculation, made before there were cars.
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In Tallinn's old town the medieval street pattern is still remarkably easy to recognise. That does not mean every building has come down from the Middle Ages intact.
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Steel gates lie under the inlets of the lagoon, rising when the tide comes. They work. The question is what happens if they are needed more often than intended.
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Lakes lie in steps behind one another, separated by barriers nobody built. They are still growing, and they can also give way.
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The oven does most of the work. Roast the vegetables until soft inside, then remove their skins. Arrange what remains in broad strips on a platter with olive oil.
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The tomato does not sit in slices on top of this bread. Rub the flesh of half a ripe tomato into the cut surface. A little oil and salt are enough; eat immediately before the crisp edges soften.
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Make the pale custard on the hob. Only once it is cold does it get its layer of caramelised sugar. One spoonful brings the contrast: a crisp top, then soft custard with cinnamon and lemon.
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After thirteen hundred metres Sweden's flagship capsized within sight of the city. That she still stands today is because the Baltic is too fresh for the shipworm.
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A port city in decline put up a museum and became a destination. Since then half of Europe has tried to copy it, usually without the result.
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In the basement a medieval castle wall still stands. Above it hangs a collection of which you can see only around six percent.
Read the story →From a Viennese courtyard to the floor of a fjord.
A little moment for yourself.
