The world’s ten creepiest abandoned cities

by Justin Delaney on


Some cities die. The people leave, the streets go quiet, and the isolation takes on the macabre shape of a forlorn ghost-town – crumbling with haunting neglect and urban decay. From Taiwan to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, these abandoned cities lurk in the shadows of civilization. Their histories are carried in hushed whispers and futures stillborn from the day of their collapse. Some have fallen victim to catastrophe while others simply outlive their function. I think we can all agree on one thing – they are all very creepy.

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Pripyat
Location: Pripyat, Ukraine – 100km from Kiev
Story: On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl reactor began its tragic meltdown. The incident was a huge blow to the viability of the nuclear energy platform, and still today, the town of Pripyat is an abandoned shell of a city frozen in a 1980’s Soviet time-warp. While the failed reactor has been entombed in a an appropriate sounding casing called a “sarcophagus,” the area remains unsafe for human life. The town has thrived in one aspect though. Wildlife has returned to the area in droves. Wolves silently hunt among the towering apartment buildings, and boars forage for food in the abandoned amusement park – which strangely opened the day after the reactor explosion in the midst of evacuation.
Abandoned since: 1986

Sanzhi
Location: Sanzhi district, New Taipei, Taiwan
Story: This area called Sanzhi was originally a vacation resort catering to U.S. servicemen north of Taipei. The architecture could be called UFO futuro chic, and the abandoned resort community had difficulties from the beginning. During construction, many workers perished in car accidents, and other freak accidents were common. The urban legend online search trail places the death count close to twenty. The deaths were attributed to supernatural causes. Some speculated that the resort was built on a Dutch burial ground while others attributed the misfortunes to a dragon statue destroyed during construction. Either way, the ruins never took their first guest, and the stillborn project was abandoned.
Abandoned since: 1980


Craco
Location: Craco, Basilicata, Italy
Story: Built on a summit, Craco’s utility was initially derived from its ability to repel invaders. The town’s placement on a cliff precipice also threatened its integrity. After being rocked by a number of earthquakes and subsequent landslides, Craco was abandoned for lower ground. Today, the empty village is great for exploration and houses a number of interesting old world churches such as Santa Maria della Stella.
Abandoned since: 1963


Kolmanskop
Location: Kolmanskop, Namibia
Story: Once a successful diamond mining community, Kolmanskop is now a desert ghost town where the houses welcome only sand. The desert city was originally built when Germans discovered great mineral wealth in the area. They built the town in an architecturally German style with a ballroom, a theater, and the first tram system in Africa. The desert reclaimed the town when the miners moved on. The sands have filled houses, covered the streets, and slowly erased most signs of civilization aside from the towering homes and public buildings. The sight of a decaying German town in the shifting sands of the Namib desert is anachronistically delightful.
Abandoned since: 1954


Ghost Island
Location: Hashima Island, Nagasaki, Japan
Story: During the industrial revolution in Japan, the Mitsubishi company built this remote island civilization around large coal deposits in the Nagasaki islands. The island is home to some of Japan‘s first high rise concrete buildings, and for almost a century, mining thrived on the island. At its peak, the 15 acre island housed over five thousand residents – coal workers and their families. Today, a post-apocalyptic vibe haunts the abandoned island and the dilapidated towers and empty streets exist in a creepy industrial silence. In 2009, the island opened to tourists, so now you can take a trip to explore the Ghost Island’s abandoned movie theaters, apartment towers, and shops.
Abandoned since: 1974


Oradour-sur-Glane
Location: Oradour-sur-Glane, Limousin, France
Story: During World War II, the Nazi troops came upon Oradour-sur-Glane and completely destroyed the village, murdering 642 individuals. The burned cars and buildings remain frozen in time as they did in 1944, a reflection of the monstrosity of war and a memorial to the villagers who lost their lives. The massacre was one of mankind’s most vicious moments. All visitors to the “martyr village” are asked to remain silent while wandering the melancholy streets of tragedy.
Abandoned since: 1944


Centralia
Location: Centralia, Pennsylvania, United States
Story: The entire city of Centralia was condemned by the state of Pennsylvania and its zip code was revoked. The road that once led to Centralia is blocked off. It is as if the city does not exist at all, but it does, and it has been on fire for almost fifty years. In 1962, a fire broke out in a landfill near the Odd Fellows cemetery. The fire quickly spread through a hole to the coal mine beneath the city, and the fires have been burning ever since. Smoke billows out from cracks in the road and large pits in the ground randomly open up releasing thousand degree heat and dangerous vapors into the air. The city has been slowly evacuated over the years, though some residents have chosen to stay, believing that the evacuation is a conspiracy plot by the state to obtain their mineral rights to the anthracite coal reserves below their homes. Smells like lawyers to me.
Abandoned since: still marginally occupied by 10 or so brave souls


Humberstone
Location: Northern Atacama desert, Chile
Story: Declared a UNESCO heritage site in 2005, Humberstone was once a bustling saltpeter refinery in the desert of northern Chile. Life on the moonscape of the Chilean pampas is extremely sparse, and outposts like Humberstone served as work and home for many Pampino miners. The hostile environment proved a menacing part of everyday life for Humberstone residents. Their efforts to extract nitrates from the largest saltpeter deposit in the world transformed farming in Europe and the Americas in the form of fertilizer sodium nitrate.
Abandoned since: 1960

Bodie
Location: Bodie, California, United States
Story: The poster boy for a ghost town, Bodie is absolutely stunning in its dereliction. The boom-town over 8,000 feet up in the Sierra Nevadas was a gold rush outpost, and, at its height in the 1880’s, allegedly one of the largest cities in California. 65 saloons lined the dusty mile long main street, meaning the saloon to resident ratio was definitely high enough to keep the sheriff busy. Beyond the swilling of brews though, Bodie developed into a city filled with big town characteristics like churches, hospitals, four fire departments, and even a Chinatown district. Today, visitors are free to to walk the deserted streets of this town built on gold and hope.
Abandoned since: 1942, though the last issue of the local newspaper, The Bodie Miner, was printed in 1912.


Kayaköy
Location: Kayaköy, Muğla, Turkey
Story: Thousands of Greek speaking Christians lived in this town just south of Fethiye in southwestern Turkey for hundreds of years. The rather large village has been a virtual ghost town since the end of the Greco-Turkish War. Over 500 houses and several Greek Orthodox churches populate this garden of decaying structures. Some hope exists for a resurgence of this old city, as organic farmers and craftsmen have began to trickle in to this fringe community.
Abandoned since: 1923

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Chocolate capital of the world: now Paris wears the world’s sweet crown

by David Downie on

How many more heavy gold medals can Paris drape around its neck?

Acolytes claim the City of Light is the fashion and cultural capital of Europe, the West’s greatest restaurant and food megapolis, a paradise for flaneurs, the mecca of hedonists and shop-till-you-drop materialists, the world’s favorite city, period. Now, while the Swiss and Belgians weren’t looking, Paris stole their milk cows and became the swaggering global capital of chic chocolate too.

Pundits quip that French president Nicolas Sarkozy set the stage. Elected in 2007, Sarkozy does not drink alcohol. He gobbles chocolat, the very best. His 24/7 excitability – some call it dynamism – are attributed in part to the capital’s current choco-manie.

But everyone knows Theobroma cacao – especially the unadulterated dark variety containing at least 60 percent cocoa – is good for the health, the libido, the mind, the morale. It makes people happy, fills them with energy, lifts them out of depression, and cures everything from rabies and rashes to the common cold, without weight gain. Or so some boosters claim, with impressive if unproven scientific “evidence.”

What better fuel for France‘s hyperactive, tea-tottling head of state, a man bent on seducing his rock star wife Carla Bruni and the famously difficult French masses?Nice story. But the rise of chocolate in Paris predates and goes beyond Sarkozy’s habit.

Chocoholics have followed the capital’s gradual rise since the 1990s, from bitter darkness – Paris lived in the long shadow of Lyon – into the limelight. The annual Salon du Chocolat has done much to raise Paris’s profile. Other factors have contributed equally, including the nationwide decrease in wine and liquor consumption symbolized by Sarkozy. Chocolate is the ideal, socially acceptable substitute.

But the main reason for the rise is simple: French chocolate has become exquisite in its simplest incarnations, and excitingly wild in its extreme expressions.

Ever since France’s great pastry chefs began breaking away from the starred restaurants where they were employed, chocolate-making has slipped out of the grip of the industrial candy-makers, local bakeries-cum-pastry-and-chocolate-shops, and fuddy-duddy neighborhood chocolatiers.

New-wave Paris chocolate masters the likes of Jean-Paul Hevin, Pierre Hermé, Christian Constant, Patrick Roger, and Michel Chaudun are as dynamic as Sarkozy, have global reach, and get at least as much press as the predictable French foodie idols, the three-star brigade led by Alain Ducasse, Guy Savoy, et al. Many chocolate stars have shops in Japan; Chaudun’s website is in Japanese.

Cult status for chocolatiers also derives from the fact that they’re not mere artisans. They’re artistes. Take Roger and Chaudun. Both sculpt chocolate. Roger is irreverent and fanciful – a master of kitsch Pop Art. Chaudun excels with Eiffel Towers, among his most popular creations.

Actually, “popular” is not quite right, given the price. Chaudun’s and his peers’ prices ensure their wares are for elites in a city slavish to exclusivity. A pound of their precious Theobroma easily tops hundreds of dollars.

There’s nothing ordinary about chic Paris chocolates, from the cacao bean up. Some top practitioners import their highest-quality beans, roasting and transforming them. Most buy prepared chocolate “bases” from France’s exclusive, persnickety, and expensive chocolate supplier, Valrhona. Typically, beans or bases are many times more expensive than those used by fine artisanal chocolate makers elsewhere.

Like it or not, for the most part luscious Belgian and Swiss chocolates are perceived as rich, fattening, sweet, milky, creamy and old-fashioned. French chocolates – especially those made in Paris – are seen as dark, lean, intense, avant-garde, surprising, disconcerting, sometimes silly or shocking. They’re filled with everything from camembert to lavender honey and floral essences, liquorice to ginger, herbs and spices, and fine wine, sometimes in multiples of three, four or six unlikely combinations.

Chocolatiers and suppliers in Italy, America, Belgium and Switzerland have followed suit. But the sheer concentration of avant-garde masters in Paris is unrivaled. And few outside the French capital have comparable panache or draw. Who had ever heard of Pierre Marcolini, a Belgian choc-and-awe master, before he opened his chicissime boutique near the French Senate?

No wonder Hevin and Marcolini display their edible artworks as if they were jewels. While they won’t set you back as much as a bauble from Cartier, you might think twice before ingesting them. Aesthetics are a big part of the experience.

It may well be this nexus of food and fashion that is driving Paris’s current chocolate boom. Chocolat and haute couture meet on the runway, sometimes to the strains of opera, with chic chocolatiers daubing models with liquid chocolate, or hanging chocolate undies and necklaces in strategic locations.

As dozens of boring old mom-and-pop stores selling useful items continue to disappear from the 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th and 16th arrondissements, or the inevitable Marais, they are often replaced by chocolate boutiques. Toss a euro coin and it will land on big-name or hungry provincial cacao magicians planting their tills in the last available floor space.

Ridiculous? Perhaps. But this is Paris, ça c’est Paris. Chaudin’s chocolate Eiffel Towers might as well be emblazoned with the capital’s latest moniker: “Paris, City of Chocolate.”

Italy’s South Tyrol: Language disputes

by Alex Robertson Textor on

In the Italian region of South Tyrol a language dispute has emerged over the exclusive use of German on mountain trail signs. In the Telegraph, Nick Squires provides an overview of what he terms a “language war.”

South Tyrol’s German-language Alpenverein is responsible for replacing all trail signage. Squires claims that around 1500 of these hiking path signs are written exclusively in German.

At stake is the maintenance of a difficult linguistic balance in the region, though mountain rescue workers also point to the issue of safety for hiking Italian speakers unable to understand the German-language signage. Squires notes that anonymous Italian-speaking hikers have taken matters into their own hands by scrawling Italian place names on signs.

In 2001, almost 70 percent of the region’s residents spoke German. Italian speakers are concentrated in Bolzano (Bozen in German), the capital of the region.

Language disputes aside, South Tyrol is an exciting place to hike and a great culinary tourism destination, with strong agricultural and wine production and an impressive tally of Michelin starred restaurants. It’s also ridiculously beautiful. See the above image, taken from the town of Sexten, for inspiration.

The kicker is that it is also surprisingly affordable. Check out our inclusion of the region among a recent list of budget-friendly destinations across Europe.

[Image: Flikr | lorenz347]

Ten things you can only do on a cruise

by Chris Owen on
There are a bunch of travel activities that can be done on both land and at sea. We can play golf on land but sail to some of the world’s best courses by sea. We can dine at a fine restaurant on land and find similar experiences at sea.

But some things are available only on a cruise.

If those are good or bad things kind of depends on how you look at them.

  1. Unpack once, see several places. Unlike any other type of travel, once you make it to your cruise ship, you are home free. Your floating hotel will take you to multiple destinations with no flights, cabs, cars, trains or buses to catch to get there.
  2. Be a complete idiot. This is where you want to wear that bathing suit that doesn’t quite fit right, sing karaoke for the first time or try out your new pickup lines. Odds are you will never see any of the people you are sailing with ever again.
  3. Eat, non-stop, 24 hours a day on pretty much any cruise ship. Unlike real life, it is odd for there to NOT be food readily available all the time. What makes this unique to cruises is that you paid for it up front, so there is no charge as you belly-up to the buffet.
  4. Fall into the ocean. It is not easy to do but you could if you tried. This is also not something you should want to do. If the fall did not kill you, the eventual drowning that comes along with it will. While the height of your cruise ship may be similar to that cliff you saw someone jump off of on TV, what lies below is totally different.
  5. Learn something new– On-board enrichment programs cover everything from acting to dance lessons. In the ship’s fitness center, qualified trainers are standing by to help you get ready for your next mountain climbing expedition.
  6. Get Seasick but you almost have to want to be sick for that to happen. There are so many different ways to avoid motion discomfort that there are few reasons to experience it.
  7. Survive a pirate attack– If you are in the Indian Ocean, anywhere close to Somalia, you could be attacked by pirates. Major cruise lines don’t sail there anyway, especially since Seabourn Spirit had to outrun them.
  8. Save a lot of money- Dollar for dollar, cruise vacations stack up very nicely compared with land vacations. Compared with backpacking? Not so much. But compare a week at sea to a week in Vegas and you’ll get the idea.
  9. Get married at sea. It is different than getting married on land. First off, you won’t be driving off to your honeymoon with a “Just Married” sign on your car. Unlike a Vegas wedding, you’ll have a hard time finding Elvis to perform the ceremony too.
  10. Experience a day at sea This is probably one of the very best parts of a cruise vacation and surely one that separates cruises from all other travel options. Being completely surrounded by ocean, in all directions and as far as you can see, is a humbling experience everyone should have at least once. Odds are you will never see anything as big as the ocean that stretches to the end of the Earth.
Flickr photo by Stephen Birch

Abandoned theme parks from around the world

by Grant Martin on




Ready to see some seriously creepy photos from abandoned theme parks around the planet? We thought so. After reflecting on the plight of Six Flags New Orleans after Katrina we got to thinking about other theme parks in similar situations around the world. As it turns out, there are a whole host of abandoned properties in similar states, some with impressively decrypt structures. Check out our gallery below for a few great examples.

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