Images from Europe
Here are my images from the Europe continent. Please click on the title or the image to take you to the other pages. (Still under construction.....)
Austria
Austria is a landlocked country with population of 8.5 million people in Central Europe. Austria is one of the richest countries in the world that has a high standard of living and in 2011 was ranked 19th in the world for its Human Development Index.
Austria has been the birthplace of many famous composers such as Joseph Haydn, Franz Liszt, Franz Schubert, Johann Strauss and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart was born in Salzburg. Much of Mozart's career was spent in Vienna.
Belgium
Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters and several other major international organizations.
Czech Republic
Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The historic city of Prague is the primary tourist attraction and since the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, Prague has become one of the most visited cities in Europe.
Music in the Czech Republic has its roots in more than 1,000 year old sacred music (the first surviving references come from the end of the 10th century), in the traditional folk music of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and in the long-term high-culture classical music tradition. Notable Czech composers include Bedřich Smetana, Leoš Janáček, Antonín Dvořák. The most famous music festival is "the Prague Spring" that has been organized annually since 1946.
In literature, Franz Kafka is Czech but he wrote in German language.
Denmark
France
France is the most visited country in the world, with 82 million foreign tourists annually! That's excluding those who stay less than 24 hours in France!
France has 37 sites inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List and features cities of high cultural interest (I have been to several cities on this List: Paris, Versailles, Nancy, Strasbourg, and Reims).
Germany
Historically Germany has been called Das Land der Dichter und Denker (the land of poets and thinkers). There are 240 subsidised theatres, hundreds of symphonic orchestras, thousands of museums and over 25,000 libraries spread in Germany. Annually, there are over 91 million German museum visits, 20 million go to theatres and operas; and 3.6 million listen to the symphonic orchestras.The UNESCO inscribed 33 properties in Germany on the World Heritage List. I have been to only Pilgrimage Church of Wies and several sites in Berlin, but I have visited many cities in Germany.
Italy
Italy is definitely one of my most favorite countries on earth. I have visited it many times and would always love to go back there. Italy is home to the greatest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, amounted to 47 sites and has rich collections of art, culture and literature from many different periods. It has approximately 100,000 monuments throughout the country (museums, palaces, buildings, statues, churches, art galleries, villas, fountains, historic houses and archaeological remains). For the world heritage sites, I have visited Rome, Florence, Pisa, Venice, San Gimignano, Vicenza, Ferrara and its Po delta, Siena, Pienza, Verona, and Val d'Orcia.
Luxembourg
Luxembourg is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg possesses the highest GDP per capita in the world. Luxembourg was the first city to be named European Capital of Culture twice.The city of Luxembourg is UNESCO's World Heritage Site.
Netherlands
The Kingdom of the Netherlands is located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. It is a geographically low-lying country, with about 25% of its area and 21% of its population located below sea level,and 50% of its land lying less than one metre above sea level. Netherlands has 9 sites on UNESCO's World Heritage Sites List and I have been only to Amsterdam and its canals.
Portugal
Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Portuguese Empire was the first global empire in history and also the longest lived of the European colonial empires, spanning almost 600 years, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415, to the handover of Macau to China in 1999. However, the country's international status was greatly reduced during the 19th century, especially following the independence of Brazil, its largest colony. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established being then superseded by the "Estado Novo" authoritarian regime. Democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974, after which Portugal's last overseas provinces became independent (most prominently Angola, Mozambique and East Timor) and the last overseas territory, Macau, was ceded to China in 1999. The UNESCO's World Heritage Sites in Portugal that I have visited are Lisbon, Sintra and Oporto.
Spain
The Kingdom of Spain was a global empire which became the strongest kingdom in Europe and the leading world power for a century and a half and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. It colonized Latin American countries for more than 500 years. And that's why now there are more than 500 million Spanish speakers today in the world. During the last four decades the Spanish tourism industry has grown to become the second biggest in the world. There are 40 sites onUNESCO World Heritage List in Spain, exceeded only by Italy. I have visited only one: Works of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona.
Sweden
Switzerland
The Swiss Confederation is situated in central Europe where it is bordered by Germany to the north, France to the west, Italy to the south, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Central Plateau and the Jura. Switzerland has 11 sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List. I have been only to Three Castles, Defensive Wall and Ramparts of the Market-Town of Bellinzona and Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch. But I have experienced the third-longest railway tunnel in the world of the Lötschberg railway line which is part of the Alp Transit.