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The "Porrat de San Antón" in Alicante

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ALICANTE - Guapa, Guapa y Guapa - is the new catch phrase chosen by Alicante Tourist Authorities for their new 2011 campaign, along with the subheading "Quiereme como yo te quiero a ti" (Love me as much as I love you). In deed, Alicante has come a long ways over the past decade or two in revamping its image from an ugly portside duckling to a shining Mediterranean jewel. Much remains to be done, but overall, the city is certainly on the right track. Despite hords of Northern European vacationers taking the city by storm in the summer, Alicante remains quintessentially Spanish with its own infrastructure, traditions and celebrations. No better way to pay tribute to the spirit and beauty of Alicante than to introduce one of its major local festivals, the "Porrat de San Anton". Spain is known for its many festivities year-round from the bull run of San Fermines in Pamplona to the Fallas fireworks in Valencia. Yet many holidays and festivals are of a more loca...
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Savoring History and Nightlife in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin

No doubt Berlin has come of age and become en vogue...promoted by the local tourist authority as party capital of Europe, thousands of visitors young and old descend onto the city in search of recent history in the making and long wild nights out partying until dawn. Berlin caters to both, but most visitors will stick to the "highlights" around the Brandenburg Gate, Under den Linden or Checkpoint Charlie along with what is left of the Berlin Wall (1961-1989). Few if any will venture beyond those main attractions, and rarely do visitors embark on explorations of "local Berlin", which is unfortunate, as the German capital has existed as a "big city" - a large incorporated Berlin Metropolitan Area - only since 1920 - and the numerous communities and villages that are part of Berlin today, all have their own history, color, dialect and trajectory. One of the most avantgarde, talked about and interesting districts of Berlin is the neighborhood of PRENZLAUER B...
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Holiday Magic in Beautiful Bratislava

More than 2 decades since the Fall of Communism, there are few places left behind what used to be the Iron Curtain that truly look and feel different. Particularly close to the former Western border, many cities have adopted the same blend of commercial infrastructure and cityscape as their counterparts in Western Europe. In order to feel some of the remnants of what life under communism used to be like, it is nowadays necessary to travel much further afield to the East, unless we opt for Bratislava, capital of Slovakia and a mere hour away from waltzing Vienna. A journey to Bratislava also has the added benefit of introducing us to a destination much less publicized and thus less crowded than, say, Vienna or Prague and allows us to visit the capital of one of Europe's youngest nations, the Republic of Slovakia, created by the "Velvet Divorce" of the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1993. A visit to Slovakia thus also confronts us with the notion of cultural identity at the ...
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