On October the 1st I got myself a new passport. Not that the old one had expired (it was still good for 6 more years), but the visa pages had run out. Within a week I had a new one. In the Netherlands you have to apply at your city hall – the application process takes a few minutes and costs 71.35 EUR. They gave me a so-called ‘Business Passport’ this time – it has 64 visa pages instead of the regular 32. I also considered to try for a second passport, but it isn’t really necessary (I use an ID card to travel within the Schengen area on the odd occasion that my proper passport lies at an embassy).

What's a good passport to have?

One would think that any EU passport has the same privileges. But according to the ‘ Henley Passport Index ’ (“the most rigorous and sophisticated measure of global access”), the Dutch passport is 5th on the global ranking but ‘less’ worthy than the German one. Our neighbors can get into Pakistan, Vietnam and Turkey visa free, while the …

I recently amended my WHS coverage strategy from purely looking for the hotspots to also going out of my way twice a year for a difficult / expensive WHS (expecting that when I get older I will have more time to travel, but physical challenges will get harder and the money less easily replenished). An odd one among the latter set of WHS is St. George, Bermuda – one of our most isolated WHS (it’s 1,200km from Independence Hall ). The island group of Bermuda is not a particularly hard destination to reach, but it is mostly visited from the US or via a cruise. From Europe there’s only one British Airways flight a day. And it surely ticks the “expensive” box: start from UK price level, add a logistical surcharge as most things have to be flown in, take the cruise ship price inflation into account and finally the American-style 15-20% tipping. In the end this ‘tick’ costed me some 1,500 EUR.

The WHS is located on and around one of the northernmost islands of the Bermuda archipelago: St. George Island. The town is known as “St. George’s” (short for St. George’s Town), but it …

I wasn’t terribly interested in the Water Management System of Augsburg , but I did feel an urgent need to make my German WHS score ‘complete’ again! So last Saturday I ventured out to this Bavarian city on a day trip from my home – flying Amsterdam-Munich and then taking a train to Augsburg. Even for an experienced traveler and German speaker, buying a train ticket from a vending machine proved to be like finishing a moderately difficult exam, having to answer question after question – resulting in a final bill of 50.90 EUR for the return trip Munich Airport - Augsburg. Ouch!

So this day consisted of a lot of sitting in planes and trains. The stay was to be so short that I did not even bring a bag and only kept my iPhone in a coat pocket. No passport as well; since a few months I am using only a creditcard sized ID card for travels within the EU (which feels a bit like having a second passport, so the real one can be safely sent to some embassy for a visa). The iPhone fortunately gave me access to some good podcasts. I …

During my Sicily trip of 2006 I had already ticked off the Val di Noto WHS by visiting the towns of Modica, Ragusa, Scicli and Noto. It comprises 4 more locations however, including specific urban areas of the city of Catania. Catania is also home to the busiest international airport on Sicily, so I walked around there for a few hours before my return flight to the Netherlands after my Etna hike in October 2019.

It takes a 20-minute walk from the station to Cathedral square, the historic heart of the city. The city has a bad reputation, but on this sunny Sunday even the railway station area did look OK. Catania’s excuse for looking gloomy is that it was built from grey-black lava stone. The excess of (badly done) graffiti sprayed on the walls and the many vacant buildings do not help either.

Yet there is also beautiful art and architecture to be found here. Just like the rest of the Val di Noto, Catania was hit by a major earthquake in 1693. The city was rebuilt in the same location making ample use of the fashionable Sicilian baroque style. Typical of the Sicilian …

Over 240 community members so far have ticked off Mount Etna as ‘visited’, but I wonder how many of them have just ‘seen’ it from a distance versus entered the core zone and witnessed its OUV. Most reviews to date indeed seem to have been in the former category. By far the best of them is Joel’s video , made during terrible weather conditions. I recently spent a long weekend in the area to try to make mine into a ‘good visit’. It all got off to a fitting start as my flight from Rome was delayed by an hour because air traffic to Catania was temporarily limited due to Etna's ash clouds .

The next day at 5.15 a.m., I left Taormina with my guide for the journey to the northeastern slopes of the Etna. We drove to the parking lot of Rifugio Citelli , which lies already at an altitude of over 1,700 meters. Everything was still dark and quiet, although we were able to stop underway at a bar for an Italian stand-up breakfast of cappuccino and a cornetto. The breakfast bars along the route open early (this one at 4.30!) to serve …

Early September I spent 2 weeks travelling across Russia , covering over 5,200km by train on this itinerary . It was only my second visit to this vast country, after having done a short tour to Moscow & St. Petersburg in 1990. Find below my top tips for travelling to Russia as a World Heritage Traveller.

1. Incorporate different regions in your itinerary

I’d recommend to not focus solely on the Moscow region or the Moscow/St. Petersburg corridor. Although it has the highest density of WHS in the country, it has a very common European vibe and many of the sights do feel a bit similar. Already after a few days I was beginning to dread visiting yet another white church with a golden dome. Incorporating parts of the South and the East in your itinerary, though these regions are very much Russified as well, will bring you in touch with different cultures and landscapes. Bolgar and Lake Baikal became the highlights of my trip.

2. You don't have to be afraid of the language barrier anymore

A few weeks before my departure I started doing daily Russian lessons via Duolingo. And I added the offline version of Google Translate …

The Historic Center of Irkutsk is an enigmatic entry on Russia’s Tentative List. Its official description is in French and just rambles on about its general history, architectural styles, street plan and renovation projects. There seems to be no focus what the prospective WHS should entail: “a large number of preserved architectural monuments of different periods and styles (Siberian baroque, classicism, art nouveau, "Russian style", local traditions, Gothic, Byzantine, Asian architectural art, constructivism)” suggests a broad approach, while it seems logical that OUV could be found somewhere in its renowned wooden architecture.

Irkutsk, the largest city in Eastern Siberia, was founded in 1661 as a military fortress that imposed taxes on the indigenous population in the form of animal fur. The city also developed as a commercial and administrative center due to its location on various trade routes with Mongolia and China such as the Tea route. Today it is slightly more chaotic than the big cities in western Russia, but I liked it. One really encounters a completely different side of the country. At the cozy Central Market, you’ll find Mongolian, Buryatian and Chinese tradesmen selling nice thick woolen socks, cheese and honey. And of …

There are dozens of ways to ‘do’ Lake Baikal . Previous reviewers already have highlighted the views from the Transsiberian Railway, its winter attractions and Olkhon Island. On my first day in the area I did the touristy thing by taking a ‘Raketa’ ferry from Irkutsk via the Angara River to Listvyanka, walking on the boulevard along the lake, eating fried omul in the recommended Proshly Vek restaurant and visiting the Baikal museum. I actually had wanted to take the ferry all the way to Bolshie Koty (an isolated village only accessible on foot or via the lake), but that would have meant another 5 hours of entertaining myself without access to food or obvious attractions, something I did not look forward to after just finishing a 49 hour train ride with the same characteristics.

For the main part of my visit though, I focused on 1 of the 5 nature reserves that surround the lake and are part of the huge core zone as well. I had booked a tour to the Baikalsky Nature Reserve near Tankhoy, which meant a drive along the south side of the lake for some 250km. The lake is fully …

The Assumption Cathedral and Monastery of the town-island of Sviyazhsk is the most recent addition to the trio of WHS in and around Kazan. Probably because of that, a very low number of 20 community members so far have visited it before me (it ranks 961st out of the 1121 WHS based on visitor numbers). I went there on a half-day trip from Kazan by taxi – the drive there takes about an hour. I had arranged for a 2 hour waiting time so I could visit the site and return with the same driver.

The drive was quite uneventful and certainly not as scenic as the one to Bolgar. It lies in a much more built-up area near Kazan. Sviyazhsk itself is a former island which nowadays can be accessed via a bridge. It all ends at a large parking lot, from where a series of steeps stairs will take you up to the historic zone. But first you have to get yourself a free ticket at the desk of the Tourist Office, in the building to the right of the stairs. With that ticket the turnstiles will open that give entrance to the site.

A trip to Bolgar is just what ICOMOS did not want it to be: an introduction to the Volga Bolgar civilization. It was an uphill struggle to get this site inscribed as a WHS: only at the 4th try it succeeded and with a significantly limited OUV statement. However, for the Tatar Republic and especially the Islamic Volga Tatars this is so much more – nothing less than the heartland of their civilization. Volga Bulgaria (c. 700–1238), the earliest known organized state within the boundaries of Tatarstan, was an advanced mercantile state with trade contacts throughout Inner Eurasia, the Middle East, and the Baltic.

Getting there is a bit tricky because it is in a remote location not close to any sizeable town; see this Forum post for transport options. I visited Bolgar with a Russian group tour by bus, organized by Hotel Tatarstan. This only cost 1899 rubles (26 EUR), including lunch and entrance fees. The normal admission price is 400 rubles (EUR 5.50). It was a full day trip from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m, of which we spent 5 hours at the site itself. The site is very extensive, we were transported by …