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WHS #586: Wachau

Site – September 19, 2015 by Els Slots
The Wachau is a riverine landscape in Northeast Austria. Here the Danube flows for 36km through a fertile valley, that has been used since the Middle Ages for growing apricots and grapes - yes, this is another viticulture WHS . Fortunately they have thrown in a number of palaces, castles and picturesque historic town centres to enhance the visitor experience. A wealth of individual monuments and places has been highlighted in the nomination file.
Schloss Schönbühel
I visited on a Sunday, and thought it would be a nice idea to start the day with a hike enjoying the river views. I parked my rental car in Schönbühel, a small town east of Melk. An oversized palace dominates its town center. It provided a tantalizing start, though you cannot get in because it's in private use. Just as in Neusiedl , which I visited the day before, cycling is very popular here: one can traverse the entire Danube valley on a smooth bike path. Unfortunately there is no separate trail for hikers, and there’s a lot of noise from car traffic on the parallel road. Hiking by far turned out …
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WHS #585: Neusiedlersee

Site – September 13, 2015 by Els Slots
The Neusiedlersee ( Fertö tó in Hungarian) is a saline lake about an hour east of Vienna. It’s on the WH List as a cultural landscape. “A combination of stockraising and fishing with viticulture beside a lake” seems to be its core value. This is a fairly well-visited site among WH travellers, and the general public also knows how to find it as shown by an annual visitor count of over 700,000. In preparation of my visit I tried to find some things to see or do that haven’t been described on this website before. I will leave the omnipresent vineyards for what they are, but focus on the reed and vernacular architecture.
Layers of reed, with some lake in between
I started my visit in the town of Mörbisch, at the west bank of the lake. The nomination file applauds its “characteristic oblong farmsteads and narrow lanes leading down to the Lake”. My car navigation however delivered me at a huge parking lot at the "Seebad" (Lakeside Resort), without anything particularly interesting to see en route. I had chosen this town mostly for its transport link to the …
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A History of WHS in Danger

Connection – September 5, 2015 by Els Slots

The UNESCO World Heritage List owes its existence directly from safeguarding endangered monuments. The succesful campaign for the salvage and relocation to higher ground of the temple complexes of Abu Simbel and Philae because of the construction of the Aswan Dam was an important trigger to create the World Heritage Convention in 1972.

List of World Heritage in Danger

A specific subset of this List contains the sites that are labelled ‘in danger’. Inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger has the purpose “to inform the international community of conditions which threaten the very characteristics for which a property was inscribed on the World Heritage List, and to encourage corrective action”. That danger can be ‘ascertained’ (sites already facing specific and proven dangerous situations) or ‘potential’ (sites threatened by situations that can have harmful effects, such as armed conflict). 1 .

Portobelo (Panama): suffering from floodings and general neglect

Some statistics

Since the publication of the first World Heritage List in 1979, 76 different sites have been put on the Danger List:

  • 1 immediately was deemed in danger in 1979 ( Kotor );
  • 12 were already endangered upon inscription;
  • 18 have been in danger for more than 10 …
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WH Travellers meeting in Rotterdam

Website – August 26, 2015 by Els Slots

The idea came earlier this year in or around Izmir, when after some private meetings among Top WH Travellers Nihal Ege thought it would be a great idea to organize an event related to the WHS website. Holland was chosen as the destination, as it lies fairly central in Europe and it would make things more easy for me as a host. An announcement was posted on this website, and many positive reactions followed.

Original Van Nelle sign

So on Sunday August 23, 20 World Heritage Travellers from 7 countries were present at the gates of the Van Nelle Factory for a tour and meet-up lunch afterwards. Most of the participants had added a few extra days in this corner of Europe to tackle such WHS as the Fagus Factory and the Par force Hunting Landscape (“There is forest. And there are deer, of which we took photos of.”). A Livingstone versus Stanley encounter even occurred at the infamous Flint Mines of Spiennes , where Iain Jackson and Paul Tanner stumbled upon each other.

Our ‘official’ programme started with a tour of the Van …

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WHS #584: Gammelstad

Site – August 19, 2015 by Els Slots
The Church Town of Gammelstad is a village in the woods some 10 km outside of Lulea in North Sweden. It’s hard to imagine nowadays that people used to arrive here by boat. The sea level in the 15th and 16th century, when the town developed, was 10 metres higher than today. By 1649 though, the harbour had become too shallow. Movement of the tectonic plates had caused land elevation. On site you can still see the spot where the old harbour was located: it now is a parking lot for the neighbouring open air museum.
Typical street in Gammelstad
When I arrived in Gammelstad on a Sunday morning at 9 a.m. its streets were empty. Only a fat Garfield-like cat welcomed me, and accompanied me on my walk around town. The trademark Falun red wooden houses give the town center a coherent architectural feel, though there are more modern houses on the outskirts of town too. I found the town lay-out remarkable: it seems completely haphazard. The cottages were added gradually and as needed. Once all the streets were lined with houses, the land between the roads was …
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WHS #583: Laponia

Site – August 15, 2015 by Els Slots
The Laponian Area is a big WHS comprising 9 nature reserves that needs some time and research to cover. Not many general interest tourists put it on their itinerary: on the web I mostly found trip reports about multi-day hikes, for which you have to take everything with you on your back (25 kg seems to be a minimum). Paths are scarcely marked: those that are experienced enough to hike here get along fine with GPS and/or compass. From the comfort of my rental car I encountered several of these long distance hikers with their huge backpacks by the side of the road, waiting for a bus or just getting ready to start their walk.
Reindeer: check!
The designated area lies north of the Arctic Circle between the towns of Jokkmokk and Gällivare. I used the latter as my base for 2 nights. The town will never win any beauty contest, but if you’re not fussy I can recommend Gällivare B&B and the local Thai restaurant. I started my Laponian exploration with a day trip by car to Stora Sjöfallet National Park. From Gällivare it takes 2.5 hours (184 …
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Searching for the Wadden Sea

Site – August 8, 2015 by Els Slots
The Wadden Sea WHS covers a huge area along the coasts of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark, so it’s an easy site to tick off. Getting a real feel for it though is a whole different story. I believe one should at least try to cover several different areas, and take in both the marine and coastal aspects. Early August 2015 I made my third trip to the inscribed area, still searching for its soul.
Wadden Sea seen from a distance
My first visit was in 1982: I was 12 years old and went on a school trip to the Wadden island of Vlieland. It was the first time that I went away for a couple of days without my parents, not counting a disastrous girl scout camp that I left crying already after one night. Vlieland was more of a succes, it’s a really popular holiday island geared to an active vacation. I still have some very funny pictures of that time. Although the islands are outside of the core zone of the WHS, you’ll inevitably cross the Wadden Sea by ferry. So technically – I had been …
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WHS #582: Wooden Tserkvas

Site – August 1, 2015 by Els Slots
The Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region are 16 wooden churches in the border region of Poland and Ukraine. There are 8 inscribed churches in each country. During my long weekend in southeastern Poland I focused on the Polish ones. Beforehand I plotted them all on a map, and as you can see in the figure below it will take a long drive to cover them all. Two tserkvas straddle the Ukranian border below Zamosc , and I was tempted to drive even further north to include that WHS also. But it still is a 1.5 hour drive from Radruz. Daytrips to L’viv in Ukraine are also advertised from the larger cities in this region, so this is a true hotspot.
The 8 bigger white dots represent the Tserkvas in Poland
In the end I only had time for the 6 in southern Poland, those that lie near the border with Slovakia. Most of the previous reviewers seem to have visited the cluster of 4 below Gorlice, although John Booth of course made it even to the most remote ones by public transport! ‘Tserkva’ means ‘church’ in the Ukrainian …
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WHS #581: Malopolska Churches

Site – July 25, 2015 by Els Slots
Southeastern Poland holds two sets of WH-listed wooden churches, which lie in overlapping areas. It’s an important travel decision whether to mix them and take in as many as possible while driving the most efficient route, or to separate them which also means not being able to visit every single one. I opted for the latter, as I thought otherwise the two sets would blur into one in my memory. I had about 1.5 days to spare in the area, and devoted the first afternoon to two of The Wooden Churches of Southern Malopolska .
Church of St. Leonard (Lipnica Murowana)
The most difficult thing about visiting any of the wooden churches is just finding them. I immediately ran into trouble with the first one, the church in Lipnica Murowana. Lipnica is a pretty cute and sizeable town, where in the center I noticed a sign pointing to the "Church of St. Leonard” rightaway. However, when I entered the indicated street I ended up at a large modern church. I wondered how this could have the same name as the old wooden one! I checked my notes for more …
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WHS #580: Auschwitz Birkenau

Site – July 19, 2015 by Els Slots

Hardly two weeks after the WHC meeting of 2015 that gave me no less than 9 'new' sites, I hit the road again for my 580th WHS. The start of daily KLM flights to Cracow drew me to a revisit of Southern Poland. I had been to Cracow in 2005, visiting the Old Town , the Wieliczka Salt Mine and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska . At that time I decided to skip Auschwitz, as I wasn’t really in the mood for what I knew would be a very moving visit. This time around I started with Auschwitz Birkenau , staying overnight in Oswiecim. I had reserved entry for 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. Visitor numbers are limited to 100-200 an hour depending on the hour, so it’s best to pre-book a spot. Later in the day places fill up quickly, as after 10 a.m. these include guided tours in German, English, Russian, Spanish or Polish.

Original wooden barracks in Birkenau

When I arrived at about 7.50, already some 100 people were queuing to get in. The doors do not open until 8 a.m., and then you have …

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