Hello, and welcome to this special Monday Edition of the Travelogue Newsletter!
Last week, I visited Bucharest, Romania for the first time. Even though many people consider Poland and Hungary to be Eastern Europe, Romania was the first country where I truly felt like I was in the East. It was an unexpected feeling, and Bucharest definitely wasn’t what I expected either. Sometime soon, I'll write about my experience and share it in this newsletter. But I’ll save that for another day. For now, let's dive into this week's stories.
Here are this week's stories:
When I was a kid, my family drove up to St. Louis once a year. The drive took three hours, but it always felt longer. I was so filled with anticipation that one minute felt like 10 minutes. I loved going to St. Louis — the botanical gardens, the incredible City Museum and Science Center, enormous Forest Park with that incredible zoo, and, of course, the famous arch reaching across the Mississippi River, the Gateway to the West. So I was thrilled to see The New York Times travel section publish this long piece about what St. Louis can tell us about America. I recommend you read, and I definitely recommend you visit St. Louis if you haven't yet.
Up for a food story? Read this from the BBC about borsch battles between Russia and Ukraine (although I remain convinced that borsch is really Polish, and it's called barszcz, and Polish Christmas dinner wouldn't exist without it.)
The BBC also published this story about the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán — you can visit the remains of this ancient metropolis underneath Mexico City. If you're interested in archeological sites — and even if you're not — you should read this story.
Have you ever heard of Purnululu National Park? It's in the western part of Australia, and it consists of about 600,000 acres of otherworldly landscapes. The Atlantic published a photo essay focusing on the park's karst sandstone formations, which create plenty of domes and caverns for hikers traveling through. Apparently Australians call these formations Bungle Bungles, which is (of course) hilarious.
Purnululu National Park. Photo by Alan Taylor for The Atlantic.
A couple of fun (albeit creepy) lists before Halloween:
Both of these are from Conde Nast Traveler, a publication that really seems hyped for Halloween season. The list of 45 abandoned places around the world includes crumbling castles and churches, China's failed attempt at recreating a mini-Paris, and a train graveyard in Bolivia. The list of haunted places includes places like the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado (which inspired Stephen King's The Shining) and an entire haunted forest in Transylvania.
And finally: Are you a horrible person for flying?
While writing this newsletter, I’ve tried to highlight issues pertaining to travel and how it affects climate change. We all know flying isn’t the best for the environment, which has made me ask myself: Should I feel guilty about flying back to the U.S. to spend Christmas with my parents this year? Well, I did for awhile. But as it turns out, only 12% of frequent-flying Americans are responsible for two-thirds of all aviation emissions, according to a New York Times write-up of a study from the International Council on Clean Transportation.
Anyway, if you still feel guilty about flying, you can buy carbon offsets that work to cancel out greenhouse gas emissions. The NYT wrote about how to find these carbon offset options in their climate change newsletter back in July. And here's a story from The Guardian also published an article about how an increasing number of travel companies are offsetting carbon emissions.