Cappadocia, Turkey

Uçhisar castle perches at the peak of a craggy mountain, or so it would appear. Look closer at those sky-piercing turrets and see that they are built not upon the stone but of it, carved out from within. Climb into its honeycombed heart and emerge blinking on top of the world, caught at the center of time and feeling it radiate out in all directions. Ancient layers of volcanic ash have been compressed by gravity into rock, playfully carved by the hands of wind and rain into pale pink curtains and fairy chimneys, reverently polished by the hands of man into a home. The substrate of this world is so delicate it can be scratched away with a fingernail, but once shaped, the cone-shaped homes and monasteries freeze; the bottom halves of a thousand hourglasses into which the sands of time no longer pour. Suspend yourself above this land and the sun may only illuminate half the story, but a patient gaze will spot the suspicious geometry hinting at something more. There! A black rectangular eye carved into virgin cliff. A window peering deep into the fossilized Otherworld of secret cities and tunnels, or is it peering out, at our realm that is still ruled by time?

*Starting the Europe list off strong with a place that is geographically in Asia

Dubrovnik, Croatia

Dubrovnik is a sunbather, its concave face pointing reverently at the Adriatic sun while its toes dip into the turquoise waters. These marble streets are liquid gold and butter-smooth, polished to a high shine by millions of traversing feet. I move like a zipper through the winding urban canyons, watching them part just a few steps before me and knit together again once I slip through the gap. Perspective tilts; I am always moving down but looking up, the city walls and hills folding in on themselves in some mind-bending parody of the Earth’s curve. I climb up high to the rim and the world redshifts from gold to clay. Sun-stupefied cats drape themselves on vintage shingles that were shaped long ago over the potters’ own thighs, each roof a patchwork of shape and size and color. Life flows within this marble bowl to fill any space available. Basketball courts fold themselves like origami into impossible corners. Balconies lean in for a kiss across narrow alleyways, a hot Shakespearean take. Formidable city walls, once built to keep out entire navies, now use their strength only for good, embracing and protecting all those who come a-knocking at the portcullis. Dubrovnik welcomes us all, emboldening us to close our eyes and tip our own faces to the sun, to dip our own toes into the sea.

Freiburg, Germany

The forest is not so black anymore, and the wildest creatures lurking in its depths may be the barefoot German hippies, but the fairy-tale magic of old still lives here. Magic borne of life that feeds back into life, a perfect self-perpetuation. It’s conjured by the youths dancing Lindy Hop in abandoned fountains. It’s generated by the grandmothers and granddaughters hiking hand-in-hand, still wearing their Sunday best. The magic pools and flows through the city’s miniature streetside canals, arteries that spread it from one neighborhood to the next. Fall into a tiny canal, the legend goes, and the magic will forever mark you as one of Freiburg’s own. Cursed to stay forever. I wonder if I can choose to curse myself, or if so doing will reverse-curse me so that one day I will leave and never be allowed to return. The beauty here is humble and understated, hiding in pedestrian details. It may only choose to reveal itself if you stop and stay awhile, which of course is all according to plan. For only once you become a generator of Freiburg’s magic may you dip your cup and drink of its perfectly heady brew.

Ireland

If the cold North Sea is a hurricane, Ireland is its eye, forever cocooned in mist. Something wild slumbers here, something ancient and nameless. It rests just below your feet, curled up in the grass, and oh, such grass you’ve never seen before. The leaves long and psychedelic-green, endlessly rippling like the sea in a gale. The meadows and heaths sing an Irish lullaby in dulcet tones of emerald and saffron and ivory. Serpentine roads roll with the hills, like they too have fallen under the countryside’s spell and can’t remember where exactly they were headed. At the edge between worlds an unlikely accord has been struck between soft meadow and hard sea, though the sea is somewhat loath to hold up its end of the bargain and nibbles fitfully at the jagged shore. One wonders whether these overpowered charms were cast to keep the unnamed wild at bay, or indeed whether we have all been hoodwinked and the wild itself is the one cheekily casting these charms upon us. Making us forget that we are the ones who are dreaming. Regardless of its origin, this dream’s quiet message is clear: there is peace yet in this world. To find it we must only be willing to pause and watch, while the grasses dance with the sea.

What’s my favorite place in Ireland, you ask? Yes.

Istanbul, Turkey

When I first knocked on Istanbul’s door, I was a genuine product of Western society. Then the famous gateway to the East swung open and a strange new wind swept in, obliterating the boundaries of what I thought the world to be. Reflexively I inhaled, breathing deep this foreign wind pregnant with scents of spices and flowers that I had never met and therefore could not name. Thus did my language lose its power. Next the wind delivered songs of imams and street vendors and exotic seabirds, a call to mosque or capitalism or nature, whichever of those old gods you worship. Thus did my ethnocentrism pale. My lungs filled to bursting with the unknown, I finally exhaled. I opened myself to the East and poured through the gateway. Relieved of my worldly definitions, I was rendered childlike, interpreting creatively as I grasped for new understanding. The skyline dominated by domes and needle-thin minarets became a field of enormous shields and spears, propped up on the ground by a long-departed army of giants. Curling Arabic script was not ancient language but modern art, open to interpretation by whomsoever looked upon the brushstrokes. Using the shapes and flavors and interactions that I found beyond this threshold, I began to sketch my worldmap anew. I created loosely and lightly, as one builds a sandcastle, rejoicing in its ephemeral nature. I draw with one eye on the door. Ready to throw it open and let the next strange new wind sweep in, to let it obliterate this new sketch, and most importantly, to inhale.

Madeira, Portugal

A shard of Africa lost at sea. Claimed in name by the Portuguese but ruled entirely by the Earth, Madeira is an unlikely shield thrust deep into the Atlantic. Its north face bears the brunt of gales that pour from the shoulders of Iceland, while its south cradles riotous gardens of plants and humans who bask in the subtropical sun. The twin faces hinge upon a geologic knife’s edge. Tiny stone canals snake for miles through the mountain folds, ferrying rainwater to the southern plantations and providing passage for any rambling feet. Life sprawls in all directions, for it must. Laurisilva forests grip sheer valley walls, while dogs keep their customary neighborhood watch from house rooftops. A curious sense of defiance grips the island; assailed as it is by time and the elements, it gives quarter to none. Entire northern cliff faces bleed raw orange earth, their weathered skin constantly exfoliated to reveal fresh layers at once both ancient and brand new. The island bursts from the sea amid a flurry of serrated volcanic rocks and plunges just as abruptly back in, porpoising among the very waves that endlessly seek to bring it all down. Yet perched atop it all, reveling in the chaos, is life. A tidal wave stronger than any of the other earthly forces, life continuously explodes into being. Endless rebirth from endless destruction. A phoenix, hovering above the sea.

Rome, Italy

Rome swallows you whole. It’s irrefutably, absurdly alive. Its history breathes. Its houses and ruins interbreed. Growing and evolving atop the ruins of its former self, Rome shows us how to burst from our roots and embrace the now. Life sprints in the belly of this beast and you better sprint with it or else you’ll never burn off the antipasti. This is the way to Mediterranean immortality. Chaos: every road a tributary to the River Styx, every street crossing a leap of faith. Passion: lingering late into the night at Trattorie dinner altars, casting adoring gazes at plates of Carciofi alla Romana and ever-dwindling bottles of wine. Beauty: stucco walls shining with the colors of a scorched desert, the sun having come down and hand-brushed them in its own image. Only once you’re spat out again can you begin to comprehend what just happened, or that it’s already too late. Because Rome’s got a taste for you now. Run.

Venice, Italy

Two worlds masquerading as one. Water and City: in theory two halves of the whole, yet they remain curiously immiscible. A photograph and its negative, light and dark, each inhabiting spaces the other cannot. Each would have been perfectly able to thrive on its own, but long ago the two were wed and the honeymoon sparked a flash of alchemical fireworks. For millennia now the worlds have compromised and argued, pushed and supported, grown and changed together. Water, the practical and flexible one, fills the empty spaces and wipes clean the slate. City, the younger and headstrong one, carefully listens to all the things that can’t be done and then finds a way to do them all anyways. Miraculously, even after all these years, their boundaries remain as strong as they day they met. To stand within one world is to be without the other. Wander deep into City’s labyrinth and you will inevitably emerge at the sheer lip of Water, toes kissing the edge of a street that cannot be crossed. Board a vaporetto and cruise Water’s veins, past City’s squares and bridges and mansions, seeing and semi-believing but unable to reach out and touch. Even the boatmen, those shamans who wield the awesome power to ferry travelers across the boundary between worlds, must choose which to inhabit. Perhaps this is Venice’s true secret: it was forged not of passion but of patience. Support and accept and respect each other long enough and even the seemingly immiscible will become one, made greater by love than the sum of its inseparable halves.