I was surprised when i discovered how many people from Western Europe come to the Eastern European country Poland for their Erasmus exchange programme.

Why do these students choose to spend one semester or one year of studies away from their well–developed countries and leave behind a settled education and professional system? What are the things attracting them to choose Poland to find their luck or to have an amazing time?

I come from Latvia and I am doing my Erasmus in Warsaw (Poland) for one semester. For me Eastern European countries are no big surprises and I don't have a so called cultural shock. A lot of things here are similar to my home country. Sometimes when I am walking down the street I feel like being back in Riga although people around speak polish, which is not mysterious to me too.

This is the second part of a documentary of the author's travel travel to Chelyabinsk/Russia. The series will be continued on a bi-weekly basis.
Part one

Strictly speaking, we Germans are spoilt in terms of our "Autobahnen" but the thing we were sliding on was not even a motorway, barely a street; the whole process of being uncontrollably propelled forward without any chance of stopping rather reminded me of sledging since it was snowing without any cease.

But it was not Father Christmas' sleigh I had entered in Yekaterinburg it was an old Russian „LADA“ probably twice the age of Father Christmas and all his reindeers together.

This article was first released in volume 9 of the anglophone Pakistani magazine The Fourth Article.
Please visit http://thefourtharticle.com for further information and all issues released yet.

Pura Vida, TFA readers!
Please don't respond with "livin la vida loca", as I used to do. If you don't know the meaning of pura vida, don't think of a quick response just yet; let me try to explain it. If you do happen to know what Pura Vida means, definitely you are one of many lucky travellers who has visited Costa Rica, a small country just on the southern up of the Mesoamerican subcontinent. Firmly nested between Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south, Costa Rica embodies the concept of Pura Vida.

We finally made it — theredpin.net is online. Thanks to the help of our first splendid volunteer authors Daniel Platt, Fabian Gohl, Manuela Bustamante, Serge Dubois and T. Schulz we made our start with what could be called our first issue.

Is there a certain area or topic you would like to read about or do you have a special place to write about on your mind yourself please drop us line.

When I started off from Berlin Airport Schönefeld on the 13th of October I had nothing bad in mind. I was happy just to leave the bad German weather behind when I boarded the plane. During our three hour flight to Athens dawn broke in and when we landed it was already dark night. We made our way through the huge airport and claimed our baggage which is not too easy with Greek characters everywhere.

Then we took the underground to our hotel. And there was something difficult for me – as a German – to understand: The Greek in general is not utterly confident with schedules and timetables or at least not with sticking to them. Anyways; I arrived at my hotel and immediately fell into my bed. Tomorrow I would have to take the ferry to Agistri, a small island around 80km off from the Piraean coast.

There are some names you just don’t want to have – Mussolini, Pinochet and perhaps Doctor Octopus command the top slots. And on the 7th of November I almost added my own name – Serge Dubois – to that list too…

When I got to Portela Airport in Lisbon in a hurry I of course didn’t think about this to happen at all. I felt completely wasted sitting on the backseat of a taxi driven by someone whose driving style felt like he attended the same party I was on the night before until 5 AM. But I made it just in time to my flight, checked in and was happy when I finally subsided into my leather seat in the small Airbus to Paris.

This is the first part of a documentary of the author's travel travel to Chelyabinsk/Russia. The series will be continued on a bi-weekly basis.
Part two

Does anyone know where Chelyabinsk is? I did not. And admittedly, Russia as a holiday destination and a country where democracy is not exactly spelled in capital letters did not seem very appealing to me. From a famous online-encyclopedia I learnt that Chelyabinsk is a city located to the east of the Ural Mountains with a population of a little bit more than one million citizens. I was flummoxed. How come that I, being not too bad at geography, had never heard of this city before? All I could deduct from this information was that it did not even belong to the European Russia. The airplane which was taking off was heading for Asia.

Sure — Checkpoint Charly, Siegessäule and the Brandenburg Gate are compulsatory for any visitor to Berlin. But if you want to see what makes Berlin the indisputable subcultural capital of Germany you should throw a glance behind the curtain of the travel brochures.

What makes the cultural Berlin so diverse is its role during the time of the division of Germany. Especially in the years between 1961 and 1989, where the western and eastern part of the city were divided by the Berliner Mauer, both parts emerged differently. While the isolated western part of the city shaped up to an appealing destination to countless youngsters wanting to escape the smugness of their West German hometowns, the eastern part was centrally formed to be a showcase of the superiority of command economy.

During the past 30 years Cali has been known as a very dangerous city, home to worldwide known drug dealers and people living in extreme poverty.

Very few people outside of Colombia look beyond that.

Cali, one of the oldest cities of the New World, has since its founding been a very hospitable city. It was one of few cities without grievous racial conflicts in the colonial era.
About 50 years after the liberation of Colombia, Cali was the favorite place for many Colombians for building new homes. The openness of the city gave them the chance to fulfill their vision of safe and affordable housing.
This multicultural wealth has allowed the city to be a place of encounters, where joy, dance, art, sport and revolution have always shined.