​The story of a unique Italo-Slovenian community which came to be united by the same border that used to divide it One of the saddest sights is that of an Italian town in lockdown... It is an early Saturday afternoon in March 2020, and I am the only pedestrian in a sun-lit cobbled street in the centre of Gorizia, an ancient border town in north-eas...

​Vitali Vitaliev visits some of the remaining European enclaves/exclaves - parts of one sovereign country, totally surrounded and landlocked by another At moments of sadness and indecision, I often wander off to Ely Place – a seemingly unremarkable cul-de-sac off Holborn Circus in the centre of London. Passing through the ornate...

​Nothing about Montreuil-sur-Mer is what you expect... ... To begin with, it's not quite 'sur mer', but is built on a silted-up river estuary, about 20 miles away from the actual sea. First-time visitors tend to be swept off their feet by the unexpected charm and beauty of that seemingly unremarkable small town in the north of France, a mere 45-min...

​Vitali Vitaliev explores some unexpected attractions of the Swiss canton Valais For someone like me, still recovering after open-heart surgery, the official promotional logo of the Swiss canton of Valais – 'Engraved on Your Heart' – was bound to sound a tad too punchy (if not to say scary) in the beginning. The fact that I had – perhaps rather foo...

​Vitali Vitaliev uncovers some little-known Cold War relics in Berlin My first introduction to one of Berlin's lesser-known Cold War relics, the so-called "ghost stations", or Geisterbahnhoffe, was spontaneous and totally unexpected.Having just landed in Berlin's SchoenefeldAirport, we took an S-Bahn (overground) train to Friedrichstrasse Station, ...

​Vitali Vitaliev discovers a little-known Jewish community, which inhabited the small East Caribbean island of Nevis in the 17th and 18th centuries, played an important role in shaping the United States and the whole of the modern world. It is hard to find a stone, let alone a pebble, on the sun-drenched cracked patch of land which is the old ...