Colourful Costumes, Visual Appeal, Music And Dancing Delights & Jewellery At the World Travel Market

 At the World Travel Market, in London November 2025. 

The lanyards are plant based silk.  The personalized card you printed, when WTM emailed approved registration, is framed by a brown card frame without a plastic window.

Europe

Costumes

Spain, featuring wine and Roman Remains

SE Asia 

Indonesia, a lady selling inexpensive ear-rings.

The next big show for the trade is in Berlin, Germany in 17-18 Feb 2026. B2B (Business to Business.)

ITB Asia is in October 21-23 in Singapore.

Useful Websites

itb-asia.com

itb-china.com

itb-india.com

itb-americas.com

Please follow me and share links to your favourite posts.

Berlin Hotel Aquarium bursts, in Germany. Where Else Can You See Enormous Aquariums?

Wikipedia is getting quick off the mark with its articles. The AquaDom burst on 16 December. By the 27th, when I found an article in the Daily Mail online newspaper, a complete account and analysis with several photos was in Wikipedia.

Photo by Dellex

Another view of it.

By vxla - https://www.flickr.com/photos/vxla/4135168921/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126740402

Berlin  Hotel Aquarium

The big cylindrical aquarium in a Berlin Radisson Blu Hotel burst in December 2022. December 16h. I am sorry that all the fish died, that the hotel has been destroyed, the staff have lost their jobs or had to change jobs, the destruction of a building and landmark. 

Berlin is on my wishlist. 

Where else can you see giant aquariums? I have seen a couple. I saw a similar one in Spain.

Spanish Hotel Aquarium

I stayed in a hotel with a similar aquarium in Spain. Our destination goal was the Guggenheim Museum. The hotel was within walking distance of the museum, which was across the road, on the same side of the river. 

USA Restaurant Aquarium

I also saw an aquarium in a restaurant at Disney World. Coral Reef Restaurant.

Picture from Wikipedia.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AquaDom

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11576259/Massive-aquarium-exploded-German-hotel-lobby-ticking-time-bomb-says-expert.html

https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en

https://www.disneyworld.co.uk/dining/epcot/coral-reef-restaurant/

Interlingua Festival June 24th and 25th in Lido Tegelsee, Berlin, Germany

 

English version below   Hallå, namaste, sawubona! Wir können es kaum erwarten – in 10 Tagen startet das EXPOLINGUA Festival im Strandbad Tegelsee!   Am 24. und 25. Juni von morgens bis abends erwartet Dich ein vielfältiges Programm, u.a.: Korean in a bubble, Chinesische Kalligraphie, Encuentro Hispano, Berufsbild Übersetzer, Darbuka Trommel Workshop, Sumo, Jobsuche in Deutschland, Co-creative Haiku Poetry Workshop, Meet&Greet with famous Content Creators, Workshops für Sprachlehrer*Innen, Arabisch, Dänisch, Griechisch, Persisch, Schwedisch, Tschechisch, und das ist noch nicht alles!  Das Programm wächst noch immer jeden Tag!   Das alles Open-Air und gut erreichbar mit EXPOLINGUA-Shuttle-Bussen vom U-Bahnhof Alt-Tegel und S-Bahnhof Tegel oder alternativ mit den Öffis!   Sichere Dir hier Deine Freikarte – wir freuen uns auf Dich! ­ ­ Zur Anmeldung für eine Freikarte ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ENGLISH VERSION:   We can hardly wait: in 10 days the EXPOLINGUA Festival will start at lido Tegelsee, Berlin!   A diverse program awaits you on June 24th and 25th from morning to evening, i.a.: Korean in a bubble, Chinese calligraphy, Encuentro Hispano, job profile translator, darbuka drum workshop, sumo, job search in Germany, co-creative haiku poetry workshop, meet & greet with famous content creators, workshops for language teachers, Arabic, Danish, Greek, Persian, Swedish, Czech, and that's not all!   The program is still growing every day!   Open air and easily accessible with EXPOLINGUA shuttle buses from the Alt-Tegel underground station and Tegel S-Bahn station or alternatively with public transport.    Grab your free ticket here: we look forward to seeing you! ­ ­ Register here for a free ticket! ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ Unsere Partner: ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­ ­

­ ­ ­ EXPOLINGUA Scharnhorststr. 24, 10115, Berlin

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

https://www.facebook.com/blauhomine/

Polyglots' Multilingual expo and conference 22-23 November 2019 in Berlin

Flag of Germany

I don't have to wait for an Esperanto conference nor wait until I can speak Esperanto. Here's a polyglot exhibition.
Where?
Berlin, Germany.
When?
November.

Is it recurring?
Yes, because they had one in 2018.

What's the cost of entry?
It's free?
I found the website confusing. There seems to be a free button but another for a ticket for one day and for two days. I thought maybe the free ticket is to visit on line. I'll let you know if I solve the conundrum.

How come? Who is financing it?
Exhibitors include the stands which are paid for by language schools. Ah!

So it's not just for dabbling polyglots?

No. It's also for language teachers, students, translators. Go and see the website.

 More details from

Places For Polyglots to Visit:
See my posts on the museum about invented languages in Vienna, Austria.

Flag of Austria

See my posts on the creator of Esperanto, Zamenhof, and his grave and museum in Poland.

Flag of Poland

Useful Websites
https://www.expolingua.com/en/

Meanwhile, brush up your languages for free with Duolingo or Memrise, or pay for a teacher through italki. Want to know more?
Join the Facebook Polyglot page.

About the author
Angela Lansbury
I have lots of posts on learning languages such as Spanish, and Chinese, buying a Russian keyboard, and learning languages. Please save in your bookmarks and share links to your favourite posts.

Recording Your Travel Trips

It is very useful to have a record of the dates of your travel trips and the hotels, restaurants and airlines and even the fellow travellers, hosts and people you met.

My husband has a travel spreadsheet on his computer, as a diary on Excel. If I want to know how many years I have lived in a foreign country, I can ask him the dates of our first trip to or from that country. He can do a search for the country or destination or date.

In my family history book, a page at the back lists all your vacations. When I was just married for a year or so after the birth of our son I started compiling the family history book and added the list of where we went on our honeymoon and first anniversary.  It seemed like overkill as I could remember the dates and places clearly.

However, as each year passes, the list become more important and interesting and relevant. I went to Morocco for my honeymoon.





Which year did I visit Morocco on my honeymoon? Morocco is a country in the ancestry line of my future daughter in law.




How many times have I visited the USA? Which year was my first trip, before or after the Vietnam war? When did we live in Rockville, Maryland? When did we move to Connecticut? Which years did we go skiing? How long after the earthquake did I visit San Francisco? Was it the same year or a year later?

Which trips did I take without my husband and without my son?

If you don't already have a list, start one.

You may also wish to keep a record of the number of countries you have visited. This is useful when writing the introduction to yourself when giving a talk on your travels, visiting a country on a conference, talking to your in-laws and the audience at a wedding.

In the good old days you could keep your passport forever with a record of your travel trips. After my late uncle died I could see which countries he had visited and when. I knew whether his stories about going to America on a cruise ship and visiting Berlin postwar were lies, fanciful, muddled dates, or the truth. I could see the exact truth, the day he arrived in and left each place.

Now that concerns about stolen or copied passports make the authorities ask you to return documents. it is helpful to take photocopies of photos of yourself in your old passports and on holiday and in ID documents, as well as recording dates, visas, entry dates.

Author
Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.  

Berlin's ITB promotes Germany's tourist attractions: learn about Mendelssohn wedding march, Disney's castle, the Pied Piper and more

That's the German flag, horizontal stripes of black, red and yellow. Not to be confused with the Belgian flag which has vertical stripes and the yellow in the middle whilst the German flag has red in the middle.

Belgian flag.

Berlin's ITB
I just received a notice about ITB Berlin, an invitation to go and have a chance to win air tickets to somewhere. This would involve me in spending time and money on getting to Berlin.

ITB is in March. I have never been to Berlin and it is somewhere on my wishlist. If I were both in the travel trade and nearby I would go. If I were not in the travel trade, just a traveller, and nearby, I would be watching the English language and German language press to find out what is new and exciting.

My first query, the first thought in my head was, what does ITB stand for?

Wiki and the website of the organization answer that question.

ITB is German for international tourist borse = with a double dot above the o - sorry but the way to type double dots inside blogger is eluding me. I have not found it - yet. (I just heard a speech about not saying no but saying not 'yet'.) The letters and sounds of b and p are close together and borse and purse are the link. It is a purse or pocket or exchange. So, international tourism exchange, not just an exchange of information, although that comes first, but taking action, trading, booking of hotels and events and setting up holidays and travel and services and events for you and me.

Berlin's Attractions
If  I go to any event or conference I try to arrive a day early to be sure of being on time at the start and like to stay later to visit the city. What if you are reminded about Berlin as a destination, can't get to the event, but wonder about going anyway? You might well start a tour of Germany in the capital, the most populated city in Europe after London, England.

Berlin is familiar as the backdrop to the city of Cabaret, the film starring Liza Minelli. Berlin was a divided city, now reunited. Famous for the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie.

My checklist of places to visit or re-visit starts with the Berlin Wall:

Berlin wall section.
Photo by VWPolonia75 from Wikivoyage.

1 Berlin Wall Museum
See the colourful murals. Read about those who made it across, those who didn't, sadly 130 casualties, and how the wall came down with great celebration, reuniting the city, West and East.

Allied Museum, Berlin. Section of the Wall displayed.

2 The Jewish Museum
Next on my list is the Jewish Museum, Europe's largest Jewish museum.

Moses  Mendelssohn, portrait, Jewish Museum, Berlin, Germany.

In the largest Jewish museum in Europe, the main old museum contains portraits of Einstein and Mendelssohn, and the eyeglasses of Moses Mendelssohn (son of Mendel). He had a hunchback and when told his young lady heard of the hunchback and refused to see him, he asked for just one minute to speak to her and apologize.

He told her, "Marriages are made in heaven and my guardian angel was told my wife-to-be would have a hunchback.
"My guardian angel replied, 'She will be unhappy. Let my young man have the hunchback - and bear all the world's troubles for her.'
"Sorry to have taken up your time. But if you liked what you heard, may I speak to you again one day, for just one minute?"
She saw him again, heard him again, and married him.

He spoke in German, so I reckon my translation into English is as good as others at capturing the essence of what he said so warmly.

Did he use those spectacles to read and teach himself Latin to become one of the leading philosophers of his day, immortalised in a play about himself and his friend Lessing? Or did he lose his sight studying by candle-light? Go to the museum and be inspired to learn more about famous, extraordinary people, and the daily lives of ordinary people, from the past.

His grandson wrote the Mendelssohn wedding march. (The one which sounds like descending a staircase. The rival tune is the one parodied as Here comes the bride.)

Jewish Museum Photo from Libeskind in Wikipedia.

The Jewish museum's modern extension is the famous or notorious, controversial Holocaust memorial, designed by architect Libeskind, all jagged and disorientating. Love it or hate it, a must see.

Garden of Exile, Jewish Museum.

The Holocaust Memorial

The Holocaust Memorial, Berlin.Photo by Alexander Blum in Wikipedia.

Other cities and attractions include:

2 Bonn - Beethoven Museum - the country is full of museums connected to music

3 Wine regions with wine tasting
German is renowned for white wines. Riesling is the grape which supposedly smells of petrol. (Americans say gasoline.)

4 Romantic Road (castles on rivers and lakes, black and white medieval villages on riversides and hillsides)
Rudesheim and many more - follow the trail

5 Theme parks

6 For romantic adults and young adults the inspiration for Sleepy Beauty Disney castle Neuschwanstein (German for new swan stone) in Bavaria, Germany.
See the three fairytale castles built by the 'Mad King' of Bavaria.

r	Ximonic, Simo Räsänen (post-processing) & Tauno Räsänen (photograph). Wikipedia.

7 WWII and Nazi past -
Nuremberg museum
Durer's house.

Durer's House, Wikipedia.

Belsen
(where Anne Frank and her sister died)

Munich -
 and Dachau where a map of the railway lines shows how trains took people from every major Nazi-controlled city in Europe via Germany to be exterminated across the border at Auschwitz-Birkeau in Poland.

8 Munich and the Oktoberfest
For beer, wine, food and fun.

9 The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Pied Piper's House, Hamelin. Photo by Bush6984 from the Wikipedia article on the Pied Piper.
The story supposedly records an event in the 13th century, when a rat-catcher in pied (multi-coloured) clothing, offered to lure away the rats (which may have spread plague) but was not paid more than half the promised sum, or not paid at all. In revenge lured away all the children (except three who were lame, deaf and blind). They were never seen again.

Possible explanations are that it is a legend with the pied piper symbolizing death from the plague era. If it was a real event, maybe children went dancing with a piper and disappeared into a sinkhole or the sounds and rhythm of the dancing sparked an avalanche.

Records suggest that orphans and unemployed youngsters emigrated, following brightly dressed recruiters. This resulted in the surnames from Hamelin appearing in other cities to this day.

The story was immortalised in German by Goethe, and the brothers Grimm, translated into English. The popular poem in English by Robert Browning is wonderfully rhythmic.

When I visited Hamelin I looked for a hotel where tourists could stay. When a hotel owner showed me his bedrooms and I tried to take a photo, he angrily told me to leave! I was surprised. Any English or American hotel owner would have been delighted, moved lights, asked me to write them up on Tripadvisor. I thought my PR might have been lacking.

Then I picked up a news sheet on the bus which gave an accusing account of a dispute about the funding of a re-enactment of the Pied Piper story.  I thought, so, centuries on, nothing has changed. Chilling.

However, that was a long time ago. Besides, every hotel and hotel owner is different.

The Romantic Road

Photo by Pedelecs.
Dinkelsbuhl. Romantic Road. Germany.

 Follow the trail maps and the signposts along the romantic road through riverside and hillside villages with steep gables.

Places to find local food: Rathaus Ratskeller
Berlin has a red Rathaus.

Berlin. Red Rathaus. Picture from Wikipedia.

On the main square of most cities is a converted medieval Rathaus, not a rat house (for that tale go to Hamelin) but the town hall.  The cellar or Ratskeller with big pillars is usually made into a vast cafeteria serving set meals. A bit like the British medieval banquets at stately homes. Girls and ladies and lads and men in olde worlde costume serve flagons of beer and local food at assorted prices. Busy at lunchtimes.

One notable Ratskeller I visited was in Bremen near the statue of the three animals which are a city folk legend and symbol.
Old picture of Bremen Ratskeller from Wikipedia.

Expect music, historical pictures and framed documents and local history and information on local sites and guided tours. Austrian cities have the same system of the Rathaus and Ratskeller restaurant.

German White Wine
I sampled many wines and stood on the Heidelburg Tun, a giant barrel in Heidelberg castle.
German wines include:
Auslese (late picked and sweeter as it has longer to ripen)
Black Tower (brand of white wine in black bottle)
Liebfraumilch (Our dear lady's milk, referring to the Madonna)
For something sweet, Boppard ice wine tasting in a shop on the main square of Boppard. Must book.

Useful Websites
To learn or brush up your German for free on the internet
duolingo.com

Overview of Travel
GERMANY AND BERLIN
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Germany
https://www.visitberlin.de/en
See Germany and Berlin in wikipedia, wikivoyage, wikitravel, tripadvisor.
https://www.itb-berlin.com/

BERLIN WALL
https://www.visitberlin.de/en/berlin-wall-memorial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Berlin_Wall_segments

https://www.tripadvisor.com.sg/ShowUserReviews-g187323-d196239-r542038704-Memorial_of_the_Berlin_Wall-Berlin.html
https://freetoursbyfoot.com/checkpoint-charlie/

JEWISH MUSEUM
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Jewish_Museum%2C_Berlin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Mendelssohn

PIED PIPER
Pied Piper House Restaurant, Hamelin, Germany.
https://www.tripadvisor.de/Restaurant_Review-g198595-d1356484-Reviews-Rattenfaengerhaus-Hameln_Lower_Saxony.html

ROMANTIC ROad
https://www.romanticroadgermany.com/

WINE TOURS
https://www.worldwidewinetours.com/germany/german-wine-tours/
https://www.tripadvisor.com.sg/ShowUserReviews-g187345-d6698203-r391171629-Vinothek_Georg_Breuer-Ruedesheim_am_Rhein_Hesse.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have many more posts on cities in Europe, the USA, Canada, Asia and worldwide. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Oktoberfest Is Over But there's Beer in Belgium and Britain, Book Oktoberfest in Germany Next Year and Christmas Markets

The flag of Germany.

Problem
I thought the German Oktoberfest started on the 1st of October and ended on the last day of October. Alas no. We have missed the Oktoberfest but there's still time to plan trips to the German Christmas Markets.

Answer
Oktoberfest started in September and it ends today, October 3rd 2017! It is the biggest beer festival in the world, attracting 6 million people, and I wasn't one of them. This year I have missed it. The good news is that now we know it starts in September, we can plan next year more carefully.

Oktoberfest in Munich in German iin 2018 will be held from September 22nd to October 7th. At least that's a bit more of October than in 2017.

So why the misleading name? According to their website, the original Oktoberfest was a week in Oktober to celebrate a royal marriage. In later years so that people could enjoy warmer weather, the festival was moved forward to start in September and end in Oktober. So why don't they call it the September fest? Oktoberfest has a good ring, doesn't it?

Plan to arrive on day one to see the morning parade of the horse-drawn carriages and bands.
If you are going there, entry to the tents is free. You just go in and sit down and order beer from the girls wearing the local Bavarian dirndl outfits. But at weekends the tents are often full by 11 am and once a tent is full nobody else is admitted. So arrive early.

Story
GERMAN BEER
I associate Germany with wine, especially Riesling, Black Tower, Liebfraumilch (wine so delightful it was called milk of the dear lady meaning the Madonna).
In many German cities you can find local food and wines in the Rathauskeller, nothing to do with rats. It's the German word for Town hall, usually a historic building, with at least one or two dishes at reasonable prices.

When we drove through Germany, it was always our first stop, if we had no other place in mind.

Meanwhile, various places in the UK are having their own little Oktoberfest German beer festivals.

Belgian Beer
Other great places for beer are Belgium.

UK Breweries
England has a septemberfest in Donington Park, I read about it on septemberfest.co.uk. If you want to see wenches in Medieval peasant costume, go to a Medieval Banquet. If it's beer you're after, and regional beer in the UK keep an eye on CAMRA, the Campaign For Real Ale.
Various breweries in the UK  are open to visitors and some are famous for the Shire horses which used to pull the delivery carts.

Travel Tips
Top German cities to visit
Berlin (the wall)
The Romantic Road (Rothenburg).

CHRISTMAS MARKETS
GERMANY
Rothenburg is a lovely backdrop for its Christmas market. Other cities for Christmas markets include Berlin and Nuremberg.

Nuremberg is associated in the minds of the British and many people with the Nuremberg Trials after the end of WWII. But the city has an old city, Durer's House museum, the expected historical museum and the Germanisches National Museum with stunning photogenic pillars outside covered in sayings in all languages about human right. (See Tripadvisor.) When I visited I did not understand the words in other languages. However, nowadays with Google Translate on your phone, this should be a problem you can solve more easily.

OTHER CHRISTMAS MARKETS
Austria: Vienna and Salzburg
Belgium, Brussels and Bruges
Bulgaria: Sofia
Canada: Toronto, Quebec, Vancouver
Czech Republic: Prague castle
Denmark: Copenhagen
England: London - Hyde Park, Bankside; Manchester
France: Rheims in Champagne region; Strasbourg in the Alsace
Ireland: Dublin's Twelve Days of Christmas
Latvia: Riga
Poland: Warsaw and Krakow
Scotland: Edinburgh; Glasgow
Switzerland: Zurich
USA: Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia, New York, Washington DC and many more.
Wales: Cardiff

GERMAN WEBSITES
Plenty of time to learn some German on
www.Duolingo.com
Oktoberfest in Germany in 2018 is Sept 22 2018 until October 7th.
https://www.oktoberfest.de/en/article/Oktoberfest+2017/About+the+Oktoberfest/Dates+and+General+FAQs
More Information From
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest
https://www.oktoberfest.de/en/article/Oktoberfest+2017/About+the+Oktoberfest/Dates+and+General+FAQs
https://www.christmasmarkets.com
https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/germany
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/festival-travel-checklist

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts.
Twitter: @AnnaTheAuthor

Graffiti Museum - Urban Museum In Berlin, Germany

Graffiti and Street Art, same thing or opposites?

Problems
Graffiti spoiling beautiful buildings.
Modern artwork on historic buildings.
'Art' done hastily by people with no talent or care.
Tunnels and alleys and buildings with boring blank walls.
No activities for bored teenagers and young workers.
No plan to remove bad graffiti and create good graffiti.

Answers
A plan to cover blank walls and beautify a city.
Protection for historic and empty buildings. (Barriers and CCTV.)
Restrictions on sale of spray paint to minors who are too young to understand the damage they cause and too young to be prosecuted.
Publicise the cost of clean-up - extremely expensive in time and equipment, admin costs, time consuming, dangerous, and hard to do without damaging the walls, a waste of tax payers' money.
Good graffiti can transform morale and turn into a tourist attraction, generating jobs and income.
If you are bored or looking for voluntary work or a good cause, especially if you in the art or admin world, here's a project for you and your area or city.
Every city should have a central wall which shows its historic landmarks and famous characters.
Commission art work which is trompe l'oeuil, realistic, surreal, skilful.

Stories
I was horrified by the graffiti on wonderful old art nouveau buildings in Bucharest, capital of Romania. My second city stay was in Brasov (the city near the Dracula Castle). One of the famous landmarks in Brasov is the 'string street', a narrow alley, which was ruined by random, unsightly graffiti.

Tourist Visits
Cities Famous For Graffiti
Berlin - Berlin Wall; UrbanMuseum
Bristol - Banksy

Cities Famous for Murals

Philadelphia, USA

London, England

Famous Street Art artists:
DALeast
www.daleast.com
Eine
IcyAndSot
Jeff Soto Facebook

Urban Museum

• • Tuesday-Sunday 10.00 -18.00
• ADDRESS

URBAN NATION MUSEUM FOR URBAN CONTEMPORARY ART
Bülowstraße 97
10783 Berlin
Germany

CONTACTTel.: +49(0)30 32295989E-Mail: office@urban-nation.comhttps://www.urban-nation.com/de/

Tips
BBC article on the Berlin museum:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41291813#_=_
Concealing Swastikas:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-40809266/berlin-street-artist-group-cleverly-undo-swastika-graffiti
Facebook on the Urban Museum
https://www.facebook.com/urbannationberlin/
Urban Nation Museum Webpage (has a video)
More ideas on where to go in a visit to Berlin from a Wiki list of museums in Berlin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_museums_and_galleries_in_Berlin

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
See my other posts on graffiti in Romania and murals.

Mexican Murals Cut Crime In Shanty Town - how and where to transform graffiti worldwide

Photo of Palmitas neighbourhood, town of Palchuca, Mexico. Photo from Wikiwand.

Problem
How do you transform the city's atmosphere, the ambiance? Two things I want to change everywhere.
1 Lack of colour
2 Untidy graffiti, when the same people could use their paint spray to create lovely colours, curves, patterns, pictures of people, rainbows and magnificent murals, turning their homes and home area into an inspiration and a tourist attraction.

Answer
Today I was delighted to hear about a project in Mexico, a government initiative, employing youths who were unemployed and/or gang members, to renovated a poor area, transform their own lives and actually cut crime. (I have the word actually, which is overused, but here it fits.) I looked up the place names Palmitas and Palchuca.

Palmitas
Palmitas is the Mexican neighbourhood (as Americans say - in the UK we would say urban area, local area). However,  my initial simple searches on Google and Wiki only found other places of the same name in the USA and Uruguay.

Palchuca
Palchuca is the town, about 55 miles from Mexico's capital, Mexico City.

If only we could copy them. Soon!

We have too much graffiti in London, as you see from the window of trains.

It is a worldwide problem. Earlier this year I was horrified by too much graffiti in Bucharest, capital of Romania, ruins the wonderful old buildings. (See pictures in my earlier post.)
Berlin has artists transforming

Brasov's landmark String Street ruined by graffiti. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

 graffiti swastikas. Would somebody please start a campaign to clean up London and Bucharest. In fact, link up everybody, in the same way as international sports associations and Toastmasters International. Then people involved could take holidays in other cities to start movements doing the same there.

Pachuca - what else to see
I looked up Pachuca, Mexico, in Wikipedia. The BBC article featured the transformed shanty town. Pachuca itself is worth visiting because of its attractive architecture and several points of interest:
Firstly, the place was settled by Cornish miners.
See
1 The clock tower.
2 Football.
3 Eat the Mexican version of the Cornish pasty. I was most interested to see that the thick crust was to keep dirty hands away from the filling.

Clock Tower (or Reloj - Spanish for clock), Pachuca, Mexico, photo from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachuca
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-40959839# (Mexican murals cut crime.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_graffiti
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-40809266/berlin-street-artist-group-cleverly-undo-swastika-graffiti
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-39101558/could-banksy-s-city-rid-itself-of-graffiti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_area_graffiti_and_street_art (Graffiti in Sydney, Australia)

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my previous posts. Please follow me here or on Facebook and LinkedIn and share links to your favourite posts.

Kate and William's Tour to Berlin and Memorials You Might Visit

 Kindertransport Museum memorial, Liverpool Street station, London.

My photos of the Kindertransport statues are copyright. The ones in Wikipedia are free - check their photos and permission.

Problem
Kate and William visited Stutthof near Gdansk in Poland, then flew to Berlin where they saw the Berlin Holocaust memorial and a camp. Yes, but they took a plane between them.

Their visit has encouraged others to follow in their footsteps to Holocaust museums and camps and memorials. Where are the Holocaust museums, concentration camps and memorials and which could you see on a visit to Berlin, Germany, Poland or another country? A Tripadvisor reader asked which ones were within reach of a stay centred on Berlin.

Why visit more than one? If you are not trying to trace an ancestor's route, why would you impose that sadness on yourself, whether on a business trip or a holiday?

The knowledge that it is there dominates other thoughts in your mind. It's like looking at road accidents. You are mesmerised by the horror. Feel that by witnessing, although you cannot help anybody who is dead, you can somehow prevent future tragedies to yourself and others by learning lessons and warning other people how to watch out for danger. You feel that it would be disrespectful to ignore it and just party.

A visit to Auschwitz is very harrowing. I had put off visiting Poland for years and when I reached Poland I found visiting Auschwitz was unavoidable. The Poles want people to know that although it was on Polish soil it was organised by the German Nazi party. Every Polish school takes children there. The concentration camp is on most tours from Krakow, either as the main feature of the tour or part of a combined tour to other locations such as a salt mine, and Auschwitz was just as bad as I feared.

Answer to tour planning problem - lists

GERMANY
Berlin has the Berlin Wall museum on general tours but you may want to spend time at:
Berlin - Holocaust museum, the one with the concrete block maze outside.
Munich - Dachau camp.

POLAND
Krakow, former capital. Beautiful small city with a preserved square and medieval cathedral. Preserved because it was just across the border from Germany and the Germans invaded and quickly captured the small city by surprise and made it their Nazi HQ. Jews were sent on trains from German and all over Europe to Auschwitz outside the city.

1 Auschwitz
This is where Anne Frank and her sister and mother were sent. Elderly and children were gassed, the useful able bodied adults who survived selection set to work. Learn that the able bodied prisoners had tattooed numbers because after three months they had aged and thinned so much that you could not recognize them from photos taken on arrival.

2 Birkenau
You can do both on a combined tour. Although it is possible to visit Auschwitz without Birkenau, the main day tour takes you to both. As people selling tours tell you, it is essential to see both to understand. The shock is that it goes on for miles. Field after field, each separated from the next by barbed wire and huge, high watch towers, with a different field for each country and language group. This field of hangars with bunk beds for the French; this field for the Germans; this field for the Poles; this field for the Greeks and so on; and on; and on.

3 Schindler's Factory
Finish with a story which had a happy end for many, a museum in the former factory of Schindler, with videos of survivors saying 'what he did for me'.
Liberated by Russians.

Warsaw
The large capital to tour. Many tours will first pass the Chopin monument, then the Jewish Ghetto and / or the outside of the Jewish Museum. Many other tours go inside both the Warsaw war museum and the Jewish Museum. (I asked for another private tour going to the Ghetto, the Synagogue and the Orphanage.)
Jewish Museum.
WWII Orphanage. Statue outside (ask a driver on a private tour to stop) and exhibition inside the orphanage. (Tours by appointment because the place is in use and not enough visitors or guides to run a tour except on demand.) Heroic head was offered the chance to be rescued by the resistance, but chose to accompany the little children on the train to Auschwitcz where he and they died.
(Jewish cemetery has WWII memorial. Interesting, but not a major attraction.)
(Synagogue.)

Czech Republic
Prague. Large Jewish Museum and a combined ticket for a group of synagogues and cemeteries.
Terezin camp. The place where the Red Cross were deceived into thinking all was well, as shown in a film. (Prague also has a museum on Franz Kafka. )

Tips
Belsen. Back in Germany - where the retreating Germans took the Auschwicz survivors on a forced march.  Then they died of mal treatment or mal nourishment, although Red Cross food was stockpiled outside. Anne Frank and her sister died here.

On a tour through Germany we unexpectedly drove past the sign to Belsen but had no time to stop because we had a route with hotels and meetings arranged and had not looked at the map and seen that we were passing Belsen. Liberated by Americans.

What are the main features of each place?

Dachau
I went to Dachau near Munich first. We started with the jollier tourist sites marked on maps.  We had photographed the fairytale castle of Neuschwanstein immortalised by Disney, spent a jolly evening in the wine district. Then before leaving the area, took a sobering look at Dachau.

I remember staring at the map of all the train routes to Auschwicz. The texts and human guides seemed to think it was very important. I wondering why a map of train routes was such a prominent feature. I was more interested in finding out about people than looking at maps. The grim stories of what life was like and how people died, and the glad news of the liberation of the camp and the survivors. Also the physical evidence, the photos and written records, human witnesses of the liberation - proving that the holocaust took place.

UK
Jewish Museum in London. Kindertransport statue on Liverpool Street station. Memorial to Anne Frank in a central London Park.
Other Jewish museums and Holocaust memorial centres in other cities.
In London, England, it seemed absurd that anybody would doubt the holocaust. Later my mother told me that post-war the cinemas had shown news reels.

My mother, who lost her first husband in WWII at El Alamein, had lost nobody in the holocaust. But she sympathised and chatted to everybody in shops in Edgware and Hendon and Golders Green. I remember her diverting to a shop to buy stockings, even though they were more expensive, because she felt sorry for the woman serving and wanted to give her a sale and talk and listen to her. The assistant would enquire after our family. Then when mother enquired after the woman's family. She would respond happily about one relative in England. Then she would look sad and say of another relative add, "I had a ... but. "

Years later I met two people at my Writing Group. One elderly woman with a German accent came to the UK just before WWII. She said of her mother, "She wrote to me in 194.* but I never heard from her again." (*I forget the exact date.)

My travel agent had a family photo. Her cousin survived WWII, as an unborn baby. When there was a roundup in a block of flats, the people upstairs knocked on the front door and said, "Your pregnant daughter, quick, come up to our flat."  The travel agent's cousin was the unborn baby whose mother was saved. My travel agent said to me, "You see, there are good people."

Tips
Check out websites for (alphabetical order):
Auschwicz
Belsen
Berlin
Birkenau
Jewish Museum, London
Kindertransport
Krakow
Munich
Schindler's factory
Schindler
TripAdvisor forum on camps within reach of Berlin
Wiki article on list of concentration camps
Yad Vashem website (Documentation of those lost in the Holocaust, stories from survivors and tributes to the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, such as Schindler.)

Kinderstransport Memorial, Liverpool Street Station, London.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several more posts about destinations in German, and Poland, and England, holocaust memorials and synagogues and WWII worldwide. Please share links to your favourite posts.