Destination: Berlin

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Europe’s Deep Freeze

europe cold weather REUTERS/Alexandra Beier

Winter weather blasted across Europe this past week, creating frigid scenes across the continent.

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Goodbye ‘White Christmas’?

Goodbye ‘White Christmas’? Photo by fiskfisk via Flickr (Creative Commons).
Photo by fiskfisk via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Do you want to spend the winter holidays in an idyllic, snow-fringed place just like the one Irving Berlin used to know? Berlin wrote “White Christmas” 68 years ago, when the concept still made sense in the German city of Berlin as well as the rest of the northern hemisphere. In what has become an annual reality check during the increasingly warm winter holidays, climate scientists and meteorologists are again warning that global warming is the Grinch that’s stealing snowy landscapes around the world. Reuters reports that the odds of Berlin seeing snow in 2100 will decrease to 5 percent from 20 percent a century ago. Even frigid Oslo, Norway, will see a precipitous decline in snow days, scientists told Reuters.

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The Three Literary Capitals of the World?

Conde Nast Traveler has chosen Berlin, Dublin and Boston as its three best cities for bookworms. They’re all worthy choices, but still, I have to ask: Was this list originally titled, “Three Best Cities for Bookworms, Not Counting Paris and London”?

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Berlin Embassy: Critics Not Impressed

Photo by snooker68 via Flickr (Creative Commons).

German architectural critics are having a field day with the new U.S. embassy in Berlin (pictured), skewering the design as “banal” and “monstrous.” It’s an unfair rap, says University of Maryland architectural historian Jane Loeffler.

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