“The Stans” is shorthand for the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia whose names all end in -stan, that is: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (but not Pakistan and Afghanistan!).
All of these have been in the media for more or less unsavoury reasons over the past few decades, but Kazakhstan seemed to be the calmest and least
On this day, or rather the coming night, 36 years ago, on 2/3 December 1984, the Bhopal disaster began to unfold. Just after midnight a leak and rise in pressure at a tank containing the pesticide MIC (methyl isocyanate) was noticed at the Union Carbide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal. Owing to a combination of inadequate technology, poor maintenance, malfunctions of safety devices and human error, some 40 tons of the poison gas were released over the next two hours and drifted in a low, ground-hugging cloud into the residential districts next to the plant.
The effects of
As decided in the latest poll, the theme of this post is ‘dark tourism and cars’. It won by two votes ahead of ‘dark tourism and clothes’, so that will be entered again in the next poll. And since several people said that their second choice (and close contender) was ‘dark tourism and spheres’ I’ll give that another chance next time too. NPPs will have to wait a little longer, but as that is one of my personal favourites it is bound to pop up at some point as well (whether in another poll or independently I can’t say yet).
But now to cars. Searching through my archives I found
Just back from Switzerland this morning! It was a nice eight-day trip, mostly in the Alps, but also a bit of city (Zürich). The main emphasis was on the spectacular Alpine scenery. Around Zermatt this is indeed dominated by the Matterhorn, the planet’s most iconic peak.
As for the dark elements: well, the building of the Jungfrau Railway cost several workers their lives during the tunnelling. At the touristified complex at the summit one section commemorates those victims of the project (which took decades to complete from the late 1890s to the 1920s). Most names looked Italian. But there was also