Europe is one of the best travelling options for everyone. It’s rich in culture, and every country is distinct in beauty. If you want to know more about the history and get the best cultural experience, these are the places where you should travel to!

Vienna

Vienna is a cultural, economic and political center. It is known as the city of music and the city of dreams, being an important place for Beethoven and Sigmund Freud. It’s also considered one of the world’s most livable cities, where the quality of life is high.

Berlin

Berlin, the capital of Germany, is the place of culture, politics, media and science. It holds a long history, and you can learn many things about the city’s contributions to the whole world. Travelling in Berlin is quite easy. You are provided with trains, trams, buses and the metro, and you can also use a bike to get from one place to another.

Amsterdam

The capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, is known for the number of canals that are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The good thing about Amsterdam is that you can visit it by bike, as it has one of the best networks of cycle routes in the world.

Brussels

The capital of Belgium, Brussels, is full of cultural events, being one of the most international cities in Europe and a time machine at the same time. Being a relatively small city, you can visit many places in one day. Belgium is also known for the most delicious chocolate and the best beer in the world, so you definitely need to have a taste.

Annette Prince moves quickly in the pre-dawn light, looking carefully at the base of each building she passes in downtown Chicago.

She finds a warbler(莺) sitting on the ground, upright but dazed(恍惚的). Then she traps it with a net. “It probably hit one of the upper floors,” says Ms. Prince, a volunteer to protect birds from striking glass windows. “It’s a little weak.” She’ll take it to the rescue center.

The warbler is fortunate. In the battle between birds and cities, cities are winning. Scientists suggest that crashing into buildings kills as many as 1 billion birds a year in the United States. The light from ever-expanding cities is making it difficult for the movement of creatures that migrate(迁徙)in the dark. And the preference for glass in buildings has proved deadly.

There are growing efforts to make cities safer for birds. Lights Out programs, in which owners and managers agree to turn off outdoor lights during migration times, have spread to 45 U.S. cities. Architects are learning how to make buildings bird-friendly by using specially treated glass that birds can see. More activists are asking homeowners to consider their own windows as well.

The issue is far more than birds. “It concerns a need to reduce the human influence on the natural world in an age of habitat destruction and climate change,” says Andrew Farnsworth, a bird expert in the University of Chicago. “The fact that architects and builders are using bird-friendly technology is a positive,” he says. “But it’s not happening as fast as it needs to be.”

My first goal: try not to look so scared. It sounds easy, but it actually took quite a few tries before I could relax from the mouth open, eyes wide expression that being on roller skates gave me. But not looking scared was something I knew I could achieve and helped me stick with the painfully embarrassing and exciting process of trying to learn to roller skate.

I picked up roller skating at the end of 2021. I have thrown myself into this hobby wholeheartedly, in a way that surprises me sometimes. It feels a lot like love. That said, it did take me a while to get comfortable on skates, and as an adult, I’m not used to feeling that awkward in my body. I got really familiar with picking myself off the floor.

I skated a few times as a kid, but never enough to get good. So starting as a grown-up, with grown-up knees, I was very careful. I signed up for online classes. In skate class, they taught me to wear protective gear(用具), to clap when someone falls, and to encourage them. Falling means you’re trying, and everyone falls in skating. That possible danger almost makes it more fun, the little thrill of possibility that you might fall, a likelihood when you first start out that gradually decreases the more you practice — but never to zero.

I’ve been skating for almost a year now, and I don’t look so scared on wheels anymore. I’ve made a lot of progress. The other day I joyfully skated past an older woman on the rink and she said, almost under her breath, “My goal is to skate like you.” I tried to contain my pride. “Keep at it!” I yelled over my shoulder. A few minutes later, I tripped, fell, quickly picked myself up, and then kept at it.

Languages around the world continue to disappear at an alarming rate. According to the UNESCO Atlas of Languages in Danger, there are 6,700 languages spoken in the world, 40 percent of which are in danger of disappearing. And the majority under threat are languages spoken by Indigenous(本土的)peoples around the world.

When an Indigenous language is lost, not only do we lose the knowledge built up by the community of its speakers, but also the world’s cultural and biological(生物学的)diversity is endangered. For example, where there are most species of plants and animal, there are most languages spoken. When a new species is “discovered” by scientists, you can bet your bottom dollar that the native people living in that area would already have had a name for that species and be highly knowledgeable about it. These languages are biological encyclopedias, and if they are no longer spoken, this wisdom and understanding is lost to humanity forever. “We human beings should care about indigenous languages in the same way as we should care about the loss of the world’s variety of plants and animals, its biodiversity,” Steven Pinker, a respected linguist and Harvard Professor, said.

Fortunately, efforts are being made to bring attention to and preserve these languages, along with the cultural and biological diversity they represent. And education is at the heart of the idea. The United Nations has declared 2019 as The International Year of Indigenous Languages so as to raise awareness, and to teach those who haven’t been aware of the contributions they can make. Similarly, UNESCO’s International Fund for Cultural Diversity is providing money to educational projects in the hope of bringing Indigenous language and knowledge into school.