Backyard landscapes vary wildly by homeowners’ taste and style, but one Austin yard stands out as the most unique of all. The aptly named “Cathedral of Junk” towers over the home of folk artist Vince Hannemann, boasting over 60 tons of accumulated trash.
Only the most fortunate can avoid the sharp pain of a broken heart in this life. For everyone else, each ended relationship leaves a trail of memories – some sweet, some less so. The Museum of Broken Relationships showcases society’s breakup stories from countries all over the globe, in a unique display of artifacts and storytelling.
Few people consider Germany as a destination for a tropical getaway. Fewer still would expect an abandoned airfield to be home to sandy beaches, over 600 varieties of tropical plants, and exotic animals like flamingos, turtles, and peacocks.
Inspired by the fine craftsmanship of bird nests, Jayson Fann has been building elaborate wooden structures since he was only 13 years old. The California-based artist has managed to build amazing recreational human nests that are rented out to anglers and Big Sur residents.
It took just over five years from ideation to finished construction for a South Korean couple to open the Dreamy Camera Cafe, a two-story building modeled after a type of twin-lens camera called Rolleiflex. Inside the cafe, the decor echoes the couple’s love of picture-taking, featuring a vintage camera display and galleries of photography.
The “Modern Toilet Restaurant” in the über-hip Ximending neighborhood of Taipei, Taiwan, is a pretty unique bathroom-themed food enterprise. This place has been designed to wow the Instagram generation with some of the most exciting and unusual bathroom twists you have ever seen. Here, the seats are real toilets, the menu is written on a toilet-seat shaped paper, and the waiting staff delivers little chocolate “poop” ice creams.
About 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Tokyo, Japan, in an area of the Pacific Ocean known as the “Devil’s Sea,” you will find a small island with a big story to tell. Miyake-jima is part of the volcanic Izu Islands, and host to Mount Oyama, an active volcano that sits at the very heart of the island. Because it emits poisonous sulfuric gas with very little warning, the 3,000 residents (as well as any visitors) are required to carry gas masks with them at all times.
Standing at the southernmost tip of Africa, it is easy to think there is nothing in the great blue beyond until Antarctica. However, halfway between these continents lies Bouvet Island, an uninhabited landmass so remote it has earned the unofficial nickname of “The Loneliest Place on Earth.”
Longyearbyen, Norway, a small coal-mining town near the Arctic, might be one of the most interesting cities in the world, despite having just over 2,000 residents. Why the intrigue? It’s illegal to die here.
In the great expanse of the South Pacific, northeast of Papua New Guinea and southwest of Hawaii, lies Pingelap Atoll, a collection of three small islands in Micronesia. Only the largest of these islands, which is less than 2.5 miles wide at its widest point, is inhabited. Despite the small size of their home, the 250 or so residents of Pingelap have attracted a fair bit of attention from researchers, scientists and now, artists.
