silver city ~ UNESCO heritage Schemnitz (Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia)

UNESCO heritage silver city Schemnitz aka Selmecbánya aka Şelmec Ban'a aka Banská Štiavnica.

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after visiting the centre of the central slovakian region, the gold + silver city neusohl aka besztercebánya aka neosolium aka Banská Bystrica few years ago and the gold city kremnitz aka Körmöcbánya aka Kremnica in 2007 and 2015 (pictures), this time we managed to spent few hours in the silver city Banská Štiavnica. well, enjoy few pictures first ... and read my blahblah if any later on. or better go to wikipedia to read more about the celts, germans, hungarians and slovaks and of course about the hills + metals which all together shaped this beautiful region, will you? wiki banska stiavnica anyway, i will ask you 3 simple questions 

1. when and where was gunpowder used for the first time in the world in a mine?
2. when and where was the first technical university in the world established?
3. how many inhabitants have had banska stiavnica in 1782 as the 3rd biggest city in the kingdom of hungary (today approximately 10,000)?

do not cheat, my dears, just put your answers as comments to this blog post below :-)

is this the hell? no, just a silver mine 😄

schemnitz (banska stiavnica) as published in the 'karpatenblatt',

the magazine for germans in slovakia, in 2024

calvary

 
main square looking downhill

main square looking uphill

zoom, zoom :-)

 

 
emblem

the old castle

the new castle

 

heaven

just to show you the difference, a gold mine looks like that:

kremnitz, 2007

as always, you can find more blog pictures in my g+ album

eof

george town (unesco heritage), penang island, malaysia

well, after we had spent 100 €uros per night in butterworth, we have got a 10 to 12 euros stay on the penang island in the stardust hotel in the historic city centre in chinatown, unesco's world cultural heritage site in malaysia ~ quite a differnce, wouldn't you say? and yes, we have felt the spirit of former times in our cheap, but so clean + nice + authentic + friendly + just GREAT backpackers' hostel :-)

folks, there is so much more to do on penang island: visiting the penang hill in the middle of the island (by a rack railway to the top), so many old temples  mosques / churches, the taman negara penang national park (NP) in the north-western part of the island especially if you havent't been in mainland's taman negara NP or haven't walk on canopy walkway as we did in kuala lumpur so we have been only on the beach in front of the NP but unfortunately didn't see any black faced monkey there ...

btw, the link library to all our destinations in malaysia is here: on the road

... coming soon or never: penang & georgetown insights + pictures :-)

malacca, malaysia

our first stop (easy to reach by bus) after KL (kuala lumpur) in malaysia, ? malacca (english), malakka (german), melaka (malay) ... a famous malay city occupied by the chinese, indians, portuguese, dutch, english and by chinese again if you asked me .... and unesco's world cultural heritage. why is that city unesco's world cultural heritage? just see the PICTURES, my dears :-)

coffee-break in chinatown

next stop? the tioman island on the  other side of the malay peninsula ....