Kosmos

Culture, travel, fashion and culinary delights: the Kosmos pages of Lufthansa Magazin bring you interesting and useful tidbits from around the world

Sports will dominate our lives this summer with soccer’s EURO 2016 and the Olympic Games coming up. But how about these three exotic disciplines instead? — © Cristóbal Schmal

Exotic sports

CULTURE CLASH

Sports will dominate our lives this summer with soccer’s EURO 2016 and the Olympic Games coming up. But how about these three exotic disciplines instead? Not stadium fillers, but spectacular all the same!

Hawaii
Splashdiving has been a popular pastime in Hawaii since around 1700. Scoffers would call it a cannonball competition. The principle is simple: The winner is the diver who makes the biggest splash.

Switzerland
Hornussen is a Swiss national sport. It’s a little like cricket or baseball, but with hockey and golf elements, too. Each team has up to 18 players, and a match lasts for four hours. Tradition has it that the losers pay for supper.

India
Polo sticks? Yes, but up to three meters longer than regular ones. Ponies? No, elephants. This sport is popular in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. But are the elephants just as happy about elephant polo?

Mr. Know It All

Cheesy

We’re all familiar with cheeses from Brie, Parma and Emmental. For a more piquant experience, why not nibble on these more exotic dairy products?

Kosmos: Mr. Know-It-All — © Bente Schipp

Italian pit cheese

Fossa, a sweetly pungent cheese from Sogliano near Rimini, matures in pits. Legend has it that the townfolk buried their cheeses to safeguard them from plundering invaders – and then discovered they tasted better than ever.

Spanish steppe cheese

Tens of thousands of merino sheep graze on the arid plains of the Extremadura. Their milk is used to produce La Serena cheese, wich owes its somewhat bitter flavor to the thistle-based vegetable rennet used in its production.

Norwegian world champion

Fanaost, winner of the World Cheese Awards 2018, is a gouda made near Bergen using the milk of only 12 cows. Experts rank Norway as one of the best cheesemaking nations in the world.

Culture podcasts

Culture clash

Suffering from writer’s block and need a change of scene? Here are three magnificent houses where bestsellers were written – and you can even rent some by the day:

Goldeneye, Jamaica

Ian Fleming, a British ex-spy, wrote all 14 of his James Bond novels here in the Caribbean – and even designed the villa himself. theflemingvilla.com

Naulakha, Vermont/USA

Rudyard Kipling didn’t actually write the legendary Jungle Book in India, but in the U.S. He nicked the name of his villa there from a marble pavilion in Lahore, the still part of India. The villa sleeps eight people. landmarktrustusa.org

Royal Albion Hotel, England

Charles Dickens adored Broadstairs, a seaside resort in Kent, and spent many summers at the Royal Albion Hotel. A Dickens Festival is being held here in his honor from 21 through 23 June. albionbroadstairs.co.uk

Worldwide

Walk back in time

The Great Himalaya Trail, Silk Road, Way of St. Jacob: The guidebook 500 Walks covers the oldest long-distance trails and walks around the world. An ideal companion for all avid hikers, it provides detailed routes and plenty of entertaining facts.

knesebeck-verlag.de

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education, in the elder, a part of experience

Francis Bacon(1561 - 1626) English philosopher, lawyer and statesman

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