krystarka
Joined Atlas Obscura in 2022
I am Kristina and my name, written with the initial K, was a strange name in Italy when I was born. My parents gave me this name not because they came from a different country - my family lived in Parma, the city where I was born, already around 1200 AD – but because they always had a great fascination for Eastern Europe at a time when traveling to the countries of the Soviet Union was practically impossible.
Perhaps that is why the first time I visited Prague - just a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall - I was so fascinated I have never stopped returning every year.
As I grew up, however, my horizons broadened, and I began to travel to new and mysterious places.
I still remember the amazement after the climb to the castle of Cachtice to see the ruins of the last residence of the blood countess Elizabeth Bathory, or the diligent research for all the strangest tombs in the many cemeteries of Paris, or the thrill felts, despite the heat, at the Winchester Mystery House.
Every trip is a discovery, but there is no need to take planes and leave home because you can visit incredible and unknown places even in a day; for example, in a tiny village near my house, the man who murdered the Empress Sisi was conceived.
Today, in 2022, due to the pandemic, I found myself with little work and too much free time, so, together with my husband, we decided to take a gap year and spend it traveling.
We were planning a trip in the footsteps of Giacomo Casanova, from the Piombi prison in Venice to his burial in the Duchcov castle, to then direct us to France, Spain, and Portugal following many bullfighting forms you could still watch, when I landed on this site.
I have visited many of the places reported on Altas Obscura, but others are unknown to me, while others still amaze me that they are not indicated.
I know every trip should be a moment for personal growth and sharing. For this reason, I will try to do my part to arouse in future travelers a flicker of a discovery’s joy I have experienced in the past and which I hope to continue to try in the future.
