Places katherineplatt Wants to Go

A surreal pile of colorful junk fills a small yard in an otherwise gray neighborhood.

Perhaps the tiniest sculpture in Saint Petersburg is a little bronze finch inspired by a song.

A 250-year-old timepiece-automaton adorned with golden mechanical birds, which still sing to this day.

A little church on a tiny island looks like something from a fairy tale.

Two well-hidden huts let animal lovers spend the night among the bears, wolves, and other predators of the forest.

This Minsk museum has cat coffee, cat chess, cat art, and even a cat "staff," which visitors are free to take home.

The apartment building where JFK's assassin lived after defecting to the Soviet Union.

A city block packed with whimsical sculptures that seem to be plucked from a tiled fantasy world.

An incredibly random collection of wax figures is displayed in a shopping center walkway.

Stalin's march toward a more modern USSR flooded a monastery, leaving a unique and extravagant nautical marker, "The Flooded Belfry."

A magnificent, Disneyesque chateau built for 150 lucky kindergarteners.

Moscow's other, lesser known kremlin is a fairytale-like cultural complex modeled after Old Russia.

Legends of time travel and magical woodland creatures bolster the natural charm of this verdant sanctuary in the midst of Moscow.

An early-20th-century "dacha" village of quaint cottages curiously located in a modern part of Moscow.

Thirteen sculptures in central Moscow graphically depicting vices of the modern world.

Museum design and public transportation meet in this unique Russian train car.

These crudely shaped folk giants may be the the second most photographed statues in the U.S.

A toweringly silly piece of modern art has been delighting locals since the 1980s.

This massive roadside mascot was the first version of the giant to illustrate his butt.

Equal parts record-breaking temple to consumerism and bizarre fun park, it's more than you think it is...

With over 5,000 champions, the Hall of Fame continues to draw amateur eaters.

The world's largest commercially available hamburger is complete with 15 pounds of lettuce, 30 pounds of bacon, and 36 pounds of cheese.

Hell on Earth is actually a small town in Michigan where anyone can be mayor for a day.

Quite possibly the last cross all humans will ever see.