Places Sternenfeuer Wants to Go

This museum shaped like an inflating balloon celebrates the sport’s buoyant achievements.

This Western confectionery in Kobe made the German tree stump cake into a Japanese staple.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

This historic estate on the east shore of Lake Tahoe was home to an eccentric millionaire (and his pet elephant, Mingo).

At the edge of the high desert, California's second-largest natural lake is home to a unique subspecies of trout adapted to its alkaline waters.

Overlooking the Colorado Convention Center is this giant sculpture made from thousands of triangles.

A huge work of Burning Man-inspired outsider art on the grounds of a California winery.

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

A pair of mutilated bronze octopuses slump at the base of the monument honoring California's admission to the U.S.

Recovered from the brink of extinction, at home in the Financial District.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

Noble beasts perhaps, but not the Emperor's dogs.

The black lab that was voted mayor of a California town is forever remembered by a life-size statue.

An eerie ghost village hidden in the forests of the Eifel, frozen in a strange postwar limbo.

One of the best-preserved pieces of DDR propaganda in Berlin.

This oversized flute-playing Ancestral Puebloan deity is also a landmark of Southwestern kitsch.

A tribute to the disposable cups that were once manufactured here, this 68-foot-tall statue would be difficult to throw away.

The world's largest otter started his life as a high school shop project.

The remnants of a refugee settlement for Belgians during WWI.

This market built by German prisoners of war is made of local stones.

A seaside cemetery honors the Commonwealth soldiers and sailors that died in Sierra Leone during World War I and II.

A statue built to honor the elite soldiers who fought for Latvia during World War I.

Built using wood salvaged from the ruined village of Bazentin, this unique cross survived both war and decay.