Wicked places in Europe

Of all of Norway's crazy roads – and there are lots of them – this is perhaps the most thrilling. The serpentine road winds its way up to the mountain pass in sharp hairpin bends with 10% incline, while waterfalls are tumbling down the mountain sides. The road is two-way, but many sections are only wide enough for a single vehicle. Below the actual mountain pass is a visitor center with exposed viewing platforms that are even more hair-raising than the ride.
Trollstigen is part of country road 63, one of Norway's 18 National Scenic Routes, and attracts thousands of vehicles every day in high season. It's closed during winter due to excessive snow cover.

Most tourists visit the bigger salt mine at Wieliczka, but the salt mine at Bochnia is actually older and less Disneyfied. Bochnia Salt Mine has continuously been open since 1248 and was in operation until 1990. Though Bochnia is less touristic than Wieliczka, it has a fair share of clever made multimedia effects, a fun underground train ride and a mine elevator to take you the 212 meters underground - and back up. On the tour you're of course offered to lick the walls to make sure that they are made of salt. There are about 3 km of mine tunnels in total, but tourists can only visit about 1 km (but they're extending). The two mines, Bochnia and Wieliczka, are enlisted as one UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Crooked Forest (Krzywy Las) is a grove of twisted pine trees. The plantation was planted around 1930, when its location was still within Germany. Today the grove lies within Poland, close to the German border, behind a nondescript apartment building in the outskirts of the town Gryfino. Nobody knows why a group of the trees simultaneously have made a twist at the ground - or whether it was man-made. To add to the mystery, there is another similar forest along the Baltic coast in Kaliningrad (Russian exclave), which is called Dancing Forest.

Wagrowiec Bifurcation is a wicked sight, which isn't particularly mind blowing when looking at it, but the facts are. Two rivers, Welna and Niebla, are intersecting each other, but only 15 percent of the water are mixed in the process. Researchers once coloured the water of the rivers in different colors and the colours didn't mix. This natural phenomena is apparently only observed at one other place on the planet (though we don't where that is).

The Fort Sarbinowo is a wonderful forgotten and mystical ruin in the forest. It was one of four forts built at the end of the 19 century to protect the city Kostrzyn, but it lost its strategic position not long after. However, in 1945 there was some heavy fighting here, when the Nazis lost Kostrzyn to the Russians. Today the fort complex has been taken over by the forest (and some graffiti and trash). Walls are crumpled and trees grow in the courtyards, but you can explore the lost ruin freely. There are no signs at the main road, just a dirt road leading into the woods, where you can park the car. Best to bring a flashlight.

A dilapidated concrete island of the coast. It was built by Nazi Germany during WWII as a torpedo launch station. After the war the USSR used it to train divers in the navy. Today, it lies abandoned a long swim from Babie Doły beach outside Gdynia. Although you have to pass a military station on the way, the beach is public. The crumbling concrete complex seems unsupervised (if you don't mind a swim), but be aware of its poor state.

Several hundred meters below the streets of the town Wieliczka snakes a real wonder of mankind: The Wieliczka Salt Mine, where miners since the 13th century have dug out more than 280 km of tunnels. Today the salt mine is UNESCO enlisted (along with Bochnia Salt Mine) and one of the biggest tourist sights in Poland. The tours will take you down 389 wooden steps (135 m), through damp tunnels all carved out of pure grey rock salt – and yes, you're welcome to check the taste for yourself by licking walls. There are artworks carved out of the rock salt by the miners through time, but the main attraction is the underground cathedral, also carved out of solid salt, with a highly polished salt floor, salt crystal chandeliers and a salt relief of the last supper. If salt is to your liking, you can even get married here.

In the 16th century, some monks got the crazy idea to dig up the town's graveyard and use the human bones and skulls to decorate a chapel's interior at St. Francis church in Evora. Each wall is covered in neatly stacked bones, while columns and arches are ornamental with lines of skulls. On one of the walls, a whole skeleton is dangling. It was a brave and artistic move to illustrate the 'transitory nature of human life', something the inscription above the entrance also points out: We bones that are here, are waiting for yours.

Maybe it's the bad economy, but Portugal is a pretty good place to pick up some old crap - well, even new crap. Some stuff is fairly enough sold as antiques, curio or memento, but others are sold as brand new right off the assembly line in the factory, even though the product has been outdated in the rest of the western world for years, even decades. Typewriters, cassette tapes, film cameras... you name it, the Portuguese have it - all brand new and still in the box.

There are few literary characters that have had a more profound impact on western civilization than Bram Stoker's Dracula. While Dracula was a work of fiction, Mr Stoker had to get his inspiration from somewhere. Enter Vlad Țepeș III, Prince of Wallachia, member of the house Drăculeşti. While it can be tough to differentiate where the real life of Vlad the Impaler ends and the character Dracula begins, one thing is for darn sure: where he was born. The town of Sighisoara itself is a major attraction, but the chance to check out the house where 'Dracula' was born in 1431 is otherworldly. Perhaps the ice cream shop that now graces the entrance-way may not seem scary at first... ok it's not scary at all, but the legend certainly is!