City Guide

Where to Work City Guides

Bergen

Before the next episode of “How to Train your Dragon” (the animated Dreamworks 2010 blockbuster, a global fantasy about warriors living between the sky and the fjords) arrives, you can learn something about “the Viking” landscape living the “savage” beauty of Bergen. Despite the various interpretations and translations of the word “hospitality”–such as those that appear in many runic stones founded throughout Scandinavia–the kind of hospitality that welcomes visitors here is as warm and friendly as you can expect from people who live by the mountain and by the sea.

And Bergen is indeed between the amazing natural crown of the Seven Mountains and the incredible stage of the Norwegian coastline

(the largest in Europe, 20,000 kilometers long). So you can pass from the sea to the top of Mount Floyen and the Funicular, starting from the very center of the city (at the Fish Market) on a journey that opens the heart and the eyes to the stages of Nature. Whether you like to trek, hike, ski or just observe the surroundings, the climb is worth the time you spend on it. Together with seabirds, salmon and fishing (which, incidentally, you can experience for free) Bergen offers big pieces of history and culture. The city echoes with the vibrations of classical compositions such as “Peer Gynt” (by Bergener, Edward Grieg), and recalls the melancholic situations described by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami in his “Norwegian Wood,” already a classic of contemporary literature. If you love to dig up memories of the past, the Hanseatic Wharf is waiting for you to bear witness to the glorious participation of Bergen in the Hanseatic League, the economic and commercial alliance of

monuments and young generations (university students come to the city in thousands), Kyoto is the ideal ground to discover Japan’s roots and, at the same time, to experience the vibrant energies that light up its most contemporary life. You can feel almost inadequate, facing a modern civilization perfectly carved in every detail, as though there is too much wisdom at every corner. You can enjoy peace, and silence (of the contemplative kind) under the weeping cherry trees, astonishing in springtime in Shinen Garden, following the Philosopher’s Path and making your own leap of faith. But Kyoto is ready to give its visitors the whole set of Japanese ‘musts’, making a short-term visit as comfortable as a long-term one, offering the unique taste of its cuisine and culture, from Manga reading (the International Museum functions as a library with free access to comic books) together with Zen meditation, sutra’s handwriting, geishas' beauty and traditional bathhouses, and the Japanese version of Hollywood with a complete scene of Samurai movies (for fans, a visit to Uzumasa Movie Village is definitely compulsory). Even a movie can help one remember that this is the land where honor, courage, extreme loyalty, and sacrifice are words that resounded through history, leaving their spell on us.

Norway Bergen

100 Work Cities The one hundred cities where to work in the next decade is a project by Work Style Company Illustration by Eelco Van den Berg Text by Elena Sassi.

trading cities (and mostly their merchant guilds) that dominated Northern Europe from the late Middle Ages to the early modern times. A part of the body and soul of European civilization has reached us in Bergen.

Ask for previous guides: Turin, São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Denver, Ekaterinburg, Marseille. Lagos, Thessaloniki.

Kyoto

It could have been another kind of story. It could have been like Hiroshima, or Nagasaki. It is precisely the city that replaced the first choice of the United States as an atomic bomb target at the end of World War II – as an intellectual center of Japan, Kyoto had a population "better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon." So, the city that hosted the Emperor’s house until 1869 stands still, waiting for visitors and pilgrims to view its larger than life temples and shrines, and trees and rocks.

Sixteen-hundred Buddhist temples, 400 Shinto shrines and 17 UNESCO World Heritage sites make Kyoto the perfect storehouse of Japanese culture and traditions.

Blending an original mix of old Japan

Kyoto