**Posted by Erik Bolt - January 21, 2009**

Jo napot kivanok, readers! This week, I thought I’d share three of my geography “Top Ten” lists and discuss why they matter. First, I have compiled the ten coolest cities that I’ve been to, five of them in Europe, five in North America. This list will contain a trivia element, because instead of just listing them, I’m giving you all a challenge of figuring out what they are. All of them are major enough cities that anyone with a background in the National Geographic Bee will know something about each one. That might also be true of my top ten national parks (six American, two Canadian, and two European), but I’ll have the answers available for those. The top ten small towns, however, are by definition less familiar, and while any geographically literate person will have heard of at least two of them, some of them are really obscure.

But why does this all matter? Well, cities are important to understand because, to put it simply, they are where things happen. Depending on exactly what constitutes an urban setting – and that’s something I suspect geographers will always be squabbling over – anywhere from a third to nearly three-quarters of the world’s people live in a city or its environs. Cities are centers of government, trade, science, education, and many of the other great things that define the human race. The ten cities on my list are not the ten largest, or most powerful, cities in the world by any means, but they are all great for their unique cultural and historical settings. Things that have happened in these cities, and other things that continue to happen, make them worth seeing, and each is a precious little slice of humanity that deserves to be recognized.

Important as cities are, the value of small towns cannot be ignored. People have been living in small communities for several millennia, and there are ways in which smaller cities and rural areas seem somehow purer, more in touch with their roots than bigger cities do. Some of these communities are even more distinctive than the great cities of the world. It’s important to recognize that even in an age of globalization and urban growth, a substantial part of the world’s population and land area remains devoted to more traditional ways of life. Rural life is just as much a part of what makes humanity valuable as our great cities are.

Of course, another important use of land is to remind us that we are not alone in the world. Our planet is also blessed with natural wonders that deserve our admiration and preservation. That’s why the greatest places in the natural world are kept safe in national parks, left to the domination of the other thousands of species of living things that we share this world with. One of the things that really got me interested in geography was visiting national parks as a kid, and learning that other countries have them too was one of the coolest things about the Geo Bee.

So, the Top Ten cities I have been to:

1) We’ll start with an easy one: Founded by the Romans as Aquincum in the first century AD, this city today is one of the four European national capitals located on the Danube to start with the letter “B”. The neo-gothic Parliament, St. Istvan’s Basilica, and the Opera House are among dozens of buildings constructed in 1896 for the approximate thousand-year anniversary of the nomadic Magyars at the site of the city. The two halves of the city merged around the time of that millennium celebration, but each today retains a distinctive character – one hilly and especially historical, the other flat and home to the modern side of town. Important museums include the Castle, the National Museum, the Fine Arts Museum, Vajdahunyad Castle – a deliberate conglomeration of every architectural style from early medieval to Bauhaus – and the House of Terror, used by the secret police of both the and the Communist regime and today a memorial to the heroes who resisted both of those foreign oppressors. I lived in this city for three and a half months, and would like to remind you that while one of the city’s halves sounds like the name of a philosopher from northern India, the other does not sound exactly like a word for an annoying person.

2) A little closer to home for Americans but still foreign, this city continues to speak French even though the British defeated the French army at the Plains of Abraham just outside the city. One of the oldest cities in North America, this is a city of narrow cobblestone streets and substantial pedestrian-only areas. A Museum of Civilization, a few impressive cathedrals, and the legendary hotel Chateau Frontenac are among the city’s sites today. While not its largest city, this is the capital of Canada’s largest province and has, at times, been the site of secessionist demonstrations that are considered unlikely to ever wrest the Francophone community away from the country to which it belongs. It’s named after an Algonquin word for “rock”.

3) It’s an exciting time to live in this major American city, with its fastest-rising politician ever now less than a week from being sworn in as the new President of the United States. The Windy City is home to millions of people who live in a rich blend of cultures that – more so than in many other American locales – have not lost their traditions but have made them all the more exuberant. It’s easy to see why this Midwestern metropolis is a place where Europeans like to go on their foreign vacations. Besides tall buildings and the spectacular Millennium Park right in the middle of them, this is a city with great museums. The Field Museum of Natural History, the Shedd Aquarium, the Art Institute, and my father’s place of employment, the Adler Planetarium, are among the most noteworthy. Throw in deep-dish pizza, a successful hockey season for the Blackhawks, a recent starring role in the blockbuster The Dark Knight, elevated trains, an Olympic bid for 2016, and shoreline on the world’s largest single expanse of freshwater*, and the third-largest American city is a great place to be these days.

*Yes, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are really the same body of water, and it’s bigger than Superior or Victoria!

4) Speaking of Olympics, how about the next city that’s holding them for sure? Surrounded by spectacular forested mountains, this city on Canada’s Pacific coast is home to another splendid mix of cultures from all around the Pacific Rim and beyond. While it does not have as many landmark buildings or world-class museums as most other cities, the city at the mouth of the Fraser River offers amazing opportunities for hiking, skiing, mountain climbing, sailing, whale watching, and trips to the even more spectacular island offshore that shares its name. Orcas, white “spirit” grizzly bears, and reported Sasquatches (probably actually hard-core hockey fans) are among the wildlife that can be seen not far from town.

5) While we’re on an Olympic roll, let’s head back across the Atlantic to a city that has had its work cut out for it ever since the Roman Empire broke up with this city right on the political fault line. Also surrounded by mountains and famed until about fifteen years ago as a ski center, this national capital is said to be the defining location of the twentieth century. World War I began here with a gunshot, and one of the worst examples of genocide culminated in the three-year siege of the city during the breakup of the largest European country to successfully play both sides during the Cold War. During my two days here, I discovered that this city has the appearance of a Middle Eastern city plunked down in the middle of Switzerland (although I have been to neither of those locations and can only conjecture what they look like). Genetically similar peoples separated by their religious allegiances used to share the city and its surrounding territory peacefully, but although peace has been restored and the city is being rebuilt, the scars of the 1990s will take a long time to fully heal. Live land mines can still be found within city limits, but as long as you stay in areas where locals are walking around, you’re safe.

6) Another former Yugoslav capital, this one was known as Emona in Roman times and Laibach under the Austria Empire. Today, the city supposedly founded by Jason and the Argonauts is a wonderfully laid-back place that pulls off a small-town feel despite being a teeming metropolis. There’s a well-restored castle overlooking the riverside district neighborhood of outdoor coffee shops and seafood restaurants. Like the country it governs, this city holds a nice mixture of Italian, Germanic, and Slavic cultural influences. The Triple Bridge, the Cobbler’s Bridge, and the statue-adorned Dragon Bridge all cross the small, thoroughly concrete-contained river in the heart of downtown – and each of these is less than forty feet long. From the innovative world-class youth hostel built inside a former prison to the old Roman forum, this is one of the few urban centers of its size where everything is within walking distance from everything else. Or at least so it seems.

7) Also a very walkable city despite having a huge downtown, the westernmost major city in the area misleadingly labeled “Eastern Europe” is an immense tourist destination. But unlike some other sites that have been swamped and strangled by hordes of visitors, this Bohemian capital seems capable of surviving anything. My first experience of the Golden City came on a Thursday night in November when almost nobody outside of my own student group was out wandering the Old Town, and the atmosphere we felt there was an amazing experience. Major landmarks include St. Vitus Cathedral, the Charles Bridge (Karlovy Most), the Tyn Church, and the Castle high up on the hill. Further out, a visit to see local football (“soccer”) team Slavia in action is well worth it and a great way to exchange crowds of silly drunken foreign tourists for crowds of chanting drunken local fans. When not overrun by tourists, the elegant cobblestone lanes of the older parts of town are a window into the past and a popular filming location for historical movies.

8) And now for something completely different. Many people who haven’t been here think of this city as dreadfully generic, perhaps because it is pretty much right smack in the middle of the contiguous United States. But in fact, this large city on the border of two US states – one of whom it took its name from even though it’s mostly located in the other one – is a lively and highly cultured city that refuses to believe it’s in the Midwest at all. Sometimes called the easternmost western American city, the home of the Royals and Chiefs is still a place where “everything’s up to date…they’ve gone about as far as they can go!” In fact, the city has more fountains than anywhere else in the world except for Rome. Statues also abound in the suburban areas, with one decorating seemingly every major intersection. There’s a fine pedestrian shopping area near the Missouri River and an art museum as good as any. Plus, here is the general area where wagon trains used to set off on the Oregon Trail.

9) Moving back to Europe, we find ourselves in another national capital on the Danube whose name starts with the letter “B”. Located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, this city was founded by ancient Celts and ruled by the Romans as Singidunum. For the last thousand years or so, its name has meant “White City” in the language of whatever country ruled it, and there have been several of those, including Turkish, German, and Hungarian as well as its own language. Many museums dot the city, one of which commemorates the nation’s greatest individual ever, Nikola Tesla, the inventor and physicist who was recently seen in the film The Prestige. He invented a way to conduct electricity through air over short distances, meaning that you can hold a fluorescent light bulb tube five feet away from his machine and watch it light as the machine begins to run, even though it’s not plugged into anything (yeah, I did it!). Other sites include the home of former national leader Marshal Tito, the world’s largest Eastern Orthodox house of worship, and the unique grounds of the Kalemegdan, a medieval hilltop fortress whose perfectly intact walls now hold a forested, grassy park overlooking the river confluence. While the city has had its share of troubles with NATO bombings and more recent riots that happened just months after I was there, the White City is largely a welcoming and vibrant place that’s worth knowing about.

10) A spectacular Southwestern US state capital, this city is known not for its specific attractions but rather its wealth of Native American and Hispanic cultures. It’s a charming ranch town on the scale of a big city. With a name that means “holy faith”, it’s a safe bet that traditional missions and cathedrals are everywhere in town. Many buildings are made out of adobe brick, or at least convincingly made to look like it. Not far up the road is a companion city known for its annual balloon festival. Also nearby are deserts, rock formations, pueblos, ski areas, and ranches. And unlike some other areas of the Southwest, the fairly high elevation keeps the city, like most of the state, comfortably cool year-round.