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Drone footage shows a frozen lake in China featuring icy “branches.”

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Host Hidetoshi Nakata takes us on a tour of Tokyo’s stunning Geihinkan — the State Guest House — which accommodates heads of states and diplomats visiting Japan.

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(CNN) — For as long as I can remember, I have struggled to explain to people where I’m from.Americans know of the Soviet Union but have little idea of the different characters of the republics that made up the former USSR.Calling myself Russian didn’t feel authentic. Yet when I referred to Moldavia, where I actually grew up, I would get blank stares. “It’s called Moldova now,” I would say. “Where is it?” the question would immediately follow. As the decades went by, I wasn’t sure myself where I was from. My country wasn’t even on the map when I was young, and in my heart I felt homeless. America was now my home. I’ve spent my entire adult life in the United States. I got married here, raised my daughters and lived my American dream. Still, a piece of me was always missing, and I didn’t know where to go to find it.That was until one day in 2019; I received a message from my high school classmates asking me to return for a reunion.Behind the Iron CurtainGoing back to the place I was raised felt scary. It had been more than 30 years and from what I’ve read in the news, Moldova wasn’t doing well. It’s one of the poorest, least visited and most politically unstable countries in Europe. Many people are leaving. But that was only half the story.It was December 1989. I had just turned 20 when I fled to the United States, leaving my parents behind in the midst of my country’s collapse, right after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I didn’t know a soul. All I had was $61 in my pocket, a small suitcase and a desire to be free. The catalyst for the escape was my arrest for selling a denim skirt. I knew it was illegal to sell anything outside of government-owned shops and if caught I could spend time in prison for “speculation” — trading to make profit.I needed money for food and hoped I wouldn’t be punished, especially with perestroika underway (the program of political and economic reforms that was intended to save the Soviet Union but, some would argue, hastened its end).But when two militiamen took me to the station and interrogated me for an entire day, promising to ruin my life, I was scared. A bribe got me released, and by then I instinctively knew I had to find my way out. I understood that once I was beyond the Iron Curtain, there was no going back.’Aren’t you curious?’Elina Fuhrman (right) and her school friend Olga Golban in 1986. Courtesy Elina FuhrmanI did make one trip in 1992 to Chisinau, capital of the newly renamed Moldova, to see my parents. The Soviet Union no longer existed, at least on paper, and I foolishly thought it meant I could now freely travel, at least through Eastern Europe, in this brave new world.On my way back to America, I was taken off the train from Chisinau to Bucharest and held at the Romanian border in a padded cell. If not for the serendipitous encounter with the newly appointed Moldovan national security adviser at a Washington, D.C., party weeks before my trip, I would have probably been jailed for leaving my motherland the way I did. “My dear girl, nothing has changed,” a border guard told me after my release following the Moldovan President’s orders in the middle of the night. Needless to say, at that point there was never going back. Ever. “Aren’t you curious?” one of my classmates messaged me on Facebook. I hadn’t seen most of my classmates since our prom night in June 1986. I forgot many of them, including their names and their faces. We didn’t have class reunions until someone created a Facebook group and started adding everyone to reconnect. We are spread out all over the world, but this year we were all turning 50, and seeing each other again seemed like a great idea to some. How do I go back to the place I removed from my memory? A vanished country that I told myself I had no connection to? I brought my family to the US in the mid-’90s, and there was absolutely nobody left in Moldova for me to see. Do I want to unknot my personal narrative after all these years? A tourist in my own homeTaking the plunge to revisit my childhood home was one of the boldest decisions I’ve made. Here I was armed with a small stack of old black-and-white photographs, the only mementos left from my life there and my even more limited memories. I nervously got ready for my trip. When the plane landed in Chisinau, my anxiety escalated. “Is this your first time in Moldova?” my seatmate asked me. I could tell that my uneasiness was noticeable, but all I could answer back was “in a long time.” Anxiously fumbling with my luggage, I handed my US passport to a Moldovan passport control officer and watched his gaze as he examined it before waving me to exit. I entered the city straight into the embraces of my classmates who came to greet me, and my fears immediately dissipated. My car ride from the airport felt surreal. If not for my childhood friends beside me, I couldn’t tell where I was. The new name for Moldova is fitting, because Chisinau doesn’t look like anything I remember. I felt like a tourist in my own home. Everything has been transformed: the alphabet, the money, the flag, the clothing, the billboards. The gray monolith that’s been etched in my mind is no more; the city and the people are more colorful. Supermarkets and designer boutiques replaced the state-owned shops selling propaganda and uniforms. Construction work is everywhere, and everyone is talking on a cellphone. You can buy sushi, go to a karaoke bar and have a burger or French pastries.The Soviet past I remember is just that — a vanished way of life, an old story or an archived film. The life and the childhood I remember no longer exist. What I do find here is the connection to my classmates, an extended family I told myself a long time ago I didn’t have. Communist youth1984: As members of the Komsomol youth organisation, the children are carrying real guns. Courtesy Elina FuhrmanWe are the children of an extinct world, and we will always be bound together by the profound experiences we can’t even begin to explain to our kids. Only we know what’s it like to grow up indoctrinated with a rigid ideology only to see it crumble before our eyes on the cusp of our adulthood. To have our formative years coincide with the sweeping shift of the political landscape and subsequent collapse of the only world we knew growing up. All of us were raised as upstanding communist youth and to believe we were lucky to live in the country of the happiest childhood. We came of age with glasnost (openness) — a Soviet government reform introduced in the mid-198s to give people more rights and freedoms — and in this changing world, we were battling our desire to live alongside the need to survive. We all share the experience of unlearning everything we learned as kids. We were the last generation to grow up behind the Iron Curtain. As we made our ways to different parts of the world, created new lives and new identities, we all realized that we would forever be trapped between two worlds. But what we found going back to our hometown is a sense of collective identity, a home within each other, a childhood home we thought we no longer had.I came to Chisinau with a question: What changed more — Moldova or me?I didn’t know how to answer it, so I asked my classmates. We agreed that everything is unrecognizable, but the changes in the city couldn’t compare to the changes within us. As we toured our hometown and surrounding areas on a bus, we felt like visitors in an unfamiliar city, discovering its secrets and learning its newly written history. The biggest change for me was that I no longer felt homeless in my heart.

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(CNN) — If your sweetheart turns to you tonight and whispers “shall we try for a little one?”, don’t dismiss them out of hand. It could be they’re talking about an Irish island. Great Blasket, on Europe’s Atlantic fringes, is seeking a couple to become summer caretakers and sole full-time residents of this unoccupied island off Ireland’s west coast. As long as you’re not sticklers for electricity or hot running water, you’ll embrace the majestic 1,100 acres (4 1/2 square kilometers) of emerald isle as your domain. As well as sublime views, the generous rain keeps the landscape lush and those stiff Atlantic breezes power the wind turbine that generates enough electricity to charge up your phone. The roles, suited to a couple or two friends, involves the management of the island’s coffee shop and three vacation cottages from April to October this year. Accommodation and food are provided and wages discussed on application.Candidates should be aware they’ll be facing some tough competition. “We’ve had about 7,000 applications,” Alice Hayes tells CNN Travel on January 16, having posted the job vacancy online just six days earlier. Hayes and her partner, Billy O’Connor, live on the nearby Dingle Peninsula and O’Connor runs regular boat tours to the island in summertime. Together, the couple refurbished the islands’ cottages, one of which was home to legendary storyteller Peig Sayers, whose Irish-language autobiography “Peig,” published 1936, has been a standard text for generations of Irish students.Sayers had “a very tough and difficult life on the island,” says Hayes, and her famously bleak book documented “the hardship she went through.”The island’s 2019 caretakers were Lesley Kehoe and Gordon Bond. Like Sayers, they shared their Great Blasket experiences with the world — although their Instagram and Twitter accounts presented a rosier view of Atlantic living. However, Kehoe tells CNN Travel, wannabe caretakers should take note: “What you see on social media isn’t what it’s all about.” While she posted “pictures of bonfires, fields and sunsets,” what you didn’t see is Kehoe “running round the cottages making beds” or “queues coming out of the coffee shop.” “You can easily forget that it gets up to 400 visitors a day,” she adds. “it can be incredibly busy.”As for off-the-grid living, Kehoe says that while you can use your cottage’s kettle to boil water for showers, after a few days she steeled herself and got used to showering cold. Start your morning that way, she says, and “at least you know that’s the coldest you’ll be that day.” The water is fed by an island spring and that pure water and fresh air has its benefits. “My skin, my hair, my general health was incredible,” says Kehoe. There’s no electricity or Wi-Fi on the island, but, surprisingly, the mobile internet reception is excellent, thanks to a mast a few miles away on the mainland. Of those 7,000 — and counting — applications Hayes and O’Connor are now sifting through, there will no doubt be a large number of people with a romanticized view of what the job entails. However, Kehoe says that those who know they’re the person for the task will have the “gut instinct” that they are a Blasket Islander in waiting. She says that she and Bond were unable to return this year “for practical reasons,” but “if we could do it again, we would.”Not only has the experience been a powerful one for her and her partner, they’ve also made lifelong friends with Hayes and O’Connor. She and Bond are now back home in Kildare, near Dublin, but plan plenty of repeat visits. While there are those who criticize the “commercialization” of Great Blasket and its neighboring Blasket Islands, Kehoe thinks the global attention the island is receiving is ultimately beneficial. “I think that the work Billy and Alice do to keep the island alive is so much more important than leaving it out there fossilizing. If that [industry] wasn’t there, it’d just be ruins.” For more information about Great Blasket Boat Tours, island accommodation and Blasket Island trips, visit greatblasketisland.net.

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(CNN) — Chris Gursky nearly died hang gliding. No, that’s not an exaggeration. There’s a viral video to prove it.Yeah, you read that right: Gursky spent over two spine-chilling minutes hanging on for his life, the glider soaring high above the ground as Gursky gripped on with a single hand.Thankfully, he lived to tell the hair-raising tale. But while most people might be put off aerial adventures for good after such an experience, Gursky — undaunted — wanted to give it another shot.And so, less than a year later, he was back, surveying the Alpine landscape, about to step over the ledge and go through it all again — albeit, attached to the harness this time round.”I said, ‘I want to do it, I want to get up there, I want to do it again,’ ” recalls Gursky, who lives in Florida.”The hardest point, I guess, was standing at the launch point — the same place I launched off the first time — and just looking down saying, ‘Alright, we’re going to do this again.'”But once once we left the ground I was just taken along and it was absolutely beautiful.”A day to remember Gursky and his wife Gail don’t shy away from heights and often enjoy aerial pursuits while on vacation. On previous trips they’ve enjoyed zip lining, he says.The couple’s hang gliding adventure in November 2018 was the first time either one of them had tried this particular air sport.It was also their very first day in Switzerland, Gursky says, and it was a stunning day, the sun illuminating the dazzling panoramas of the Alps and the lush forests below.Gursky’s wife took off successfully, and he was poised to follow.”It kind of went in slow motion when we took off,” he tells CNN Travel.”I didn’t exactly know what was going on, what happened until it was way too late to either drop off or do anything about it. I just remember realizing that the only thing holding me up from probably imminent death was my hands.”The video shows how Gursky grabbed onto the glider with his left arm, and scrambled with the right to hold onto the instructor, who was attached.An adrenaline rush — for the wrong reasons.Watching the video is pretty stressful, so it’s impossible to imagine what was racing through Gursky’s mind during the ordeal.”At one point when I looked down, I pretty much saw that the trees were all changing colors. It was an absolutely beautiful day and I just looked and I was like, this is absolutely beautiful — and I’m going to fall to my death here. And I kind of envisioned myself falling to the air. And I think at that point, I really just tried to concentrate fully on hanging on as hard as I could, for as long as I could.”Gursky’s ordeal is a pretty impressive exercise in endurance, both physical and mental. Faced with such a terrifying scenario, many of us would panic and potentially lose control. He reckons what got him through is a mix of being strong-minded — and strong-wristed.”Once I put my mind to something I’m pretty stubborn about it,” Gursky says. “I’m not a gym rat. I don’t work out like a maniac or anything, but I’ve always had a pretty strong grip. But I’m right handed and I held on mostly with my left hand the whole time — so I’m not sure where that came from.”There was just no other option but to hold on, says Gursky, so that’s what he did. He remembers feeling pretty relieved when he finally landed on the ground — even if it was a bumpy descent. He fractured his right wrist and tore a tendon, but was otherwise left unscathed.The aftermathLying in the hospital later that day, Gursky tried to make sense of what had happened.The pilot might have made a grievous error, but he, in Gursky’s words, “turned out to be a pretty stand up guy, even though he nearly killed me.”Gursky had no wish to name and shame the instructor or the company, or pursue legal action.”I just wanted to take the high road, and just move on, move past it,” he says.He did share his experience on Facebook though, recounting the story alongside a picture of his arm in the cast.But because Gursky is known by friends and family as someone who enjoys a laugh, a lot of people assumed he was kidding.The video footage proved otherwise.Chris Gursky and his wife Gail, about to embark on their second hang gliding experience.Courtesy Chris Gursky Gursky’s GoPro was clipped on to the hang-glider, and he left the camera behind when he headed to the hospital. When it was later returned to him by the hang gliding company, Gursky says the footage had been deleted.”This could have been just a big, wild crazy story that I told a few people and no one really knew about it,” he says. But Gursky found a company that helps retrieve lost footage — and they got it back. Gursky posted the video on YouTube, entitiled “SWISS MISHAP” and with the warning that “Content may be disturbing to some. Including my wife!”It’s since clocked up over 9.9 million views.”My wife would not watch it for oh, probably several weeks. She couldn’t do it. She didn’t really want to see what I went through because she really had no idea what happened until we’re in the emergency room,” he says.The video ends with the statement, which almost seems comical in light of the footage that precedes it: “I will go Hang Gliding again as I did not get to enjoy my first flight.”Second time lucky They weren’t empty words — Gursky had every intention of going hang gliding again.Despite everything that happened that fateful November day, Gursky kept returning to the look on her wife’s face when she landed, before she knew what had happened to her husband.”She was standing there and she was absolutely glowing,” he says. “Like she did the coolest thing ever.”Gursky wanted to experience that feeling.He appreciates some people might think he was crazy, voluntarily ascending to the skies once more, but he puts a practical spin on the situation.”I mean, what would the odds be that that happened again, to me?” says Gursky. “It was a one in a million as it was.”Still, his wife kept telling him, right up to the day in September 2019 that they found themselves back in Switzerland, that he didn’t have to go through with it.The couple chose a different hang-gliding company this time round — in fact, Gursky was flying with Wolfgang Siess, considered to be one of the world’s best hang gliders.So he was in safe hands, and didn’t feel that nervous.”It was just everything I hoped it would be, it was effortless, like you were flying. It was fantastic.”So what would Gursky say to adrenaline junkies who find themselves hesitating after watching the video of the flight gone wrong?”Mine was a one in a million, you know? I would say go for it. It’s a incredible experience,” he says.Correction: This article has been updated to correct the length of time Chris Gursky was in the air during his original flight.

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(CNN) — For some, the prospect of buying a cheap home in Italy is a chance to leave their old life behind and start all over again. But the latest town to offer tumbledown houses priced at just over a dollar wants buyers to bring it with them — encouraging families or groups of friends to buy multiple properties. Bisaccia, a picturesque destination in Italy’s southern Campania region, is putting 90 dilapidated buildings on the market for one euro, joining other places across Italy trying to save dying communities by incentivizing people to move there. Unlike other towns and villages offering deals for people committing to one-off renovations, Bisaccia’s officials say its tightly clustered architecture lends itself to more communal projects.”We face a very particular situation here,” the town’s deputy mayor, Francesco Tartaglia, tells CNN Travel. “The abandoned [area] spreads throughout the most ancient part of the village. Forsaken houses are clustered together, one next to the other along the same roads. Some even share a common entrance.”That’s why we welcome families, groups of friends, relatives, people who know each other or investors to join forces. We encourage them to buy more than just one house to actually have an impact and breathe new life.”As is usual with Italian bargain home offers, buyers are expected to commit to renovating their newly acquired properties, but unlike in other towns, there’s no stated investment level or time frame to complete the work.Bisaccia’s winning asset is that local authorities own all the empty houses abandoned years ago by residents who fled in search of a brighter future. In most other Italian towns offering one-euro homes, the transaction sometimes involves tricky dealings with the original owners.”This stands as a guarantee that the disposal process will be speedy and smooth, we won’t need to chase descendants of old owners nor have any issues with third parties,” says Tartaglia.The ‘genteel’ townThe town sits on the crossroads of three Italian regions.Salvatore CasseseSitting atop two gently rolling hills surrounded by a low forest, Bisaccia is a sleepy spot. Once a thriving feudal center renowned for its wool-making and artisans, it has been hit hard by emigration. A series of severe earthquakes, the last one in 1980, accelerated its population decline. “Bisaccia is dubbed the ‘genteel town’ because, despite the hardship, its people have always been respectable, welcoming, hard-working and resilient,” says Tartaglia. “Newcomers here are pampered and taken care of. We want this place to shine again.” Locals have a reputation for being friendly and fun-loving people, who enjoy giving each other cute nicknames based on personal traits and tics. But they’re also known for being fiery. Bisaccia’s residents descend from the Italic tribes of the Samnites which inhabited the surrounding hills and fought bitterly against Imperial Rome before capitulating. Legend has it Bisaccia was built on the ashes of the Samnites’ mythological ancient city of Romulea. The name “Bisaccia” is said to hail back to the Latin “vis” or “force.” Its coat of arms features two lions fighting. Bronze Age caves and catacombs dot sheep and cow-grazing fields where wind energy is now produced. The opulent Princess Tomb and the archaeological museum are top highlights. The town’s belvedere viewpoint offers a bucolic vista over sanctuaries and ruins of Roman villas. Frozen in timeThe homes lie amid a cobblestone maze of ancient streets.Salvatore CasseseSome of Bisaccia’s quaint appeal comes from the eerie ambiance of forsaken spots that sit next to still-vibrant parts of town thronged with shops and families. The abandoned ramshackle old farmer and shepherd dwellings, made of thick walls with huge jutting-out stones, are located in the town’s historical center, clustered at the feet of the overhanging medieval castle. Thick grass has grown over unhinged doors, rusty staircases and broken windows. Forgotten objects and destroyed kitchens can still be found inside rooms stacked with heaps of debris. A labyrinth of alleys made of huge, uneven moss-covered cobblestone steps connect a series of arcaded stone portals, adorned with vaults and tunnels with dangling ferns. The newer blue, pink, green and yellow pastel-colored homes rise close to Baroque aristocratic palazzos with lavish façades and decorated balconies. A new “diffuse hotel” scattered across several buildings in Bisaccia’s old center offers visitors an opportunity to get the feel of the town’s dead and alive vibe. Italian crossroadsBuyers will have their work cut out in renovating the properties.Salvatore CasseseBeyond the town, Bisaccia boasts a unique location that allows for spectacular day trips. It straddles the border of three of Italy’s southern regions: Campania, Basilicata and Puglia. Naples and the UNESCO World Heritage site of Matera are both nearby. “Our folklore and traditions are the product of a picturesque contamination between regions, we celebrate Carnival with local masks and have a variety of fairs and foods that embrace all regional traits,” says Tartaglia. “It’s like getting the best of three regions in one single place.”In the past the town’s isolated hills were a perfect hideout for bandits from the middle ages to the end of the 1800s, but they’ve also served as a retreat for rulers. Emperor Frederick II, known as the “enlightened one” for his advancement in arts and sciences, loved to hunt in the woods in the 13th century.Each year a festival featuring actors in costume recreate the emperor’s time in the town, while at Christmas the living nativity scene draws hundreds of fascinated visitors.The countryside offers trekking tours along old shepherd trails amid pristine nature and deep silence.Hikers can discover Bisaccia’s other districts scattered across the prairies and far from the town center. One rural ghost hamlet called Borgo Oscata, where just 20 people live, is already being brought back from the grave. “We’re working on a major restyle project to turn this microcosm into a tourist retreat where visitors can experience the farmer lifestyle,” says Tartaglia.Food attractionAn idyllic, bucolic setting comes of course with great food and protein-rich gourmet menus.Delicacies include lamb specialties and pots of fried meats, potatoes and sweet peppers served during the local annual “Fry Fair.” Bisaccia is also a kingdom of colorful pasta shapes.Treidde are handmade twisted pasta while li marcannale are thick spaghetti. Li Cauzungièdde are ricotta-filled ravioli, vrecchièdde ear-shaped short pasta served with meat ragù sauce and laene is tagliatelle cooked with beans. Struffoli is a cake made with tiny fried dough balls covered in honey, while squarcella is an Easter cookie with icing. Cheese specialties include tear-drop caciocavallo and pecorino made with sheep milk. Bisaccia’s premium cold cut is the so-called soppressata, a thick greasy sausage made with lard, hot chilis and spices.

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