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Puerto Rico Vega Baja, Puerto Rico
Unincorporated territory of the United States de jure
Fully independent Caribbean country in our hearts
Municipality population: 54 414
Coordinates: 18°26′N 66°23′W

I still have no clue how American Football (or Handegg) works, but I do love Halftime Show at the Super Bowl! This edition was really special thanks to unique and packed with love, pride, great music, Spanish language (that's why links to Wikipedia here are in Spanish too), cultural references to Puerto Rico, powerful message that reminds us that America is a continent, not a single state, and of course - flags! The guy that was responsible for this spectacle, the most streamed artist in the world - Bad Bunny - comes from a humble barrio of Almirante Sur in Vega Baja municipality, around 30 km from the capital of the island nation San Juan. The general vibe of this kind of rural Puertorican with sugar plantations and small businesses area was meticulously recreated during the show!

Bosnia and Herzegovina Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Metro population: 555 210
Coordinates: 43°51′N 18°24′E

Winter Olympic Games are already up, this time in Italian part of Alpes which is reliable place to host the global event like this. It wasn't the case of that one time in 1984 when for the first time ever a communist country (although not full on board with the Soviets) Yugoslavia, host the Winter Games in Sarajevo, nowadays a capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Year 1984 was also the year the Summer Olympics took place, in capitalist Los Angeles, which were promptly boycotted by communist countries, except Romania, People's Republic of Congo, China and Yugoslavia. The games in Sarajevo turned out the be the ultimate success for the city and add a much nicer major world event to the history of Sarajevo than shooting in 1914 that launched the World War I.
Those years were the peak economic prosperity of Sarajevo and Yugoslavia in general, but sadly not that many years left until the federation dissolved into chaos from 1992. Nowadays Sarajevo as well as UNESCO listed old city of Mostar is an emerging tourist destination in the Balkans. Sarajevo is surrounded by Dinaric Alps which may not be as high and snowy as The Alps itself, but back in the days the climate was a bit colder for winter sports and the landscape is still always very scenic.

Cuba Matanzas Province, Cuba
County population: 710 127
Coordinates: 23°03′N 81°34′W

Cuba is one of those places that is never associated with freezing cold, it's just way too tropical, Caribbean and relatively low altitude. So much so until the February 3th this year for the first time in history of measurements the temperature at any place on the island reached 0 degrees Celsius. That took place not on the highest mountain range of Sierra Maestra, but on the flatlands in the province of Matanzas. It's hard to imagine how unusual might all the tropical fauna and flora might feel in such extreme conditions, even though we're in central part of Europe are casually waking up at 6AM with -20C to go to work.
Matanzas is the second largest province in the country, having access to both north and south shore and located about 80 km from Havana. The region is an industrial base for oil extraction of Cuba and have a long (and early on slave based) history of sugar plantations. When it comes to culture and tourism it's known as the birthplace of dancing styles like Rumba and Danzon, Afro-Cuban folklore and on of the largest resort town in Caribbean, Varadero. Also that famous invasion Bay of Pigs Invasion (that one when Kennedy was the president of the invaders) took place in the southern shore of the province.
On a map, the region looks like it's got a huge foot (probably to kick invaders out) that is covered by endless marshlands and swamps, and protected by the National Park of Ciénaga de Zapata (Zapata Swamps).

Russia Kronstadt, Saint Petersburg, Russia
County population: 44 414
Coordinates: 59°59′N 29°46′E

Saint Petersburg was a very ambitious (and cruel for workers who built that) project of the Russian Empire and part of defense system of the former capital of Russia was Kronstadt - strategically important island fortress, sitting right on the entrance to the city's access to the Gulf of Finland.
Kronstadt was founded by Peter the Great in early XVIII century on Kotlin Island caputred from Swedish. Since then the city on a small island became a focal point of commerce and history of the whole region. It was also a place of historic rebelion in 1921 which was the last major revolt against Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. The island is also a known pilglimage site with its orthodox church in memory of Saint John of Kronstadt. A lot of things happened on this 15 km2 island.
Nowadays Kronstadt is one of the city districts of Saint Petersburg. On the map this place looks very unique, the island is connected to the mainland by two bridges that form a giant ringroad around St Petersburg, those bridges also act as flooding prevention mechanism for the port. Up close the town also seems to have a small version of Chinese Forbidden City - rectangualar fortress surrounded by a moat. The rest of the district is the typical soviet urban area, commie blocks and some port industrial areas. What cought my attention on the map was also is an abundance of rows of garages, typical soviet-era amenities where residents can storage and fix anything they need.

Republic of Korea (South Korea) Pyongchang County, South Korea
County population: 40 448
Coordinates: 37°22′N 128°24′E

It's cold, I've been cold, Poland is cold and there is still an unusual amount of snow which reminded me that Winter Olympic Games are about to launch in 6th February in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo in northern Italy! Not that I religiously watch all the games on TV or something, but I like this whole infrastructure and planning that's going on around it and of course I love watching how many medals each team got every day!
Unfortunately I hardly remember what was going on at the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022, that was clearly not the year of good competition and peace in the world, the russian attack on Ukraine right after the games ended completely overshadowed that event, no matter how expensive it was.
On the other hand I have a very fond memories about the Winter Games in 2018 (it was 8 years ago, whaat?) in South Korea, which for a moment made the global peace slogan a bit more real. Forming a single national team out of athletes from both North and South Korea was a bold idea and extremely interesting to watch, especially the contingent of impeccably prepared spectators from the DPRK. What was novel for me and many online Polish viewers was the format in which we could watch the grand prestigious Olympic Games - Eurosport sponsored a youtuber - Krzysztof Gonciarz that I mentioned in the featured region in Greenland - to make a vlog from the games in a much humane scale rather than the usual epic coverage. Check out this fragment about what was happening during the hockey match between United Korea vs. Japan team.
All and all the whole region seemed to be really well prepared for such a big event and I hope the legacy of the Games positively impacted the actual residents and their realtively small city. To be honest I easily remembered the name of the county Pyeongchang because I heard that in promotional materials they spelled the name in English as PyeongChang with the capital letter in the middle to emphasize the difference between 'PyongYang', the more famous capital city in the northern side of Korea.

Venezuela Valencia, Carabobo State, Venezuela
Metro population: 2 031 000
Coordinates: 10°11′N 68°00′W

2026 promptly started with Venezuela on the global headlines, unfortunately due to rather violent events. I'm not a fan of Maduro, neither the ruling USA administration so I'm not going into the details, instead I want to focus a bit on one of the major Venezuelan city that shows what kind of economic and cultural potential this country has.
Valencia is one of the oldest cities in the country, founded a couple of years before Caracas. Valencia also served for few years as the capital city and the battle of Carabobo that took place nearby the city in 1822 won by general Simón Bolívar gave Venezuela its independence.
In the XX century Valencia as well as Maracay on the other side of Lake Valencia became the second largest metropolitan industrial hub of Venezuela, which growth was fueled by large oil deposits. I'm especially impressed by ambitious plans of the expansion of the metro system and the construction of the light rail system from Maracay to Puerto Cabello. I hope those plans will be fulfilled, although decades of mismanagement and the instability of the whole country definitely slows down the progress.
Quick searches don't show anything but vague assurances that the culture of the city is 'vibrant' and the fact that on its wikipedia page there is a whole section of Miss Venezuela winners from Valencia. I guess it's cool, but it definitely lacks some global brand that would distinguish it from Valencia in Spain.

Great Britain Handa Island, Scotland, United Kingdom
Island population: no people, lots of birds
Coordinates: 58°22′N 5°11′W

I was introduced to the existance of this relatively unknown island on the very up north altitude of Scotland by an article about a peculiar job opening of the wildlife guard. The articles points out multiple times that despite the job requires living and working on an uninhabited island, the applicants must have great social skills and be able to work closely with various groups of people and volunteers. It goes on saying that despite being well paid, the job is quite challanging because of unpredictible problems and lack of readily available solutions from the mainland. Still, the island is said to be very beautiful nature reserve and sanctuary for birds where on a 309 hectares of rigid land they can chill and breed unbothered.
The next day I read that short article I heard about Handa again on the radio so I guess it's became sort of global trivia news.

Greece Lemnos Island, Greece
Island population: 16 411
Coordinates: 39°55′N 25°15′E

This uniquely shaped island is very well known by Arpa game series players was mentioned in another article from this very New Year's day. It turned out for a brief moment the whole island was fully covered by snow. The climate is a bit colder and windier than the average of Greece, but the island is not that mountainous so the sight of snow everywhere is very uncommon.
For me the shoreline of Lemnos with its iconic inland bay was intriguing since my very beginning of map making and this silly map series is the proof.

Greece Thasos Island, Greece
Island population: 13 104
Coordinates: 40°35′N 24°38′E

Speaking of Lemnos I might as well add the third island in the row, the only one of which I actually visited, another Greek island of Thasos. I was there like 20 years ago with my family and rented Fiat Seicento so it gave me my first ever impression of how Greece looks like. The first thing that hit me is how dry the ground is in comparision to the usual solid and often puddy soil of Poland. Thasos in a lovely, sparsely populated and rather mountainous island that does not have a lot going on in terms of architecture and events, but as the laidback Greece experience is pretty cool.
2026 2025