Two links: Abandoned Russian Lighthouses - a series of crumbling structures in beautiful natural surroundings. Add a healthy dollop of poverty and tragedy:

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did [the] job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment.

The Linguistic Diversity of Europe - an interesting, if brief, look at how the linguistic landscape (literally!) may have looked as long as six millennia ago. Ringe makes a good case for how he constructs it (as we have very little, if any, hands-on evidence, obviously) and the comments are interesting too. I'm a sucker for (Proto-)Indo-European linguistic archaeology, anyhow even if that makes me sound vaguely geeky.