A 16-year-old Australian girl sailed her yacht out of Sydney harbour today, beginning an attempt to become the youngest person to single-handedly circumnavigate the globe unassisted, despite concerns over her age and expertise.

If all goes to plan, Jessica Watson will spend the next eight months alone on board her 10-metre vessel, Ella's Pink Lady, navigating 28,000 miles through some of the world's most dangerous seas.

Around 100 boats congregated under grey skies in the harbour to see her off. Watson did not speak to reporters before she left, but her mother, Julie, posted an update on the solo sailor's blog. "I know you are all anxious to hear from Jess, but she's a little preoccupied on her first day, so she asked me to post a quick note to let everyone know that the departure went well this morning," she wrote.

'If you're faced by the wall every morning, it's dark all day," says Steve Morell, DJ, musician and one of Berlin's legendary night-owls. "Even though we were just in the West, it felt apocalyptic; I thought it would never end."

It's a blue-sky morning outside the Rauchhaus, one of the oldest squats in Berlin, right up by the former death strip. I've come to see how the city has changed in the 20 years since the wall fell, with the help of Steve and my old friend Nackt, from cult Berlin band Warren Suicide. The idea is a personal road trip across the spaces that have transformed their cultural landscape.

Before 1989, Kreuzberg was the centre of alternative youth culture in West Berlin, and the Rauchhaus, a neo-Romanesque hospital, was on the eastern tip of this once-desolate neighbourhood, enclosed by the Landwehr canal and the wall. Named after left-wing radical Georg von Rauch, it now welcomes visitors, but check the website first. If you don't mind sharing with strangers, a bed in the "international guest room" costs from €3 a night. If that sounds a little scary, its Smoke House parties offer lashings of authentic Berlin spirit on the second weekend of each month

There was a time when people talked of videogames as an art form. They had sophisticated modular narratives, critics would say, as well as parallax scrolling and anamorphic perspective. Halo? Its killzones had a radiant beauty. BioShock? Love those eerie 1940s stylings. But the games that are booming today are different: they're what used to be called "resource management" games, and a lot of them can be found on Facebook. They are games, if we're honest, that people play sneakily on their computers while at work.

Parahawking

Mason was a typical trekker when he arrived in Pokhara eight years ago. The day before he was to leave, a colorful wing caught his eye, and he booked a tandem flight. As he circled in the sky with a pilot guide, Mason was thrilled by the sight of so many raptors. Hawks and enormous steppe eagles veered inches from the glider. A falconer since the age of 11, Mason wondered: Is it possible to train birds to help pilots scout thermals?

The next day, Mason heard about two black kite chicks rescued from a destroyed nest. He changed his travel plans and spent the rest of the season in Pokhara. While he learned to fly a paraglider, he began working out the techniques to teach the raptors to fly alongside. It led to a successful commercial venture offering tandem parahawking flights to tourists.

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Following the vulture's lead, we begin to pivot around the core of a thermal. Mason blows a whistle, calling Kevin in for a reward. As instructed, I thrust my gloved arm out like a perch and grip a chunk of raw meat. The vulture swoops in from behind, flares his wings and sinks his talons into my leather glove. He devours his snack and hitches a ride on my arm. Suddenly, he dives back into the sky.