St. Gallen vs Ashgabat

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St. Gallen or traditionally St Gall, in German sometimes Sankt Gallen (Sankt Gallen ; English: St Gall; French: Saint-Gall; Italian: San Gallo; Romansh: Son Gagl) is a Swiss town and the capital of the canton of St. Gallen. It evolved from the hermitage of Saint Gall, founded in the 7th century. Today, it is a large urban agglomeration (with around 167,000 inhabitants in 2019) and represents the center of eastern Switzerland. Its economy consists mainly of the service sector. The town is home of the University of St. Gallen, one of the best business schools in Europe.

The main tourist attraction is the Abbey of Saint Gall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Abbey's renowned library contains books from the 9th century. The official language of St. Gallen is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect. The town has good transport links to the rest of the country and to neighbouring Germany and Austria. It also functions as the gate to the Appenzellerland.

Source: Wikipedia

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Ashgabat (Turkmen: Aşgabat; Ашгабат, pronounced [ɑʃʁɑˈbɑt], Persian: عشق آباد‎; Russian: Ашхабад), formerly named Poltoratsk (Russian: Полтора́цк, IPA: [pəltɐˈratsk]) between 1919 and 1927, is the capital and the largest city of Turkmenistan. It is situated between the Karakum Desert and the Kopet Dag mountain range in Central Asia. It is also near the Iran-Turkmenistan border. The city was founded in 1881 on the basis of an Ahal Teke tribal village, and made the capital of the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic in 1924.

Much of the city was destroyed by the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake but has since been extensively rebuilt under the rule of Saparmurat Niyazov’s "White City" urban renewal project, resulting in monumental projects sheathed in costly white marble. The Soviet-era Karakum Canal runs through the city, carrying waters from the Amu Darya from east to west. Since 2019, the city has been recognized as having one of the highest costs of living in the world largely due to Turkmenistan's inflation and import issues.

Source: Wikipedia