Visit 12 cities in this word search

Question

Find below 12 cities in this word search puzzle, to find out what you are:

• Algiers
• Barcelona
• Bogotá
• Brisbane
• Buenos Aires
• Cologne
• Gdańsk
• Lagos
• Madrid
• Miami
• Seattle
• Sofia

S W E N D S O A W B T A R G E N W
X E I A D N M E R Q P I N J T T A
O P D G A R I A S O O T D N Y I D
B M O L O G E B M L K N J L E N R
I D F U C L A U S T T E G R A A S
A U O B A A N L M R A N D P O W P
C G U A I R A G L A L G E U L I K
O L O M B T V B A L O M R E A O L
S T C A G S U A A I P T I U P T N
W G C U I N E S I T D N A L O V W
X U Z A E N A I R E G L A T E S U
B N A S E I R V E G O M T D W O N
B N Y G E G A N M I I N S S P T I
R A F T A E T P U N A D D T A X T
A M E F A R I A N I P U E T I N U
I R D Y D M E O B V S F I R N I I
S E G Y N A R L E S N I A P S N E

Don't forget it has a enigmatic-puzzle tag

Answer 1

As Prim3numbah showed in their answer,

Each of the countries represented by the 12 cities has its name written in a square pattern:

From there, I thought I knew what the next step was:

Each of these cities is pretty easily mapped to a point on a 3x3 grid if you look at it within the borders of its country. For example, Algiers is pretty close to the top-center of Algeria:



So, doing the same with the square of letters...



It looks like Algiers should represent the letter O. Unfortunately, with this method, we get the letters OTOLTEETEXDC, which doesn't mean anything, nor does it anagram to anything I can find.

However, thanks to a helpful tip from OP in comments, I tried

reorienting myself:



As you can see, the eight cardinal and ordinal directions now line up with what we'd expect (i.e. "NW" in the top left corner, "N" in the top middle - albeit confusingly next to another W, etc.) Thanks again to the OP for some more prodding in that direction.

Now, if we try the same trick, we get the letters TROBITERETOG, which ... is so close to spelling the word GLOBETROTTER that it must be the right answer. (OP confirms that the I for Buenos Aires should be an L.)

Answer 2

Partial answer

First step

Find the corresponding countries to the cities which, in alphabetical order, are: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Colombia, Germany, Nigeria, Poland, Spain and United States

You'll see that each country form a 3x3 square inside (for example you find the square of Argentina by following the letters, in order, until it forms a square; a,r,g,e,n,t,i,n,a,a,r,g,e,n,t,i)

Here´s what I think is the second step:

Let´s write down all the 3x3 letter squares we've found.
Algeria:




Argentina:




Australia:




Bulgaria:




Colombia:




Germany:




Nigeria:




Poland:




Spain:




United States:







Not sure how to proceed from here... perhaps there´s some way of arranging these to make another wordsearch or similar, but can't see how. I also don't know how to make use of the 3x3 letters to match the specific cities...