Night from Saturday to Sunday in the last week of February 1982.The night after spending the day in foggy and slightly rainy Washington D.C. When I inadvertently came across the back door of the White House, without a line, and I walked through the corridors and halls where the fate of the world is often…
Category: route
The Mulberries in Brooklyn
Morus nigra, called black mulberry is a species of flowering plant in the family Moraceae that is native to southwestern Asia, where it has been cultivated for so long that its precise natural range is unknown. The black mulberry is known for its large number of chromosomes.Morus nigra is a deciduous tree growing to 12…
With Alamut on Alamut
“I wrote for a modern audience, and yet! I had the feeling that I was simultaneously writing for an audience that will live fifty years from now, and almost also for an audience that lived fifty years ago.” – Vladimir Bartol about his novel Alamut Alamut is a novel by Vladimir Bartol, first published in…
Having Capuccino in New York
New York in the Gay Eighteen Nineties had almost everything, except for a place where an opera lover, after a night of Verdi or Puccini, could relax, play a Neapolitan card game called “Scopa” and drink a cup or two of espresso.The story behind the opening of the oldest paticceria in the U.S. in 1892…
Samarkand Bread
One hot July in 2015, on the way from Andijan to Tashkent, I came across a roadside bread stand.What a wealth of smell, shape, taste…Samarkand non or “Samarkand bread” is a traditional bread from Uzbekistan. It is a very popular bread that accompanies the numerous dishes of the traditional Uzbek cuisine.It differs in its sizes,…
How I Swallowed the Beating Heart of a Cobra
What can we say about eating cobra meat?A particularly high content of linoleic acid in snake meat has a certain effect on the prevention and treatment of vascular sclerosis. Snake meat is rich in calcium, magnesium and other elements. It exists in the form of protein fusion, so it can be well absorbed and utilized…
Immigrants to the USA
Illegal immigrants within the workforce are extremely vulnerable due to their status. Being illegal makes these individuals susceptible to exploitation by employers as they are more willing to work through bad conditions and low income jobs—consequently making themselves vulnerable to abuse. Most illegal migrants end up being hired by the U.S. employers who exploit the…
In the Embrace of Annapurna
I didn’t sleep well the last night before climbing the pass. I was suffering from mild altitude sickness, it was freezing cold in the small room that resembled a prison cell, and I had drunk too much tea the night before. Outside, in the “toilet”, the wind and minus twenty C. What else can you…
Four Days in Baku
In April 2018, I traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan via Constantinople. The reason for the journey was quite unusual. For my upcoming photography exhibition on architecture in Iran, I wanted to exhibit some photographs of the Heydar Aliyev Center as a counterweight. I wanted to contrast the “masculine” Muslim architecture of medieval Iran with the contemporary…
Ashura in Iran
I had the rare opportunity to attend Ashura in the city of Ashkezar near Yazd, Iran. In 2014, for the first time, foreigners, non-believers, were allowed to attend. According to their data, around 450 foreigners attended Ashura in Ashkezar in 2017. It was Sunday, October 1st. In the morning we took a minibus to the…