“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…
Tag: traveling
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…
Coffee at Partizani
In April 2009, I traveled around Albania with a group of photography enthusiasts.Albania, then a land of poverty, bunkers, young people and Mercedes cars. Mercedes cars? You could see Mercedes on every corner. When you ask how this is possible, given the financial situation of most Albanians, they answer that Mercedes is a status symbol….
Algerian Sahara
Trekking Through Desert Wastelands Sand. More and more sand. 1200 km in old military Toyotas, 200 km of hiking at a temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, a climb to the second highest Algerian peak, the 2780 meter high Assekrem. This is trekking with the Tuaregs across the Sahara in the south of Algeria!Sometimes I wonder:…