Sunbaked in Albania is the third part of a running series of recollections from adventures in the Balkans. You can read the previous update, about a Roman city that stands in ruins mere footsteps away from the modern capital of Montenegro, here. How to build a road in Albania Things just haven’t been making sense […]
Balkan Tales – Solitude in Doclea

This piece is the second in a series of recollections, in no particular order, from my travels in the Balkans. You can read the first one, about a peculiar encounter in a Slovenian ghost town, here. I set this story in Montenegro, but it just as easily could have been told elsewhere amongst the myriad […]
Balkan Tales – An afternoon in Slapnik

This is the first in a planned series of recollections and stories from my adventure in the Balkans. I pulled the SUV onto the gravel shoulder. Across the narrow one-lane-wide strip of asphalt was sharp turnoff onto a gravel path that descended steeply into the brush below. It looked as if I would need to […]
Reflections on Place: Yokkaichi Honmachi

Sometimes you come across a place that looks like it was born directly from your own fantasies and imaginings. A place that looks, feels, and even sounds like a place that you had visited before, but only in your dreams. I found one such place in Yokkaichi, Mie last week. For the vast majority of […]
Conversations in Japan: Big Drama in a Small Town

This post is an attempt to recapture and preserve a few, short exchanges I had in Japan this summer. Interjecting my own descriptions and interpretations for context, I nonetheless hope to focus on what the individuals with whom I spoke had to say about their lives, the challenges they face, and their hope for the […]
Churches of Iceland

Since Christianization in the year 1000 AD, the church has been a center of community life in Iceland. The most photographed location in Iceland, arguably, is Hallgrímskirkja, a hallmark of the Reykjavik skyline and an architectural masterpiece which captures the natural beauty and splendor of the Icelandic landscape. However, in this post, I wish to […]
Iceland

It was dark when we arrived in Keflavik, at ten-thirty in the morning, after a red-eye that felt twice as long as what was actually traveled. But at least I was not connecting on to Europe, another five or six hours away. Those poor bastards. Dawn came as we pulled into a hotel outside Reykjavik’s […]
The American Southwest – March 2016

There was no better place to think about life, death, and the American condition than on the roads of the great West.
The American Southwest – November 2015

For some, an American road trip is a journey down the iconic Route 66, or a pleasant drive through the countryside of the Atlantic seaboard, complete with quaint, perfect little towns and rolling hills. However, it was the desert scenery of the American Southwest that captivated my imagination. For me, the Southwest was a magical […]
Shintō – Goshūin

Goshūin (御朱印), Japanese for red seal, literally refers to only the stamped impression of a particular shrine or temple’s formal seal. Historically, devout (and literate) worshippers that donated a handwritten copy of a Buddhist sutra (although Buddhist monks, much like in Medieval Europe, spent much time copying scripture, this task was also popular as a […]