While I was living in Split, Croatia, my friend Helena Lovrić and I stumbled upon a group of ladies playing the sport of bocce. In Croatia, bocce is not a sport that women play and so we felt inclined to talk to them and ask what the story was. It turns out that these sixty-something women have started a sort of feminist movement doing weekly activities typically reserved for men!
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When departing Croatia I wanted to segue to a destination within Europe that 1) I had never visited 2) was not conspiring in Covid regulatory policies inhibiting happiness. I had a handful of options throughout the Balkans that fit these criteria: Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. While I hope to visit all of these places eventually, the convenient option and availability of a short bus ride from Split to Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina simplified the logistics greatly. Traveling is fun when the next destination seems to volunteer itself for your consideration in such a way that you feel inclined to trust its judgement. I find that being ignorant of the geography, history, language and culture of the destinations that I visit sets the stage for efficient learning. By this I mean that unburdening oneself of the presuppositions of knowledge allows us to become empty slates upon which to record. For instance, being unable to pronounce “Herzegovina” prior to my arrival set a low bar of expectations of what I might learn from my visit; assuredly in my vacant, dry-sponge mind, this trip would be a success if afterward I had solved this single mystery. When I […]
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There is a lot of content on this website covering my visits to Split. It’s one of my international homes, and prior to 2020 when governmental Covid-19 restrictions inhibited international movement, I was in Croatia perennially five summers in a row. However, my streak ended in 2020 and that made me mad; so much for being a no-mad. I did manage to break free of the USA in mid January, 2021. Any port in a storm and Split is a most fitting port — having been a port city welcoming foreigners for over two thousand years. It was a great decision and I’m very glad to have returned after over a year away. The Dalmatian coast is known for the rocky beaches of the Adriatic sea, island life, sunshine and pomalo summers — but even in winter during a pandemic, unable to do my daily swims or beach-basking, Split felt better than the black hole of fear, anxiety, divisive politics and caustic media that has come to define the United States of America. In previous visits when asking Croatian friends what winter was like in Split, I was led to believe “very windy, very cold, but sunny.” Maybe I lucked […]
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Seoul is a great city to explore owing to the beautiful architecture, temples and endemic culture that is preserved amidst a modern, economic boom. The food is my world-wide favorite (sorry Lima now you and ceviche are now #2) — spicy, savory barbeque and lots of fermented vegetables — it is as if someone calibrated my palate to be magnetized specifically toward traditional Korean cuisine. I’ve been trying to return to Seoul for the past four years after visiting in 2015. It took a while because of all of the other places in queue (at least thirty, I think) — this time around I squeezed two weeks in before returning to the USA for Thanksgiving. It was long enough to sate my cravings for Korean food but not long enough to be ready to leave Seoul again. I secured a well-located Airbnb in the district of Songa-pu which besides being conveniently located via hyper-accessible transportation to nearby Gangnam had a lot to experience and explore in its own right. I joined a gym that I absolutely loved and the people were very kind and friendly. One of my favorite parts was the exercise uniforms they provided each visit; absolving my […]
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This summer I spent three months in Split sandwiching a two-month trip around eastern Europe (Belgrade, Kiev, Odessa, Krakow, Warsaw, Minsk, Latvia). But before that, in June, my vacationing sister and her family met me in Cavtat (where I spent a month back in 2015) and Dubrovnik before returning to Split. In June I visited one of the islands off of the Croatian, Dalmatian coast, Vis. A small island only a few miles across with two towns. I rented a scooter and explored it for a day. Surprisingly, even though Vis is one of the most photogenic destinations I have visited, it was almost vacant of foreign tourists. In September, when I returned from my eastern European sojourn, I was happy to have a respite from changing destinations each week, and focused on work, yoga, swimming and fitness for the month. I made new local friends and it became our habit to congregate on Saturday nights for homemade thai cuisine, gin and tonics, and a marathon of competitive cooking shows and American television. One weekend I hosted a meal and cooked macaroni and cheese, orange chicken (my favorite recipe) and even a chocolate cake for my friend Dado who had […]
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I was in Riga for a week. I was busy with work but really enjoyed the architecture. It’s a beautiful, peaceful city that made for a great visit. The highlight was one day exiting a café I was working from to have an old friend message me on my phone — “Reid did I just see you leave Rocket Bean Roastery here in Riga?” My friend Paul, who I hadn’t seen since I was in Lima, Peru in May, 2016 had recognized me from behind while working in the same café. We admired our good fortune — what are the odds of bumping into someone on the other side of the world like that. We had Dinner two nights later and shut the restaurant down talking US politics, work and alien conspiracy theories. Thanks for the great memory Paul. I keep my eyes open for you in every café I work from now.
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I spent a week during the end of August in Minsk with no expectations. Travelling like this — everything feels novel, new and interesting. My apartment was close to downtown and the city is very walkable, has a subway and even Uber. I joined a nautically-themed gym named Moby Dick and frequented “Surf Coffee” — a small coffee shop themed after a surf shop. I had to clarify to be sure that there was not any available surfing within at least three thousand miles from Minsk — it was assured that I was correct. As luck would have it I caught the tail end of watermelon season in Minsk and was able to carry one home each day after the gym. I ate spicy thai and many kebabs. I took a lot of photos, and generally really enjoyed my time in Minsk though I can assert that I didn’t much scratch the surface of history or culture, instead choosing to diffuse and derive it through my camera lens and belly. This must be how deaf, mute adventurers do it all of the time?
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I spent a week in Krakow and a week in Warsaw working and exploring Poland for the first time. Somewhat surprisingly, after hearing many people tell me I would prefer historic Krakow to a “bland” Warsaw, I actually enjoyed Warsaw more. Krakow is the city that wasn’t destroyed during World War 2 and so all of the old, historic architecture is still in place. And perhaps it’s charming — but at this point feel that I’ve seen so many charming European city centers that they all seem rather the same. Krakow is charming enough to attract multitudes of tourists (like me!) who traverse the historic districts in golf carts with guides (not like me!) who point and explain the charming histories of the neighborhoods. I avoided the tour route and instead chose to experience Krakow culture by eating mountains of perogies — the pillowy-soft polish dumplings that come filled with just about everything: meat, cheese, fruit. I liberally spread sour cream on top of them and ate them by the dozen. Their appeal may be hard to appreciate without savoring yourself, but I’ll try to translate such a sensory experience into words: perogies have a warm, gummy-soft, chewy exterior that […]
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Ukraine has the best traditional cuisine I never knew existed. My friend Zeke says that it’s just traditional Jewish fare — potato pancakes, lots of meat, pickled vegetables — not much bread. I arrived in time for the summer harvest of berries and purchased kilos of black berries and blue berries along with pickles, fermented cabbage and salads. My homemade breakfasts and dinners were charcuterie spreads. Many *good* restaurants in Kiev are open 24/7 which makes it one of the most comfortable cities I can remember to get well fed and affordably. The main, broad streets of Kiev are in some places paved in cobblestones offering intriguing contrast when opulent sports cars will actively accelerate and honk at you if you don’t cross the street quickly. This is a city where pedestrians yield to cars and even fear from them. And the small bunches of people who wait alongside me to cross the street — we seem to have solidarity against the other class of super-car-driving maniacs who want to run us over. I must only presume that during the winter months the dynamic is different, when snow piles up with the bitter cold — how do these same cars […]
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In 1986 a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine had a melt down and caused a drastic amount of radioactive fallout that was scattered around the rest of Europe. I feel obligated to learn about all of that and so I took a one-day trip from Kiev into the Chernobyl “exclusion zone” to learn and take photos. Unlike a quarantined zone, an exclusion zone is permanent. Due to the nature of the on-hundred thousand year high-half life of the radioactive isotopes contaminating parts of the 30km and 10km radius zones surrounding the disaster site, parts of the area will be dangerously tainted forever. Access to and from the exclusion zone is strictly enforced and controlled with rigorous access checks and security. Still, there is a large area that is safe to visit and explore with only very low, and perfectly safe radiation exposure. An unexpectedly cool part of the trip was discovering this magnificent, secret, gigantic radio tower built by the Soviets to try and anticipate nuclear attacks from the USA. It was securely guarded and hidden behind the guise of a children’s camp (replete with a fake bus stop decorated with childish, cartoon animal motifs). Conveniently located near the disaster […]
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