A Strangely Small Place

I remember learning about the numbers in school. During World War II, prisoners in the German concentration camps at Auschwitz were tattooed with numbers upon their arms. There is something about this that we weren’t taught in school, or if so, it didn’t make an impression. I know I’ve heard it since, but today it […]

In The Middle

Standing in the swoon-inducing Panorama Raclawica, the Imax of its day, a certain revelation hit me, and somehow Poland is a natural follow up to Armenia in my journeys. It’s not simply that they were both once locked behind the Iron Curtain, but that they have both shaped by their locations in the middle – […]

They Do Universities Here

I somehow seem to find myself in university towns on a disproportionate number of my journeys. I don’t seek them out – maybe it’s just the type of town I look for. Or maybe I don’t have a bias toward university towns at all, and I’m just aware of the universities when I get there. […]

Sometime The Getting There Is Bumpy

The email from SAS caught me entirely off guard – the weather in New York was impeccable, with a comfortably warm morning and cloud dappled blue skies above. The subject was unexpected, blaring the the words “Cancellation information from SAS” in my inbox. The were informing me that my flight from Newark to Copenhagen had […]

The Stories We Take Home

The asphalt of the desolate careening streets was cracked and broken and the stone and concrete buildings around me pitched at angles as I walked through Kond, the oldest surviving neighborhood in Yerevan. I found myself here because I like age and it was recommended as a quirky place to visit for a glimpse into […]

Of Hope and Hardship

Ad astra per aspera. To the stars, through hardship. These famous words echoed through my mind today as I stood in the chill rain on the slippery steel deck of the decaying remains of the Soviet Orgov Observatory, a superhuman radiotelescope built into the mountains well above Yerevan. It was designed to listen billions of […]