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doors to other worlds
Tag Archives: Roman Empire
mosque heaven: Edirne
From Samothraki I took the ferry before dawn back to Alexandroupoli, arriving in brilliant, freezing sunshine. After 20 minutes, the bus to Orestiada turned inland into thick fog, passing through small towns among roads lined with white single-storey Thracian cottages … Continue reading
hard times in Greece, and how to survive them
The Guardian had a story about a guy in Patras who has been so hard hit by Greece’s current troubles that he could no longer support his ten children and had turned four of them in for care. Sad, yes, … Continue reading
Posted in anybody up there?, road
Tagged Byzantium, church, financial crisis, Greece, Greek Orthodox, inequality, Macedonia, religion, Roman Empire, Salonica, Thessaloniki
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trans-Slovakian
when I left Levoča this morning I took the bus to a quite ordinary town called Poprad – quite ordinary, that is, apart from its view of the High Tatras: These are the highest mountains in the whole Carpathian range, … Continue reading
Posted in road
Tagged castle, Europe rail, High Tatras, Poprad, Roman Empire, Slovakia, Trenčín
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Budapest
My arrival in Budapest wasn’t too salubrious: a drunken woman and a man with a weatherbeaten face and a moustache like out of a chronicle of some Balkan war shouting and throwing a table at each other, and an old … Continue reading
Posted in road
Tagged Budapest, church, Danube, Hungary, Nazis, Ottoman, Roman Empire, Soviet empire, synagogue, terror, World War II
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oh no, those Habsburgs again…
I thought that yesterday had been my day of visiting Habsburg palaces, but it seems that in Vienna their influence runs deeper than that… Today I went to the Vienna art history museum, a very grand structure… …that, as it … Continue reading
Posted in road
Tagged Arcimboldo, Austria, Brueghel, Caravaggio, classical art, Duerer, Gentileschi, Greece, Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Roman Empire, Titian, Velasquez, Vienna
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louvre
well this is what everybody comes to see: If that was Venus de Milo (and the Winged victory of Samothrace, if wildly impressive, was pretty much the same), I didn’t even try the Mona Lisa. Instead, I got easily more … Continue reading
Posted in road
Tagged Assyrian Empire, classical art, France, Greece, Louvre, Paris, Roman Empire, Sargon II
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