In Tirana, 31 years between views of Enver Hoxha’s house
As of 2025, it is likely that outside of Albania, very few inhabitants of the planet Earth recall who Enver Hoxha was. This is...
A brief recounting of the Balkan getaway in February, 2025
Obsessions can be of lasting duration, as with my history of 47 pilgrimages to the European continent since 1985, or they can be more...
February update: 40 Years in Beer, Baylors in the Balkans, and a forthcoming book...
Regular readers know that my "day job" is at Food & Dining Magazine, where responsibilities have expanded over the years from writing a quarterly...
Daphne Phelps and “A House in Sicily”
The struggle to learn the language was wearing, when study necessarily took place after long days of dealing with endless kind visitors who felt...
Tilda Swinton in Berlin: “Cycling the Frame” (1988) and “The Invisible Frame” (2009)
It's been at least two years since I created this draft, and it has waited patiently for me to return to the story of...
Beers with a Stoic: “Until philosophers become kings”
This morning at Facebook, Diana and I were both targeted with a memory reminder in the form of the cover photo, which was taken...
My Beers in the GDR, Part Three: Yes, there was lots of beer in...
Previously: My Beers in the GDR, Part Two: Sharing a few Pilsners with a future war criminal.
“Germans absolutely cannot live without sausage and beer.”
--Soviet...
My Beers in the GDR, Part Two: Sharing a few Pilsners with a future...
Previously: My Beers in the GDR, Part One: A working lunch in East Berlin, August 1989.
East Berlin: August, 1989.
Each Friday afternoon for three weeks...
My Beers in the GDR, Part One: A working lunch in East Berlin, August...
In 1989 I spent the first three weeks of August buffing and polishing V. I. Lenin’s shoes. The footwear belonged to a gargantuan statue...
The famous mishap in Madrid, November, 1989
This column from "On the Avenues" originally was published at NA Confidential on November 14, 2019. Kindly note that nothing came of my plan...
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The abstract modernism of “monuments and memory” in Tito’s Yugoslavia
Controversies over the newer monuments in Yugoslavia also came up as we talked. We discussed the memorial at Tjentište in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Ćosić argued that...
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 75: My shoes are filled with Volga...
Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 74: Down a rabbit hole, deep into the Belgian beer paradise (1998).
Insofar as ordinary Americans know to...
Archie’s axiom — or, beer’s ephemeral pass-through nature
Saturday evening we attended a performance of Urinetown: The Musical at Derby Dinner Playhouse in Clarksville, which is celebrating 50 years in existence; long...
