Learn more about Käthe Kollwitz and her powerful visual legacy

 Käthe Kollwitz is an artist we should know and celebrate. Controversy is the least of the reasons why, although it's something I appreciate. Why Käthe...

An Afternoon with Santa Claus: Zürich’s Hürlimann Brewery, 1994

Exuberant excess in beer has been redefined so many times recently that I wouldn't know where to begin a survey of the territory, but...

Travel: Sofia, Bulgaria in June 1987

Yesterday, a review of a book about Bulgaria during the Cold War. https://www.rogerbaylor.com/2021/06/02/books-the-cold-war-from-the-margins-in-bulgaria/ 34 years ago Tuesday (June 1, 1987) I arrived in Sofia, capital of...

Beercycling by numbers, in Belgium

My band of beercyclists rode their bikes in and around the Westhoek region in Flanders five times in nine years (2000-2008), and I still...

To hell with car-centric burdens, but long live the Trabant!

I never cared very much for automobiles in the sense of stylishness. Growing up in a transitional zone between rural and suburban, I understood...

It was May Day in Vienna, 1987

Friday, May 1, 1987 was the 16th day of my second European immersion tour. Prior to arriving in Vienna earlier in the week, it...

Donald Niebyl tells the amazing story of Yugoslavia’s pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal

In 1987 for the first and only time, my European tour itinerary included Yugoslavia. It was fascinating for all the usual reasons, and at...

An absolute fascination with “The 15 Tallest Skyscrapers of Yugoslavia”

If Donald Niebyl created a calendar with these images I'd snatch one up. My only visit to Yugoslavia when constituted as such came in 1987,...

“Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $25 a Day” absolutely changed my life

At 91, Arthur Frommer still preaches the budget travel gospel, just as he did when I was converted 35 years ago. As it was...

Even the Commies know I’m not a Communist

Whenever locals refer to me as a communist, it strikes me far less as an insult than the understandably ineffectual flailing of dullards. It also...

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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...