Where Hitler's Crowds Once Roared
After decades of visiting Nuremberg, I finally stood on the grounds where Hitler once addressed thousands of followers.…
Travel
15 posts
Berlin Then and Now
Two visits to Berlin, separated by nearly four decades, revealed a city transformed. Berlin taught me that remembering the past and rebuilding for the future are not opposites.…
Pan Am Promised Me the Moon
Signing up to go to the moon.…
Edinburgh and the Stories We Choose
Edinburgh is a city that understands the power of stories. From Harry Potter pilgrims on Victoria Street to the portraits lining the walls of a Victorian gallery, I found myself wondering how places become meaningful—and how much of that meaning we choose for ourselves.…
Glasgow: A City That Earns You Over
Glasgow did not overwhelm me immediately. Instead, through its bridges, blue-hour streets, universities, museums, and industrial history, it gradually revealed itself as one of the most distinctive cities I encountered in Scotland.…
Inverness: A Castle That Isn't a Castle
Inverness sits in the shadow of Culloden, where the Highlands suffered one of the defining defeats in Scottish history. Yet what I found there was not a city burdened by loss, but one animated by music, books, memory, and a quiet sense of pride.…
Paris, One Month After the November 2015 Attacks
Moving past the classic postcards, my camera found a different Paris in December 2015. Outside the Bataclan and across the squares, a resilient city was pausing to mourn, remember, and keep moving forward.…
Walking Through Silence: A Son’s Journey to Auschwitz in 2025
I came to Auschwitz not as a historian or photographer, but as a son. Walking through Birkenau in 2025, I confronted memory, loss, and the responsibility to remember.…
Crossing Half the Planet
The Longest Journey of My Life For most of my life, Australia and New Zealand felt almost theoretical — names at the bottom of the map, separated from my daily reality by oceans and time zones. I had…
Memorable Places
Places that have stayed with me.…
A Lesson in Staying Awake
I had flown from Washington Dulles through Iceland, and by the time I reached Glasgow I wasn’t hungry so much as determined — determined to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime and reset my clock. La…
Walking Along the Seine
In 2014, I stumbled across Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light. The author, David Downie, is an American who has lived in Paris since 1986. He loves Paris deeply and knows it far better than…