Hong Kong has an issue with its discriminatory mindset and its not very often brought up in conversation. Although there may not be racial discrimination on the surface of day-to-day interactions with different people, there does seem to be a preference or some sort of ranking in terms of race. Read more…
Dividing Germany’s capital city, Berlin, for nearly three decades, the Berlin Wall divided not only land, but a people between two contrasting ideologies. Is it East versus West, or Regan versus Gorbachev? Berlin was at the battlefronts of the Cold War, a city a spies, and a city of dreams. Read more…
“Näschte Halt, Alexanderplatz, übergang zur U2, U8, zum Regionalverkehr, zur S-Bahn mit verbindung zum Hauptbahnhof, und zum Bus mit verbindung zum Flughafen Tegel. Change here for bus service to Tegel Airport.” ~ U5 announcement for Alexanderplatz Station I’ve been on the U5 to Alexanderplatz so many times I can memorise Read more…
Open air concerts, fireworks, meeting Benjamin Franklin in the flesh, and having huge hot dogs for lunch, all this means the 4th of July in Washington, D.C. I’ve only watched movies about Americans having barbecues and setting off fireworks on this festive date and never experienced it myself. Being there Read more…
Theres a running joke among my Canadian friends that even though I was born near Vancouver I seem to have more friends in Toronto, even though I haven’t been to Toronto until I turned 19. When I did visit, I decided to make it my Canadian heritage trip where I Read more…
“Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.” ~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca I love Vancouver and its beautiful blue sky because it is my own. There are always these surreal cotton candy clouds that float lazily above you in the warm summer sky. Read more…
Cold, very cold, especially in winter when temperatures dropped to -35C at night. Well it was night almost all the time. The journey began with a Skype call with Seth, a friend of mine who was living in France at the time. He really wanted to see the northern lights Read more…
Constructed for the 1936 Summer Olympics, the Olympiastadion in Berlin was the largest stadium in the world when it was built. This gigantic 100,000 seat stadium was Hitler’s showcase to the world and he wanted to be take seriously. Built on the western end of the east-west axis of ‘Germania’, Read more…
Olympiastadion – Germania and Beyond This was the first bit of serious research I’ve done looking into the history of Nazi Germany and how its architectural styles reflect its ideology when I was in Berlin. It’s not very long so I won’t write too much of an introduction.
Authoritarian Themes of National Socialist Architecture in Berlin When I was studying in Berlin, I enrolled myself in an architecture and art history course out of pure curiosity. Being a foreigner in a prominent university in Germany, I took full advantage of this situation and decided to write about a Read more…