At Home In The Wasteland

POTD: Air Koryo office in Pyongyang, North Korea

Lindsay — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 14:37:14 +0000

Booking office for Air Koryo, the North Korean state-owned airline. My tour group flew Air Koryo into and out of Pyongyang. Worst airline food ever.

POTD: Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, England

Lindsay — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:11:07 +0000

Despite living in London for a year, I never made it out to Oxford. I finally ventured out there during a January 2010 trip to London, the day after a major snowstorm hit the region. While it was a pain navigating the snow-covered streets and sidewalks, the scenery was incredibly beautiful. This structure was built in 1737–1749 and originally housed the Radcliffe Science Library at the University of Oxford.

POTD: Christmas Market in Prague’s Old Town Square

Lindsay — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:25:30 +0000

One of the main reasons my family traveled to Central Europe in December 2009 was to visit the many Christmas markets that can be found throughout the continent. This is the Christmas market in Prague’s Old Town Square, which sells some of the best pastries I have ever tasted. I first visited Prague in the summer of 2005, and I must say that I definitely prefer it in the winter. It’s less crowded, the comfort food is much tastier in the cold temperatures, and the light dusting of snow adds to Prague’s reputation as a “fairytale city”.

POTD: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Lindsay — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:30:21 +0000

View of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant from a bridge leading into the deserted city of Pripyat. Taken during our July 2007 excursion to the exclusion zone.

POTD: The Texas Embassy in London

Lindsay — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:09:02 +0000

The first time I walked by the Texas Embassy, I did a double take. Surely Texas doesn’t have its own embassy in the UK? That would be bizarre, but not completely unexpected given the inflated ego of the state’s residents (and I say this as a Californian ). Well, as it turns out, it is just the name of a Tex-Mex restaurant near Trafalgar Square. My friends and I spent our 4th of July here in 2005 when the soggy London weather forced us to cancel our plans for an Independence Day barbecue. If you can’t have hot dogs, you might as well celebrate our country’s independence from the Brits with margaritas and nachos.

Maine: Bar Harbor & Acadia National Park

Lindsay — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:21:04 +0000

Despite living on the East Coast for almost a decade, I’ve seen almost nothing of New England. Sure, I had spent a very cold month in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire back in January 2004, but I had never ventured to iconic New England destinations like Boston or Maine. Obviously, this needed to be rectified, and since I currently have an inordinate amount of time on my hands, my boyfriend and I decided to take a week-long road trip to New England in July. First, we went to Hershey, PA to ride roller coasters and gorge ourselves on decadent desserts. Following that, we drove through upstate NY, crossed Lake Champlain via ferry, stopped at the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory in Vermont, drove through New Hampshire and then spent a day at Acadia National Park in Maine. We spent the rest of our trip in Boston, visiting the Revolutionary War sites and taking in a Red Sox game at Fenway.

One of the highlights of the trip was definitely Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor. The area is incredibly beautiful and I kinda fell in love with the place. Seriously. I want to move to Maine, become a park ranger at Acadia, and eat lobster rolls everyday.

Early morning fog

Bar Harbor

Islands off Bar Harbor

We went on a puffin and whale watching tour, but it was incredibly foggy.

Better view of the island with a lighthouse on it.

Hiking Gorham Mountain. Underneath all that fog is the ocean.

American pose on the summit.

View from Cadillac Mountain.

The sand and gravel bar from which Bar Harbor takes its name. At low tide you can walk across the bar to Bar Island.

More photos here.

POTD: Schindler’s Factory in Krakow, Poland

Lindsay — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:25:34 +0000

Strange, I went nearly an entire month without posting to this blog. It’s not due to lack of material, as I’ve got plenty of that. I suppose I just feel guilty writing blog entries when I could be writing yet another cover letter.

Anyways, this is something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile. A few years ago, I would post an old LIFE magazine photo that I found particularly interesting, along with a short blurb about the photo. Well, I figured why not revive that, but instead of posting a LIFE photo, use one from my archive. I’ve managed to take over 8,200 of them in the past ten years, the majority of which are from my overseas travels. Setting a goal of posting one per day, along with a short description, at least gets me back in the habit of writing, and producing content when I don’t have time to sit down and write an extended entry. So let’s see if I can manage to post once per day. I’ll pick whatever image comes up in the “random image” section of my gallery and write a short post about it (unless the image totally sucks, in which case I will just hit reload and hope for a better one).

So, first up…

This is an entrance to Oskar Schindler’s factory in Krakow, Poland. Schindler, a German businessmen, is famous for saving the lives of 1,200 of his Jewish workers during the Holocaust. Schindler spent every penny of his personal fortune to provide care for his workers and bribe Nazi officials to ensure the workers wouldn’t be shipped off to concentration camps. To honor his efforts, the State of Israel declared Schindler “Righteous among the Nations” and allowed him to be buried in Jerusalem following his death.

When I visited in 2007, there was not much to see at the factory, but it was recently turned into a museum, so you can now view exhibits on Schindler and the Krakow ghetto.

China: Climbing the Juyongguan section of the Great Wall

Lindsay — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:20:08 +0000

After sampling the firearms of the People’s Liberation Army, I was off to climb the Great Wall of China.

I visited the Juyong Pass section which was first built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Located approximately 60 kilometers from Beijing, it played a vital role in the city’s defenses. I would have liked to have visited a remote, unrenovated section of the wall, but unfortunately my time in Beijing was limited.

When we arrived at Juyongguan, my guide asked me if I wanted to walk the easy part of the wall, or climb the “hard” part that snakes up Jinju Mountain. Still jet-lagged and stuffed full of greasy Chinese food from lunch, I of course chose the “hard” climb. It did not disappoint. There are 1,700 uneven, slippery steps to the top of the mountain – nearly twice the amount contained in the Washington Monument. Thankfully, the unbearable heat and smog from the previous day had been replaced by cool temperatures and a slight drizzle. I’m not sure where my sudden burst of energy came from (the greasy lunch, perhaps?) but I climbed the wall rather quickly. In fact, I totally smoked by guide (it didn’t help that she was wearing completely impractical shoes). At one point I stopped to wait for her, and when she caught up she was incredulous.

“Lindsay, I climb this several times a week, and yet you are much faster. Do you have many mountains where you live?”

“Well, not where I live now, but where I grew up, yeah.”

The start of the climb. This stone is inscribed with the famous quote by Mao Zedong: “If we fail to reach the Great Wall we are not men.”

Getting higher

View from a watchtower

American pose at the top of the Great Wall

Locks of love on the Great Wall

More photos here.

North Korea: The Streets of Kaesong

Lindsay — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:52:27 +0000

Random photos taken while driving through Kaesong. Compared to the showcase city of Pyongyang, Kaesong has rougher roads and much poorer infrastructure.

No traffic girls like Pyongyang. All the officers were men.

Obligatory Kim Il-Sung statue

More Kim Il-Sung

And more…

Even more…

Outside Kaesong

More photos here.

North Korea’s Funniest Home Videos: U.S. Imperialists visit the DMZ

Lindsay — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 02:23:23 +0000

Here is the North Korean produced footage of our visit to the DMZ. I had to break this up into two parts due to YouTube’s ban on videos over 10 minutes.

Part 1: This has some incredibly dramatic music as well as dialogue that explains how the “U.S. imperialists bent their knees” to the North Koreans. It also talks about the structure the North Koreans built for the signing ceremony against the wishes of the U.S., which merely wanted to hold the ceremony in a tent because the “U.S. Imperialists were afraid that future generations might see the place where they signed the surrender documents after suffering shameful defeat in the Korean War.”

Part 2: U.S. Imperialists visiting the Joint Security Area (JSA) in Panmunjom. Incredibly dramatic music followed by something that is more appropriate for a cheesy musical.