People & Places | Europe | Smithsonian.com

London's Best Restaurants

Thu, 16 May 2013 06:50:48 GMT

An eating tour of London—from Soho to Shoreditch, Bermondsey to Brixton—reveals the best restaurants among the city’s diverse new culinary scene

London’s Secret Gardens

Wed, 15 May 2013 01:55:45 GMT

With more than 300 gardens—some public, others private, many secret—London amounts to one of Europe’s greenest capitals. Towering pink hollyhocks creep over a high brick wall off a busy street; red and green ivy bedecks apartment courtyards. Offices and museums set aside valuable real estate for a patch of green with fruit trees and flowers. It’s easy to miss such gardens amid London’s sensory overload, even for locals living in their easy reach. London’s Vauxhall neighborhood, for instance, is full of rollicking after-hours clubs and traffic-choked streets and bridges. Seek out relief in Bonnington Square Garden, a ragtag oasis of trees, vines,

What Happened to Kalinka Bamberski?

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 03:22:36 GMT

The story begins in October 2009, with the kidnapping of Dieter Krombach, who was suspected of murdering his French stepdaughter, Kalinka Bamberski, 27 years earlier, in Germany. Krombach, a German doctor, had been convicted in absentia in a French court in 1995 on the basis of tissue samples that indicated Kalinka had been raped and then given a fatal injection. But the German government claimed the evidence was inconclusive and refused to extradite him. – Joshua Hammer This piece is an excerpt from "The Kalinka Affair" by Joshua Hammer. The full ebook single is available for sale from The Atavist, through Kindle Singles, iBooks, The Atavist app, and other outlets via The Atavist w

An Image of Innocence Abroad

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 06:00:00 GMT

After spending a madcap day in Florence 60 years ago, Ruth Orkin, an American photographer, jotted in her diary: “Shot Jinx in morn in color—at Arno & Piazza Signoria, then got idea for pic story. Satire on Am. girl alone in Europe.” That’s all it was supposed to be. “It was a lark,” says the woman at the center of Orkin’s picture story. Nonetheless, one of the images they made together, American Girl in Italy, would become an enduring emblem of post-World War II femininity—and male chauvinism. The American girl, Ninalee Craig, was 23 years old and, she says, a “rather commanding” six feet tall when she caught Orkin’s

Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 06:00:00 GMT

It was the end of term at Kirkkojarvi Comprehensive School in Espoo, a sprawling suburb west of Helsinki, when Kari Louhivuori, a veteran teacher and the school’s principal, decided to try something extreme—by Finnish standards. One of his sixth-grade students, a Kosovo-Albanian boy, had drifted far off the learning grid, resisting his teacher’s best efforts. The school’s team of special educators—including a social worker, a nurse and a psychologist—convinced Louhivuori that laziness was not to blame. So he decided to hold the boy back a year, a measure so rare in Finland it’s practically obsolete. Finland has vastly improved in reading, math and

Where Agatha Christie Dreamed Up Murder

Tue, 17 May 2011 06:00:00 GMT

On a crisp winter morning in Devon, England, sunlight streams through the floor-to-ceiling French windows of the manor house called Greenway, the secluded estate where Agatha Christie spent nearly every summer from 1938 until her death in 1976—and which opened to the public in February 2009. Gazing beyond a verdant lawn through bare branches of magnolia and sweet-chestnut trees, I glimpse the River Dart, glinting silver as it courses past forested hills. Robyn Brown, the house’s manager, leads me into the library. Christie’s reading chair sits by the window; a butler’s tray holds bottles of spirits; and a frieze depicting World War II battle scenes—incongruous

Resurrecting the Czar

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Valentin Gribenyuk trudges ahead of me through a birch and pine forest outside Yekaterinburg, Russia, waving oversize mosquitoes from his neck and face. The woods close in around us as we follow a trail, stepping over rotting tree trunks and dark puddles. “Right here is the Old Koptyaki Road,” he says, pointing to a dirt and gravel path next to a gas pipeline. “This is where the assassins drove their truck.” We stop at a spot where nine timbers are embedded in the ground. A simple wooden cross stands vigil. “The bodies were found buried right [at the site marked by] these planks.” Like many Russians, Gribenyuk, a 64-year-old geologist, has long been obs

Joshua Hammer on “In Sicily, Defying the Mafia”

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:30:26 GMT

Berlin-based author and freelancer Joshua Hammer is a frequent contributor to Smithsonian, having written, just in this last year, about Kashgar’s imperiled old quarter, antiquities smuggling in Mali, Sherlock Holmes’ London and a new approach to the electric car. For the October issue, he reports on the anti-Mafia movement in Sicily, led by organizations like Addiopizzo, a group of business owners working, as its name suggests, to bid goodbye to the pizzo, or the protection money the mafia has long forced them to pay. What drew you to this story? I’ve been interested in the mafia for years. My father was a journalist and author, and he specialized for many years in org

In Sicily, Defying the Mafia

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 06:00:00 GMT

Until recently, Ernesto Bisanti could not have imagined he would face down the Cosa Nostra (Our Thing)—the Sicilian Mafia. In 1986 Bisanti started a furniture factory in Palermo. Soon after, a man he recognized as one of the neighborhood’s Mafiosi visited him. The man demanded the equivalent of about $6,000 a year, Bisanti told me, “ ‘to keep things quiet. It will be cheaper for you than hiring a security guard.’ Then he added, ‘I don’t want to see you every month, so I will come every June and December, and you will give me $3,000 each time.’ ” Bisanti accepted the deal—as had nearly all the shop and business owners in the city.

Micronations of the World

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:11:04 GMT

Most tourists who cross the bridge from Annapolis, Md., into Eastport don't realize that they're entering another nation. After all, the boat slips and frame houses with carefully tended flower gardens on the east bank of Spa Creek look just like those on the west bank. Signs are written in English, cars drive on the right side of the road, and no border patrol guards in dark sunglasses are checking passports. But the hitchhiker's thumb-shaped peninsula jutting into the Chesapeake Bay is in fact the Maritime Republic of Eastport, lovingly called the MRE. The micronation of some 6,000 people broke away from Annapolis—and Maryland and the United States—in 1998, on Super Bowl Sun

In Northern Ireland, Getting Past the Troubles

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:00:00 GMT

The crime that still haunts Don Browne took place on a cold, damp evening in February 1985 outside a housing development in a working-class neighborhood of Derry, Northern Ireland. That night, Browne says, he handed over a cache of weapons to fellow members of a Catholic paramilitary unit. The gunmen whom he had supplied pulled up to a row house where Douglas McElhinney, 42, a former officer in the Ulster Defense Regiment—the Northern Ireland branch of the British Army—was visiting a friend. As McElhinney was about to drive away, a member of the hit squad killed him with a sawed-off shotgun. For his role in the murder, Browne, now 49, was sentenced to life. At the time a membe

Snapshot: Istanbul

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:00:00 GMT

With a skyline studded with domes and minarets, Istanbul is one of the truly great romantic cities. In Turkey's largest city, the continents of Europe and Asia come together as West meets East, separated only by the 18 miles of the Bosporus Strait that stretches from the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south. And in the less literal sense, on the vibrant streets of this city of 12 million people, miniskirts and trendy boots mingle with colorful Muslim head scarves and prayer beads. Origins: Istanbul is a treasure trove of history still being uncovered. Archaeological remains show that people have inhabited the immediate area of present-day Istanbul for tens of thousand

Climbing the Via Ferrata

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:59:45 GMT

From my lofty perch 8,900 feet above sea level in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, the view is spectacular. Towering peaks frame an idyllic Alpine valley, with deep-green pine forests and golden foothills. It’s hard to believe that just 90 or so years ago, during World War I, these mountains were wracked by violence: explosions blew off summits and shrapnel pierced tree trunks. Even now, the ground is littered with bits of barbed wire and other debris from the conflict. Thanks to a network of fixed climbing routes installed during the war, this breathtaking vista and history-rich area is accessible to anyone, not just experienced climbers. The routes, rigged with cables and ropes,

Blood in the Water at the 1956 Olympics

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:43:44 GMT

The scar is slight, just a little half-moon over Ervin Zador's right eye, a remnant from the most famous water polo game in Olympic history. In December 1956, just a month after the Soviet Union had crushed a Hungarian revolt in Budapest, the two nations' teams met in a brutal match at the Melbourne Games that came to be known as the "Blood on the Water" game. Officials ended it before time expired when a Soviet player sucker-punched Zador. A wire-service photograph of Zador, standing on the pool deck in his trunks, dazed, blood streaming down his face, was published in newspapers and magazines around the world. The picture presaged the political nature of the modern Olympics, which would

Peace at Last?

Mon, 01 Jan 2007 05:00:00 GMT

The first blast reverberated through the old quarter of San Sebastián at one o'clock in the afternoon. It rattled the windows of the ornate buildings around the 18th-century Santa Maria del Coro church and sent a flock of pigeons into the sky. We were standing in a cobblestone plaza outside one of the town's most famous pintxos—tapas—bars, La Cuchara de San Telmo, eating braised rabbit and sipping red Rioja wine when we heard it. A minute later came a second explosion, and then a third. "Let's go see what's happening," said my companion, Gabriella Ranelli de Aguirre, an American tour operator married to a San Sebastián native, who has been living there f

Americans in Prague

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:00:00 GMT

William Lobkowicz moved to Prague in 1990, joining the hordes of young Americans drawn to the beautiful Czech capital in the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution that had peacefully toppled the Communist regime a year earlier. Lobkowicz, then a 29-year-old real estate broker from Boston, lived—like most young foreigners in the city—in a cramped, leaky walk-up apartment. But from his centuries' old townhouse off a cobblestone square, he could gaze up at Prague Castle, rising majestically on the hill across the Charles Bridge spanning the Vltava River. Or he could wander the labyrinthine, medieval alleys that inspired novelist Franz Kafka's vision of a city that ensnared its denize

Bouillabaisse a la Marseillaise

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 03:10:52 GMT

From The French Chef Cookbook (Knopf, 1968), by Julia Child: How to make the authentic bouillabaisse is always a subject of lively discussion among French experts; each always insists that his own is the only correct version. If you do not happen to live on the Mediterranean, you cannot obtain the particular rockfish, gurnards, mullets, weavers, sea eels, wrasses, and breams which they consider the absolutely essential fish for bouillabaisse, but you can make an extremely good facsimile even if you have only frozen fish and canned clam juice to work with, because all the other essential flavors of tomatoes, onion or leeks, garlic, herbs, and olive oil are always available. Bouillabaisse

Memory Blocks

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:37:56 GMT

Visitors to the bustling center of Frankfurt am Main seldom venture as far north as Eschersheimer Landstrasse 405, where Holocaust victims Alfred Grünebaum and his elderly parents, Gerson and Rosa, once lived. But those who do will discover three four-by-four inch simple brass blocks known as stolpersteine—German for "stumbling stones"—embedded in the sidewalk in front of the doorway. Each simple memorial, created by Cologne artist Gunter Demnig, chronicles the person's life and death in its starkest details: Here lived Alfred Grünebaum Born 1899 Deported 1941 Kowno/Kaunas Murdered 25 November 1941 [translated] More than 12,000 such stones have been instal