Revered for its colonial architecture, its streets are lined with buildings distinguished from each other by their successive shades of pastel hues. Palms rise amidst a sea of red tile roofs against the backdrop of lake shores and volcanoes. There are baroque and Moorish aesthetic influences interspersed throughout the cityscape…. Read more.
Any savvy traveler will attest to the fact that integrating with the locals is the best way to immerse yourself in a new destination. This approach certainly isn’t only relevant while on a safari adventure in Kenya or a rainforest trek in Peru. When exploring Copenhagen, Scandinavia’s most stylish city, this same mindset applies…. Read more.
There’s no doubting that Venice is one of the most touristic cities in Europe. While the rest of the world regards Paris as the city of lovers, Parisians have reserved this title for Venice, meaning that it can be hard to escape the clichés that come along with it, especially in a city that’s hardly even inhabited by native Venetians…. Read more.
Over the course of the last few months, news of the Catalonian Independence movement has been elevated onto the international arena. Yet, the European Union has repeatedly dismissed it as an exclusively internal affair to be dealt with by the Spanish government. In today’s globalized world, however, the situation does not exist in a vacuum. In his article titled, “Catalonia: Past and Future,” Luke Stobart says, “In all, throughout Catalonia’s modern history a general pattern can be identified: rather than Catalan national consciousness being a constant — ever-seeking to create or develop a national polity — it is a more variable reaction to the political and social limitations of the Spanish national project.” One of the most significant external forces to have a hand in the latest wave of Catalonian independent struggle is that of neoliberal economic policy, which has taken hold in Europe and beyond over the past fifty years. The European Union To understand how these forces are at play in the situation, it is necessary to zoom out and examine the trajectory of the EU in the …
Over the past decade, Stil in Berlin has played an integral role in both documenting and influencing the cultural and gastronomical zeitgeists of Germany’s capital city. By extension, its founder, Mary Scherpe, has been an important figure in the public eye when it comes to filtering out the best that the city has to offer in terms of everything from fashion to food. Yet, something remains elusive and enigmatic about the woman behind the blog. Knowing her story and the values that ground her work breathes new life into each post on the widely read platform. Born in the former GDR, Mary has rural origins. “My mother had a huge garden and she would farm loads of things herself and we had cows and rabbits and chickens. My mother would make all these things like preserves and sauerkraut.” Her family’s approach to food changed substantially, however, after the fall of the Wall. “When the Wall came down and unification happened, this all kind of went away. It was replaced by supermarkets. You know, pre-processed foods. …
Post-Truth: a Crisis of the Intellectual Bourgeoisie In November 2016, just days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Oxford Dictionaries announced that its choice for Word of the Year was post-truth. There, it was defined as, “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion that appeals to emotion and personal belief”. Since the emergence of the term, there have already been numerous articles and even entire books written with sprawling commentary about why truth doesn’t seem to matter to people as it used to. Many of which are written by center-left intellectuals and journalists who lament the end of a time when fact was regarded with sanctity over opinion and veracity was revered. One of the central underpinnings to these analyses is the idea that the post-truthers helped to give rise to Trump, as sites like Breitbart and even the POTUS’s own words on Twitter have warped what is accepted into popular consciousness as valid grounds for basing our belief systems. The musings I’ve seen on the concept …
Tainá Guedes promotes harmony within herself, among other living things, and in the natural environment by making mindful choices, which translate into practical action. She believes that food systems provide a key entry point for dealing with the greatest crises of our time, from poverty to climate change. As a cookbook author, gallerist, and mastermind behind Berlin Food Art Week, Tainá combines food with artistic expression in order to communicate important messages about how we can all be living more thoughtfully and sustainably. “The movement that comes from me, from my heart, and moves through my hands to make my work, my book, and write my recipes. It doesn’t matter what it is; it is all connected.” Growing up in Brazil as the daughter of an artist, Tainá’s youth certainly shaped her sense of social consciousness as well as her approach to making strides in the causes she cares about. Coming of age after her father’s death as a teen during a period of economic turmoil in Brazil, she started working at a very young …
As the owner of Okay Café in Neukölln, Marie-Louise ‘Makki’ Crona creates delicious things to share with others, pastries and home cooked meals that come directly from the heart. Born and raised in Stockholm, where going out to eat is more expensive, “I missed just hanging out at each other’s homes, so this was also a reason why I started cooking more here for other people.” The crowd favorite was always her cinnamon buns, which she baked according to traditional Swedish style, simple, rustic, and seasoned with a hint of cardamom. “I think it started as a cure for homesickness because it’s such a typical thing from Sweden and something we always had at home.” She received such great feedback from her friends in Berlin that she decided to start selling them at the Neukölln Flohmarkt. “It was an extension of a reason why I cook for friends and family. I got this social thing going on, and this was another level of it: I met strangers and had this really good feedback instantly. It …
Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1945, Photographer Mohamad Al Roumi creates work that offers an increasingly rare glimpse into this country before it became ravaged by war. … Read more. Photo credit: Abu Daama 1998 | © Mohamad Al Roumi
Ruth Bartlett’s way of relating to food speaks volumes about how she interacts with the world around her. In fact, everything that Ruth does communicates in volumes. As a creative with a bold persona, if she works on a project, you can expect she does it big or not at all, harnessing the dynamism of life and community in each of her projects and endeavors. Using intuition to guide her, Ruth has the uncanny ability to cultivate vibrations and sensations in the spaces she designs and inhabits. Food itself, along with all the social, cultural, sentimental significance that comes along with it, is perhaps one of the meaningful mediums in her repertoire of creative expression. It functions as a source of collaboration and cohesion in myriad interesting ways, with feminist consciousness at the fore. No doubt, this mentality and the importance of building community around food was influenced by her London upbringing, “I guess every culture has it in different way, but in U.K., Sunday roast is such a time for people to come together, …