Tellus

Anyone who has gone to Germany will tell you that each city has three things to offer, a church, a palace/castle and a town hall. We visited the Stuttgart Palace on a wonderful summer afternoon, had ice cream in the city center and ate Döner. Walking in these fountains next to toddlers and Germans. This is a [...]

It’s strange. During my days abroad in Germany I got to really know this particular landmark known as the Wasserturm or the Water tower in English. It actually looks really nice in the surprisingly hot German summer. Everyday I passed by it on my way to class. In the beginning I found this building quite intriguing [...]

Going to visit Fushimi Inari Shrine at night was one of the most breathtaking experiences I had while in Japan. Wandering up the mountainside between thousands of torii gates, my friends an I were almost the only ones there. Pure silence except for the sound of footsteps. I doubt I’ll ever experience such a solemn, [...]

Prague is a city which celebrates the harmonious interaction between history and the present. Living in Prague opens your eyes to the importance of the past in defining a nation’s culture and identity. The city’s architecture and memorials not only honor the country’s predecessors and heroes but commemorate the beginning of the nation. The Charles [...]

Rīga is bitterly cold in the winter. It was -18° Celsius (just under 0° Fahrenheit) in late January when I got off the plane in Latvia and walked across the tarmac to the gate, still wearing the jeans and T-shirt I had on when I left Seattle. The next three weeks only got [...]

In London, History greets you at every turn. Literally. There are monumental locations galore: Westminster Abbey, in which a myriad of historical figures are buried; the Banqueting House, at which Charles I was beheaded; the British Library, housing manuscripts written by Dickens, Milton, Darwin, and Handel; Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms; the [...]

This is one of the many messages written on the Peace Walls of Belfast, Ireland. Graffiti throughout Ireland interested me but the single wall we saw held the most intricate and powerful images by far. For me, our trip to Belfast was unique in that the historical struggles of Ireland were immediately present rather than [...]