Becoming a tartanista!

I brought 2 tartan kilts and one tartan skirt when I was in Scotland last month, and I cannot believe how much I love this look. Here I am rocking one of the House of Bruar kilts at the Staatsoper in Berlin last week. Since I didn’t want to look like a schoolgirl, I paired it with brown fishnets and some tall Doc Marten boots. I think I need more tartan in my life!

Photos from Freiburg and Waldkirch, Germany

I have lived in this part of Germany for roughly sixteen months over the last 8 years, and the natural beauty of the place still astonishes me. I went to the Münsterplatz Market on Saturday and enjoyed a lovely evening in the Black Forest Town of Waldkirch that evening. Yesterday, I went to the Freiburg Schlossberg Festival and caught a great snap of the sunset.

Day trip to New Lanark in Scotland, a UNESCO world heritage site

I was so excited to finally visit New Lanark, the home of Robert Owen’s utopian socialist experiments in the early 19th century. This place could be seen as the birthplace of every social movement to improve the working conditions of industrial workers in the last 200 years.

Since it was early April, the place was very empty and we spent a few hours wandering around the exhibits and really reading everything. It was the perfect day trip from Glasgow.

My short but wonderful Bulgaria trip

I’ve just returned from a quick dash to Sofia to do some research in the National Library, celebrate my ex-mother-in-law’s 85th birthday, and write a little about how the country still celebrates 8 March as International Women’s Day. It was a very busy and over scheduled trip, with visits to three history museums, but I am always happy to be back in Bulgaria, even if only for such a short while.

The Karl Marx and Capitalism exhibition at the German History Museum in Berlin

On July 4th, I visited the “Karl Marx and Capitalism” exhibition at the German History Museum in Berlin, twice in one day. I did the exhibition first in the morning, and then went back in the afternoon for the guided English tour. It was a really good exhibition, and remarkably well put together and thought out. It was very text heavy, so there weren’t a lot of images, but I enjoyed the presentation of Marx’s ideas within the context of their time.

The German History Museum also conducted an interesting survey of Germans and their opinions of Marx in 2021. Not surpassing, the East Germans have a much more positive vision of Marx than those in the West. I am posting some highlights of the exhibit here, but if you happen to be in Berlin this summer, it is well worth a visit.