Author: Ms. R.

Kragujevac was the most important city for the automobile industry in Serbia. The Zastava factory produced various car models, mostly licensed by Fiat, and employed more than 10,000 workers. In the city of Kragujevac toward the end of the 20th-century, it wasn’t uncommon to have a family member or neighbor that worked at Zastava. Although the factory has since sold to Fiat and changed its name, most of the local residents still call it Zastava. It remains the city’s……

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Miniatures & Curious Collections Museum is a breath of fresh air in a town otherwise obsessed with alien imagery.  According to one of the volunteers, this museum was started when the children of a Roswell-area miniature collectors group inherited the fruits of their parent’s hobby. The museum is filled with miniature diorama displays,  along with miniature collections of mismatched proportions and styles. There is also a bizarre small-to-large foot sculpture display that adds to the charming confusion of this obscure……

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Kochi Prefecture is known for its sake. Once a year, during the Tosa no Okyaku Festival, 18 sake brewers from across the prefecture bring seemingly endless bottles to Kochi City, so young and old can toast to the joys of the drink.  Watching over the event is Berobero no Kamisama, the God of Drunkards. This extraordinary naked god, who is clearly three sheets to the wind, is a beloved mascot for sake fans in Kochi. Throughout the festivities, people pay……

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Opened in December 2001, this museum tells the story of the Mennonite colonies of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Mennonites are considered the most numerous of the Christian Protestant denominations known as Anabaptists. Of Central European origin, the group also includes similar groups such as the Amish, and tend to be known for a shunning of several types of modern technology and generally only using modern machinery for essential tasks. By some estimations, the world’s largest Mennonite population is……

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An abandoned cemetery on a slender rise in Staten Island, one of New York City’s five boroughs, has many names. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission called it the Sleight Family Graveyard when it designated the parcel a landmark in 1968. The earliest gravestone is for Jacob Sleight, who died on June 20, 1751, which may explain the nomenclature. Other early settlers of the island and their descendants are interred here—the Seguine family makes up around half of the graves—and……

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A marbled slice of tonkotsu pork rests on a bed of yellow noodles, nestled next to three shiny green sheets of nori, some boiled spinach, and a few shreds of kikurage, or wood-ear mushroom. A pair of disposable chopsticks raises a tangle of noodles above the red bowl, as if headed to a waiting mouth just off the edge of the page. A description of the meal is printed next to the drawing, along with the price, date, and……

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Adjacent to the city forest, the Siebentischanlagen is actually a separate, manmade landscape park. After the park was constructed on former farmland in 1908, a fountain known as Schaezler Fountain was designed to honor Baron Edmund von Schaezlerr, one of the donors responsible for the park. The fountain itself was also part of a so-called “Green Basilica”. The location of oak trees denote the outer walls of a church and the fountain marks the location of the altar. It’s said……

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Not much is known about this eclectic place, but just off the beaten path along the San Juan Creek, at the intersection of Calle Arroyo and Via Sonora, sits a tiny little folk/outsider art installation. It’s comprised of fake evergreen trees, dozens of handmade birdhouses, gnomes, little Buddha statues, blown glass sculptures, and a myriad of other trinkets people have left behind. At the park is a little free library encouraging people to take a book, return a book,……

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