Posts about travels to places around the globe that reflect our shared heritage
As promised, I’m posting a few additional photos from my travels to Vienna, Austria last week. The top two photos are a detail from Hofburg Palace and a view of St. Peter’s Church in the rain. The next is a detail from St. Peter’s. Finally, the last two are shots from St. Stephansdom: the organ on the left and a detail of the pulpit and nave on the right. More to come… DJB
(NOTE: See my 2020 update to this post here.) Business Week magazine just included Murfreesboro, Tennessee as one of the best places to raise your children. Well, if they’d just asked me I could have told them that a long time ago. For years now, I’ve been using a little vignette about growing up in Murfreesboro as a part of a talk I give about the livability of towns and cities. While Business Week focuses on Murfreesboro as a recession-proof college town, I believe there’s a lot more to it. When I think of home, I remember 407 East Main Street in Murfreesboro. I grew up in Murfreesboro when it was a city of 35,000 people. My parents bought a simple 1880s-era home on Main Street because it had an apartment where my grandmother could live with us. Over the course of twenty years, four generations of our family lived under this roof. Murfreesboro has a history that was very real and very present to me as a child. I could walk four blocks to the town square, …
Today was cold, gray, and rainy in Vienna. But since it was also the only day I had to tour the city, I hit the streets early bundled in my winter coat and sheltered (somewhat) by my travel umbrella. It turned out to be a fitting day for a (Viennese) funeral. For someone interested in history, architecture, and cities, being in Vienna for only one day on your first visit can be as frustrating as being a kid in a candy store with a very strict parent. There are only so many things you can choose. Luckily, my friends Jim and Janet (they of the great Western trip itinerary) had steered me to a wonderful (and relatively inexpensive) little family hotel that sits astride the St. Stephansdom and Hofburg districts of the city. These are the names for the medieval city and the imperial city respectively. So I could jump back and forth with ease and, in the course of a day, see 4 of the best churches in the city while also spending an hour …
Last evening in Bratislava, i went with friends and colleagues from the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO) to a lecture and reception hosted by the Slovakian Ministry of Culture and the National Trust of Slovakia. The evening was at a former palace for the Roman Catholic Cardinal in Bratislava, and so was very opulent and grand. We entered through a courtyard and came across the statue of St. George slaying the dragon that you see at the left. We were admiring it when someone said, “I didn’t know St. George had to kill THREE dragons.” Well, we looked closer and there was only one dragon, but this variety had three heads. One bit of speculation was that the Cardinal simply wanted more water in the fountain and a three-headed dragon was the answer. Whatever the reasoning, it was another good day for our meetings, which were held at the University Library in Old Town. The library was part of a complex of three historic buildings, which have been adaptively reused. The courtyard (see photo) made …
Bratislava, Slovakia is the only world capital that borders two other countries. (Isn’t Wikipedia a wonderful thing!) And last evening I had the chance to enjoy some of the best of this city with my friends and colleagues from the International National Trusts Organisation (or INTO). After my all-night flight on election night, I arrived in Vienna around 9 a.m. local time and caught a bus from the airport that took me the 45 minutes to Bratislavia. The countryside between the airport and the city was very rural, broken only by the occasional wind farm and two delightful small historic towns (one of which still maintained its historic city wall surrounding the town). Since the hotel where I’m staying didn’t take guests until 2 p.m. and I needed to do something to stay awake, I ate a bit of breakfast and then strolled the streets of Old Town Bratislava. And I’m here to say that the historic core was hopping. I was on the streets at lunch time and those streets were swarming with people eating …
I just had an hour or so to become introduced to Old Town Bratislava in Slovakia, where I’m attending the executive committee meeting of the International National Trust Organisation. Here’s a teaser photograph from the historic city. More to come… DJB
On a beautiful fall day at the height of the fall color season, Candice and I walked through Maryland’s Sligo Creek Park today and soaked up the wonders of nature. The Washington area is blessed with parks and Rock Creek is the best known. But where Rock Creek Park can be busy on a gorgeous day, nearby Sligo Creek Parkway – located five minutes from our front door – is a great alternative with less crowding. So we walked for an hour, breathed the fresh air, took a few pictures of the creek and the fall foliage, and tried to just “be.” We hope you’ll enjoy. More to come… DJB
Franklin, Tennessee is a gem of a little town. I should know. Both my parents grew up in Franklin and I spent many a summer hour visiting my grandmother’s house as I mowed her yard, played catch in the back yard, helped in the large vegetable garden that was on a lot behind the house, or ran down the street to Alfred’s (a small store in a converted church) for ice cream and candy. Murfreesboro, where we lived, was a big city compared to Franklin, but that meant that Franklin had an intimacy that was familiar, welcoming, and walkable to a 12 year old boy. Franklin has changed through the years. After my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to Murfreesboro to live with us and she sold the family house to the city, which let it fall into disrepair. We would drive by on occasional trips back with her to visit friends and lament the shape of the old Bearden-Brown home place. But a wonderful thing happened. The local preservation group – the Heritage Foundation …
I spent the last two days in the mountains of North Carolina. A colleague and I had a meeting in the region and our timing could not have been better. Few things are as beautiful as the mountains of western Virginia and North Carolina during the fall. This was my favorite season during the 15 years we lived in Staunton, in the middle of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. So Tom and I were thrilled to find ourselves on a lake with a jaw-dropping historic dam and a shoreline filled with trees in all their fall glory. We viewed a great historic property with the owner on Tuesday afternoon, but knew we had to get up this morning to see more of this wonderful place. After a restful night’s sleep (boy it is dark in the country), Tom and I hit the hiking trail this morning to walk around the lake, enjoy the wonderful light, and examine the dam up close. As you can see from these pictures, the trees were spectacular and the dam was awesome in all …
Just arrived home after a week in Tulsa for the National Preservation Conference. National Trust staff posted some great updates throughout the week on the PreservationNation.org blog which I recommend. I did see some great art deco architecture and thought the Gilcrease Museum was a real treasure (check out the amazing Ansel Adams exhibit). But since I spent the better part of the week in partner and board meetings, I’m not the best judge of all the city had to offer. So I’ll just post this picture from last evening’s terrific closing party with Asleep at the Wheel and say thanks to Marty, Marcia, Cliff and all our hosts from Oklahoma for a great week. We’ll let Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel take us home with a great version of Route 66! More to come… DJB
MORE TO COME... 