Check out BA contributor Tyler Stiem’s awesome essay on Liberia, “Goodbye, Babylon King”, in the current issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Although it’s never been recognized by the international community, Somaliland broke away from Somalia during the civil war. Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, a bombed-out ghost town only fifteen years ago, is now thriving. But across the border in Ethiopia there’s trouble. Somali Ogadenis are still fighting their own, doomed war of secession.

You can’t seem to walk three blocks in Barcelona without running into a Gaudí masterpiece — though by masterpiece we’re referring to scale. In architecture, as in cities, grand has more than one meaning.

Our contemporary coureurs du bois head straight into Manitoba’s heart of whiteness to plumb the true meaning of an Arctic Front. Can Western Civilization and Immanuel Kant triumph over The Land God Gave Cain? Your guide to the Ices of Northern Canada.

We stuffed ourselves into the metro car until no one more could fit, and then a few more people squeezed in. While we were waiting on the platform for the train to come, a group of a half dozen kids popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and hooted as it hit the roof of the metro station. Then they did it again. It was just shy of midnight and the train was going to downtown Barcelona. There was hardly room to breath, let alone swig champagne, and anyway, there would be time for that later.

Havana’s most conspicuous foreign mission is the former Soviet (now Russian) embassy, which seems to glower rather direly back at anyone who dares to look at it. The obelisk erupting from its brutalist tower block does suggest a periscope from which those inside might be surveilling the city, but for those of us with an unhealthy fascination with totalitarian design the building is utterly compelling.

With William Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain as his on-again, off-again guide, Tyler Stiem spent a couple of weeks seeking out the points of intersection between Islam and Christianity in Turkey and Syria. Here, he adds to his collection of sound recordings of muezzin calls to prayer.

[Photo: Zingerman's Delicatessen, Michael Takasaki]
I’ve dreamed of visiting Ann Arbor, Michigan for years. Because that’s where Zingerman’s Delicatessen is. As soon as I read co-founder Ari Weinzweig’s book Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating, I knew I had to go.
Last week, on the way back from Indiana with Chris, I finally made it. There was a [...]

[Photo: First Christ Church, Eliel Saarinen, 1942]
Indiana Detour: Took a day away from the China in Africa symposium to check out the southern Indiana town of Columbus, which is a little-known hub of 20th century architectural showpieces, boasting buildings by Eliel Saarinen, Harry Weese, Gunnar Birkerts, Eero Saarinen, and several Pritzker Prize-winners including I.M Pei, [...]

[Photo: Mohamad writing "quit busting my balls" on his hand so he can remember it for his next client, by Andrew Gregg]
Mohamad Pony’s name is not really Mohamad Pony—he is the best fixer in Egypt and quite possibly the best fixer in the world. The Pony comes from his first car, which was a Hyundai. [...]