Category: Cadence
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The mountains are cursed. That’s what our tour guide said and he explained why. We leave Tirana at dawn and within an hour the landscape has turned biblical — jagged peaks with clouds dragging across their shoulders, valleys so deep they swallow the light. By 9:33 am we reach the Macedonian border. By 10:15, Lake…
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Morning in a contemporary art gallery with Krist Dimo’s ‘Vuoto’ — paintings of fragmented figures and shared human experience. Evening at an Albanian wedding show, dancing in a circle shouting ‘opa.’ In between: a $6 pita, a produce vendor who now knows my face, and the realization that Tirana is starting to feel like home.
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Shkoder Day 1: A walk through the Marubi photography museum, breakfast at Nam Bistro with orange juice that tastes of Valencia, and an unforgettable evening feast — 26 dishes, 4 kilos of rose petals, and a host who turns out to be a software-developer-philosopher rolling grape leaves by hand.
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From the Baroque secrets of Maria Rotunda to the Gothic thunder of St. Stephan’s, the elegance of the Opernviertel, and Mozart performed in the very hall where he once played.
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Cadence — The Sound of Music Today was a singular event. I rested my body for the day to prepare for the music hall Ehrbar Salon. It was a one hour concert where the masters have played before in years past. I took two subway trains to get here. I stopped off at a Persian…
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From the scent of the Danube and the zany colors of Hundertwasser to a quiet Gothic church and a German-dubbed Odyssey — Vienna’s first day was a sensory feast.
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From a ruby-leafed tree in a forgotten botanical garden to a bowl of goulash that bridged years and borders, and a harp on cobblestones that made up for a closed symphony hall.
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First day in Bratislava: the immensity of the castle, the lost skills of Hungarian artisans, a voice like an angel at St. Stephen’s, and a filet mignon that transported us back to Uruguay.
