At Home In The Wasteland Travel Blog

After driving through Big Sur, we stopped for some delicious clam chowder in Monterey and continued north to San Francisco. The following morning, at my friend Adam’s suggestion, we drove to Battery Spencer, in the Marin Headlands, for some amazing views of Golden Gate Bridge and the city. Other than seeing the Golden Gate Bridge, [...]

In a previous post about North Korea I described our group’s visit to the USS Pueblo, an American ship that was captured by the North Koreans on January 23, 1968 and has since remained in North Korean hands. To this day the North Koreans love bragging about how they captured the “US ARMED SPY SHIP [...]

This is a copy of the famous sign that once stood at Checkpoint Charlie, a border crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. The checkpoint remained in use until October 1990, when Germany was reunified. Checkpoint Charlie remains a major tourist destination, however, and a replica of the Allied checkpoint guardhouse was [...]

And here is the video that accompanies my previous post on the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum. Watch it so that you may familiarize yourself with the “immortal military exploits” performed by Kim Il-Sung.

Pyongyang, July 27 (KCNA) — At least 550,000 foreigners visited the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum over the past more than 50 years since it was opened to visitors in Juche 42 (1953). Exhibited at the museum are materials and evidence proving that the army and people of the DPRK heroically defeated the armed invasion [...]

Along the banks of the River Spree runs a 1.3km long section of the wall that divided East and West Berlin for 28 years. This particular part of the wall, the longest stretch still standing, is now home to the East Side Gallery, which hosts over 100 paintings by artists from all over the world. [...]

Here is the North Korean Tourism DVD footage of our trip to the USS Pueblo in Pyongyang. In this clip you can hear the narrator describe how the “US armed spy ship Pueblo” was “captured by the heroic Korean People’s Army while committing espionage acts”. You can also see us “imperialists” playing around in the [...]

The NYTimes has an excellent series of articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was only seven years old when this happened, but can still remember watching the news reports showing Berliners attacking the wall with sledgehammers as they were sprayed with firehoses. What an amazing moment in history. [...]

Over the past few weeks there have been several interesting articles about North Korea. The first, “Soldiers, Mines and Sounds of Children Playing” is actually about the South Korean Taesung Elementary School, the only school inside the Korean DMZ. Kim Han-seul, a fifth-grader, attends a most unusual school. Each morning, his school bus picks him [...]

If you’ve known me for a while then you’re well aware of my interest in touring US warships. Ever since I can remember, my parents would take me down to San Diego so we could visit whichever ship was open to the public. I’ve been on everything from aircraft carriers to dock landing ships to [...]