I will be going to Washington in a few weeks for a class on the interaction of history, politics, geography and architecture and, needless to say, I’m already awfully stoked. It has not been finally decided which places we will visit, but we will probably see the Capitol, the National Building Museum, the National Archives, the Wilson Center, Brookings Institution and several memorials. If everything works out as planned, we will meet with people who either work at the respective place or have done research about it, so it’s totally different than your average dull in-classroom seminar. I still have to decide on which specific subject I want to focus my research, but since I’m more interested in politics than in architecture I will probably write a paper about the changes in Washington’s status and political culture during FDR’s presidency.

Since I haven’t traveled in a long time – my last trip was to Tuszla, Bosnia in 2004 – I’m already quite nervous. The unsettling remarks of our lecturers about the capital’s strict dresscode (“Just bring the best clothes you’ve got.”) didn’t help either. I hope that I will have the chance to write a few posts during my stay, but I will in any case report about everything after my return.