Did you know that in what is now Afghanistan, there was a university so old it makes Oxford and Cambridge look like toddlers? Yep, it was called the University of Balkh (or the “Madrasah of Balkh”), flourishing around the 9th century in the city once known to the Greeks as Bactra. This scholarly hotspot was a melting pot where Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and Persian sages gathered to debate the stars and human nature. Imagine a place where everyone swapped ideas over steaming mugs of cardamom tea! 🤓✨

Picture this: luminaries like Al-Jahiz and the mathematician Abu-Mansur of Garras roamed those halls. They were so prolific, churning out scrolls on philosophy, astronomy, and medicine by the dozen, that they often needed extra hands just to carry all the manuscripts. Meanwhile, tea brewed constantly and debates raged hot—sometimes literally, since there wasn’t a central heating system back then. ☕️😄

After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the Madrasah of Balkh was largely destroyed, but its manuscripts scattered far and wide: some ended up in Baghdad’s libraries, others made their way to India. Without those preserved scrolls, many Greek and Persian texts might have vanished forever. So here’s to Balkh for saving a chunk of world knowledge—like a medieval backup drive for civilization! 📚🌍

Today, all that remains are a few weathered ruins and a handful of stone carvings, but the spirit of that university lives on in Balkh’s narrow streets, the stories of its elders, and the dusty libraries where medieval manuscripts still rest. If you want to impress your friends on Zoom, just mention you’re studying at “Afghanistan’s first Harvard,” and watch their jaws drop in scholarly envy. 😏🎓

Blumenau doesn’t feel real at first. I stepped off the bus and thought I’d sleepwalked into the Black Forest — but with palm trees. Half-timbered houses lined the avenue, their dark beams crisscrossing white walls like a gingerbread diagram. The signs were in Portuguese, the beer was cold, and the air smelled like yeast, eucalyptus, and some distant churrasco smoke riding the breeze.

Someone played a polka on an accordion across from a pastelaria.

This wasn’t Europe — it was something stranger. A memory of Europe, rewritten by the tropics and stretched across a new world.

They call this place little Germany, but that doesn’t quite capture it. It’s not Germany-lite. It’s Germany translated — through exile, through empire, through festa. Brazil does this a lot: folds things in. German, Japanese, Italian, Indigenous. Not melted, not erased. Just folded.

The buildings here feel like props, but they’re loved. I saw a local teenager take a selfie with a faux-Bavarian clocktower like it was Christ the Redeemer. The city owns its costume. And after a few hours, I started sketching the steep rooftops like they were old friends.

Architecture does that. It tells you where you are — or it lies to you, sweetly. In Blumenau, it hums a tune in German, even while the people around it speak Portuguese and dance samba.

And you know what? It still works. You just have to listen closely — the bricks are still speaking, even if they’ve learned a new language.

You don’t walk in Mesa. You squint, you scurry, you shimmer — mirage-style — from air-conditioned shade to air-conditioned shade.

But one morning, I did walk. Not just across parking lots, but through neighborhoods where the houses crouch low to the ground, like they’re bracing for something. Heat? Time? Memory?

The stucco here is the color of toasted almonds. The streets are wide — wide like they were built for tanks, not people. Yet on the margins: turquoise fences, blooming bougainvillea, and murals whispering we’ve been here a long time.

There’s adobe influence everywhere, even in new builds — though sometimes it feels more like a costume than a conviction. I stood in front of one apartment complex with faux-wooden vigas jutting out like stage props. A cactus had grown up beside them. It looked more authentic than the building.

I stopped for a raspa at a roadside stand. The owner had lived in the area since 1962. He said, “Mesa used to be sleepy. Now it just sweats louder.”

He wasn’t wrong. But there’s music in it.

You just have to slow down enough to hear it.

And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the dissonance too — a city shaped by indigenous forms and Latin rhythm, but one that once voted for a sheriff known for racial profiling and making inmates wear pink underwear. I sketched a mural of Quetzalcoatl across the street from a campaign billboard, sun-bleached and flaking. It made me wonder: can a place sing two songs at once?