Quixoticguide

Most people arrive in China through its superstars — Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu. But if you move eastward, past the familiar skylines and high-speed rails, the Shandong Peninsula offers something quieter, saltier, and more atmospheric. This is China facing the Yellow Sea: part maritime province, part agricultural heartland, part industrial frontier. Qingdao: The German Memory…

The United Nations sits in Manhattan like a promise carved into concrete: a place where the world gathers, argues, negotiates, and, occasionally, agrees. Yet every time I walk along the East River, past that slim slab of international idealism, I feel the same quiet tension. For all its symbolism, the UN is anchored to one…

If you’ve ever been confused by the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, you’re not alone. Two neighboring countries, almost the same name, even capitals facing each other across a river—it feels like history played a prank. But there’s a good reason both countries kept the name Congo, and it has far deeper roots than modern…

Some of the most meaningful journeys don’t begin with a plan, an itinerary, or even curiosity. They begin with restlessness — the quiet kind. The kind that doesn’t demand escape, only motion. We rarely talk about that version of travel. The Pressure to Justify Motion Modern travel is obsessed with explanation.Why this place?Why now?What’s the…

Maarten’s Note I’ve crossed many borders where flags were treated as unquestionable facts—stitched onto uniforms, printed on documents, fixed above checkpoints. Traveling long enough teaches you something else: identity is rarely that stable. It shifts, overlaps, and sometimes contradicts itself. When I first encountered Marc Napier’s net.flag, it felt less like digital art and more…

An atlas is supposed to explain the world.Borders, scales, legends. Certainty. The Coincidence Atlas does the opposite. It maps what cannot be planned. This atlas is not organized by country or capital, but by moments of alignment: places entered by accident, meetings that should not statistically exist, cities that appeared briefly and then rearranged your…