Embassies of Washington, Part 7

Our latest batch is Botswana, Cameroon, Grenada, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Peru, Sierra Leone, and Spain. Upon finding the Spanish embassy I wanted to post it with Mexico's, just down Pennsylvania Avenue, because they have the same architectural feature of building a big modern building behind a small historic facade. I like Spain's more, but that's partly because they have a corner location instead of being uncomfortably sandwiched between ten-story buildings. I also like their banner bragging about winning the World Cup.

Embassies of Washington, Part 6

G'day mate! Our embassies series continues, although it will inevitably slow as the remaining embassies may take more time to find and photograph. Today, however, is Australia (a neighbor of my graduate school, I fondly remember their Christmas display of kangaroos pulling Santa's sleigh), the Bahamas, Cyprus, Greece, Haiti, Jamaica, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, and Togo.

Embassies of Washington, Part 5 (Embassy Row)

The historic heart of DC's embassy district is Massachusetts Avenue from the Naval Observatory to Sheridan Circle and onward to Dupont Circle - "Embassy Row." There are a fair number of old historic embassy buildings, as well as more modern and high-security showcases of the type that has populated International Drive in Van Ness, a latter-day Embassy Row. I live four blocks from Observatory Circle, so I often walk to the Dupont Circle area through this inspiring international avenue. So today, we're eschewing the usual alphabetical ordering in favor of a simulation of walking southeast, towards Dupont: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, Japan, South Korea, Cote d'Ivoire, Luxembourg, and Indonesia. These are the big beasts of the block, but there are at least 30 or so other embassies on the walk. I was a little surprised at the grandeur of the Cote d'Ivoire embassy, but love their elephant. Brazil has a more interesting, arty building on their complex, but it's under construction. Turkey's old embassy is one of the prettiest in the city, but it's just the residence now, as the chancery has moved to this imposing castle. Winston Churchill waves to passersby from a bed of flowers at the south end of the long British complex. Towards Dupont Circle, Gandhi stands tall by the surprisingly small Indian embassy (they have several buildings, and one further north has some lovely elephant sculptures as well). It's a nice walk, I highly recommend it.

Embassies of Washington, Part 4

According to the State Department, there are 194 sovereign countries in the world. Others might come up with different numbers, but for the US, it's the 192 members of the United Nations plus the Holy See and Kosovo. There are five we don't have diplomatic relations with: three you all should be able to guess (the Republic of Cuba, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea), one more obscure (the Kingdom of Bhutan), and one that's sort of tricky (the United States of America). So 189 is my magic number. Plus I've already discovered Cuba's hidden embassy as well as some other interesting diplomatic buildings scattered around the city.

40 countries in, we've now covered 16 of the 27 members of the European Union, 9 of the 23 other countries of Europe (who's in Europe is a matter of some debate, this number includes Russia, Turkey and the South Caucasus), 3 of the 34 non-American countries of the Americas, 4 of 42 in Asia, 7 of 53 in Africa, and 1 out of 14 in Oceania, plus 10 of the 26 foreign countries I've visited, 6 of the 8 embassies I've visited (Russia, Estonia, Portugal, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary... Greece and Austria are coming), and 1 of the 3 countries whose ambassadors I've met (Portugal, as I'm trying to get a better picture of the British Embassy and have never seen the German embassy.... and by "met" I mean have been in small groups that these ambassadors have spoken to and perhaps asked these honorable gentlemen questions like "Is it possible that the 29th member state of the European Union might indeed be Scotland?"). Hope you're enjoying the tour.

Oh, and by the way, today's countries are Angola, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chad, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Norway and Turkmenistan. So Scandinavia and the Caucasus are complete. The ultra-green Finnish embassy is another of my favorites, while I also love the statue of the "Golden Man of Kazakhstan" standing on his winged panther. And yes that is a hammer and sickle on the flag of Angola, to my knowledge it's the only country in the world that still has one on its flag.

Embassies of Washington, Part 3 (CEE)

Here's the first of our special editions. I used to work at CEPA, a think tank which studies the ten post-communist member states of the European Union. A ready-made group of 10, so after tracking down Slovenia, the only one I had not seen or visited prior to the project, and swinging by my old neighborhood to snap Poland and Lithuania, I present to you the EU Class of 2004 and 2007, minus Cyprus and Malta: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic (which has one of the best embassies in the city, on Spring of Freedom Drive near Van Ness, nestled in the woods, and they gave out full cups of free Pilsner Urquell at EU Open House day), Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.