Author - Don Pogreba

Don Pogreba is a current writer and retired teacher of English, Social Studies and Debate, and a loyal, if often sad, fan of the San Diego Padres and Portland Timbers. When he is not traveling, he is working on his classroom web site or dreaming about another adventure.

Photos: New England, October 2016

I have always dreamed of visiting New England in the fall, and while I was apparently a bit late for the maples to be “blowing up,” I couldn’t have been happier with my short trip.

Heading Home: The Scenic Route

The end of the trip has been filled with a bit of medical adventure, as I seem to have actually sprained my ankle in that scrum to get on a shuttle bus from the train station to my stop in Almere, Netherlands, but it didn’t stop me from hobbling around Bruges for five hours yesterday and the Van Gogh Museum for two today. Bruges was...

On the Linguistic Inadequacy of the Word “Travel”

Even as I begin to catalog the series of frustrating events that were my travel day yesterday, I recognize life could be profoundly worse than hopping on a plane from Porto and ending up in a quirky, suburban hotel near Amsterdam. That caveat noted, what I did realize yesterday was that the word “travel” seems problematically imprecise...

A Few Things I Won’t Miss About Portugal

Since tomorrow’s post is going to be a saccharine love letter about how smitten I am with Porto specifically and Portugal in general, I thought I should clear the deck with an admission that there are a few things I won’t miss about the country when I leave tomorrow. In total, these things I won’t miss are approximately 0.4% of my...

A Proper Castle!

Prepared to be shocked, but when I was a kid, I was a bit of a nerd. One of my favorite series of books was a collection by David Macaulay with specific titles like Castle, Pyramid, Cathedral. I suspect if one were to look through the records of the library at Lockwood Elementary and Middle School, s/he would see that I still hold the...