Discovering the stories hidden in ordinary places.
EverywhereHistory is about looking more closely at the places we normally pass without thinking much about them.
An old building beside a cycle route. A monument in a small town. A plaque on a wall. A railway line, forest road, forgotten stadium or village that seems ordinary until you start asking what happened there.
That is usually where a story begins.
Come with me, I found something interesting
I like travelling, cycling, walking and exploring places, but I don’t think an adventure has to mean flying to another continent or organising a major expedition.
A train to a town outside Warsaw can be an expedition. So can a bicycle ride through Mazovia, a walk around an unfamiliar neighbourhood or stopping to investigate a building I’ve passed many times before.
I often notice something during a trip, become curious about it, and start researching when I get home.
EverywhereHistory is where I keep track of what I find and share it with anyone else who might be interested.
Part of the reason for creating the blog is simply that I don’t want those discoveries to disappear from my memory. Places I’ve visited, information boards I didn’t have time to read properly, stories I’ve come across during trips and things I’ve later researched all become much easier to remember when I put them together here.
EverywhereHistory 2.0
This isn’t the first version of EverywhereHistory.
I started the original blog in 2015 while living in Brisbane, Australia. At the time I wrote mainly about Brisbane, Queensland and places I discovered during my travels around Australia.
After a long break, I’m starting the project again with a new blog and a slightly different approach.
The old stories haven’t been abandoned. Over time I plan to revisit them, research them again and rewrite them for the new EverywhereHistory. I spent 12 years living in Australia and accumulated a large collection of photographs, brochures, museum material, magazines and notes from the places I visited.
That gives me plenty to go back to.
This is not a historian’s blog
I’m not a professional historian.
I’m a traveller, observer and local-history enthusiast who enjoys visiting places and trying to understand the stories behind them.
I use books, museums, archives, historical publications, information boards, maps and other sources to learn more about the places I visit. Sources used for individual articles are listed at the end whenever possible.
History is sometimes uncertain or interpreted differently by different sources. If I discover an error, I’d rather correct it than pretend I can’t make one.
The point of EverywhereHistory isn’t to arrive somewhere already knowing everything.
It is to notice something, become curious, investigate it and see where the story leads.
What you will find here
EverywhereHistory has four main types of stories.
Journeys
Bike rides, walks, runs, train trips and other micro-expeditions where the journey leads to interesting places and stories.
Hidden Stories
Articles focused on a particular place, building, landscape, route or historical event.
Discoveries
Shorter posts about individual buildings, monuments, plaques, unusual details and things I notice along the way.
Explorations
Sometimes the process starts before I leave home.
I research a town, district or area first, make a list of places and stories that seem worth investigating, and then go there specifically to see what I can find.
The research provides the route, but the field visit still matters. Things look different on the ground, some places raise new questions, and sometimes the most interesting discovery is something that wasn’t on the original list at all.
You will also find Worth Knowing sections throughout the articles. These contain short pieces of additional history or context that are interesting but don’t need to interrupt the main story.
Where?
Most current explorations are in Poland, particularly Warsaw and Mazovia, simply because that is where I live and where many of my everyday journeys begin.
There will also be stories from other parts of Poland and from places I visit abroad.
And, gradually, I’ll return to Australia.
Brisbane, its suburbs, Queensland road trips, museums, towns and other places I visited during my 12 years there will become another part of the new EverywhereHistory.
The idea has never really been limited to one city or one country.
Interesting stories are everywhere.
Sometimes you just have to stop and look.