Since 2015, Richard has developed an extensive range of tours across central, east and southeast Europe.
Itineraries are often built around monuments and memorial sites: with routes following in the footsteps of founders, or liberating armies, to consider history in the context of its landscapes. Conventional tourist attractions may be skipped in favour of places like supermarkets, building sites, cemeteries, dive bars, power stations, sewers, and brutalist transport depots.
These tours avoid singular, reductive, or ‘correct’ narratives about history; instead, understandings emerge out of dialogue. Whenever possible, polished guide patter is replaced with the voices and perspectives of ordinary people.
To date, Richard has designed and led travel experiences in Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. From 2017–2023, he operated a highly popular series of multi-country tours for Atlas Obscura.
Impact
In 2019, Forbes described Richard as “full of dates and figures, but also clearly able to see how stories tie together – connections he made not just from reading the limited literature about monuments throughout the Slavic world but from interviewing scores of people about their lived history.”
In 2022, heritage scholar Dr Uwe Baumann joined Richard’s tour of Yugoslav monuments as part of his research into tourism at sites of contested meaning. He later praised it for “reflecting an Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and a dynamic culture of remembrance in which meanings and valences of cultural heritage are renegotiated.”
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, guests who had attended Richard’s tours in Ukraine collectively raised more than €10,000 in support.
In 2023, Richard received a Certificate of Appreciation from the director of Sutjeska National Park in Bosnia & Herzegovina, in recognition of his tour’s contribution to memorial conservation funding.
