With natural hot springs, steamy stews and tranquil monasteries, Bulgaria is a winter wonderland—even if most tourists don’t realize it. Continue reading Wintertime Bulgaria is So Much More Than Just Ski Resorts
In the summertime, northern Italy blooms with green grapes and cross-country cyclists. But in the winter, the region’s Germanic spirit comes alive. Continue reading Getting into Italy’s Germanic Christmas Spirit
“I BETTER TAKE MY PHONE,” the redheaded farm boy said. “In case we get stuck out there, to call someone to pull us out.” He had done this before. He searchingly patted the pants he’d hung up in the downstairs shed that smells faintly of sheep and dung and eventually found his small cell phone, the kind with a fuzzy green screen, then tossed it … Continue reading Notes From the End of the World
THE FIRST THING TO GIVE UP in Iceland’s December is the sun, and with it the loss of humanity’s very conception of time itself. Darkness shrouds the jagged island for 20 hours a day; the sun peeks out only briefly between 11 and 3 o’clock, which forces locals to reconfigure “morning” as a painfully taunting three-hour sunrise. Rising at daybreak—that very primal notion that dictates … Continue reading The Many Cons and Mighty Pros of Iceland in December
LONDON IS ONE OF the great museum capitals of the world, and whereas the Tate Modern and National Gallery may be obvious choices, there is a surfeit more whose aim is so peculiarly niche that I’m a little surprised anyone sporting only a vague interest would bother to pay the admission fee. Then again it is that same vague and disbelieving curiosity that brought me, … Continue reading A Brief Guide to Some of London’s Lesser-Seen Museums
I WROTE A FEW WEEKS AGO that “there is no such thing as small in Budapest.” If that is true, then the opposite must be said of Edinburgh, where everything is small, and cute, and surrounded by a proud air of uniqueness: things are hand-woven or hand-written or hand-made, arts & crafts, one-of-a-kind, organic and fair trade and ethical, and very, very hip. I suspect … Continue reading The Incredible Hipness of Edinburgh
1. The Arc de Triomphe A short man bent over in front of me as I was sitting on a bench slathering goat cheese on a piece of brown bread for lunch. The Arc de Triomphe stood brightly in the sun behind him, and I had been enjoying the view, which he interrupted by standing up and showing me a thick golden ring he’d picked … Continue reading What Parisian Landmarks Are Today
WATCHING PARISIAN WAITERS is watching an angry, anxious modern dance where things break and crash and no one ends up happy. Two young men will determinedly stare ahead and chug towards each other quickly, like rushing into a mirror, and at the last possible moment stomp down hard on the black-and-white tile floors and leap to one side as if staging a choreographed fight for … Continue reading Notes From a Paris Cafe
THERE ARE SOMEHOW SIX HOTELS in Berdorf, Luxembourg, a commune with a population of not quite 900. Most of them were closed. I stepped into an open one, the Famille Defive, for a coffee. Everyone knows everyone: this was immediately clear as I made eye contact with the waitress, a hefty woman with spiky red hair and angular eyebrows, with whom I shared a two-second … Continue reading What Happens to a Tiny Luxembourgish Commune in the Winter
LUXEMBOURG IS, IN EVERY WAY, a mishmash of other countries. Its ads are mostly French; its language sounds German; its radio mostly Luxembourgish. Even the just name “Luxembourg” sounds like a conglomeration of other words smushed together: luxurious, emboldened, smorgasbord. (All of which, strangely, are perfect descriptors of this tiny European nation.) Contrary to what some believe, Luxembourg the Country is more than just Luxembourg … Continue reading Luxembourg is a Weird and Beautiful Place
A Long Way Back 