Category Archive: travel

Plimba Ursul! Or Better Yet, Plimba Peter, Day 4

Romanians curse a lot. My favorite of their more playful profanities is when they tell someone to go away. We might use two simple words to form an expression that makes very little… Continue reading

Personal and Continental Redemption on Day 3

The obvious highlight on Day 3 of our Tour of Romania is the opulent yet intimate royal palace of Peles. I’ve written about it before and there is much more to say, but… Continue reading

Romania Day 2, the Power of the Athenaeum

Initially, Bucharest’s Athenaeum looks like just another nice neoclassical building of columns in front and a dome on top. Very European. So European that it’s familiar everywhere they sailed, ubiquitous in statehouses around… Continue reading

My Favorite Part of Day 1

I love to hear different languages overlapping in the summer air. In Bucharest on Day One of this year’s Romania tour, the languages were varied and the air was nice and toasty, like… Continue reading

Romanian Epiphany

The thing about epiphanies is they’re supposed to be singular, right? You have them once, and that’s it. But after I flew back to Romania yesterday, I inhabited a cycle of one recurrent… Continue reading

The Athenaeum

Time is a bully. Its complete refusal to pause, reverse, or even bounce around a little is stubborn to the point of cruelty. That may be part of why I enjoy travel so… Continue reading

A Walk in Rome

I went for a walk in Rome today, because you never know what you might find in a city like this. I crossed the Tiber, whose now calm waters whisper historical reminders to… Continue reading

A Day Driving in Romania

Today was a day of missed photographs, passing too quickly outside the window of my rental car. Tradition seems mostly held by women in this world, and Romania has so many moments of… Continue reading

The Real Story in Tskaltubo

The healing water has been famous for 1400 years and the buildings are relics of the 20th century’s greatest geopolitical tension, but the history I felt most keenly in Tskaltubo happened in 1993.… Continue reading

The Guides of Tskaltubo

Memory was fading from Tskaltubo’s long hallways and grand rooms, trapped echoes of grand aspirations from the other side of a political fight but the same side of our human struggle to find… Continue reading