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
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
As with all proper legends, Tskaltubo’s story begins with a shepherd. Or a chieftain. And undoubtedly somebody tells it as a virgin who first found the miraculous healing hot springs in what is… Continue reading
After weeks in Vietnam, talking too much with other tourists, I jumped at the invitation to join a local for dinner. I was the only identifiably foreign face in the crowd gathered around… Continue reading
English teachers call it a “feedback sandwich.” A discouraged learner might disengage, so you wrap the hard part between two tastier layers. At the end of the first tourism year after two rough… Continue reading
Walking those last hours of descent back to pavement and electrical outlets was a time of comfortable contradictions. Steps tentative with battered ligaments, but perhaps a tiny bit of swagger after traversing the… Continue reading
Never judge a city by its train station neighborhood. They tend to be grimy, cracked, and carry a certain energy that makes you want to put your hand on your wallet and leave… Continue reading
You might think you packed light until you’re in the back seat of a van, the kind that coaches used to take seven high schoolers to track meets in the 80’s but now… Continue reading
Standing in front of Notre Dame Cathedral I had a lot of answers. 12-14th century, Judean Kings, and here are 10 things you can do tonight. Another 21-day tour almost finished, I was… Continue reading
When a Buddhist monk in Myanmar sprawled out over several seats in the train, or one on the bus in Malaysia blasted a radio no one else wanted to hear, or a third… Continue reading
