Travel
The Annual Onion Festival
That’s right. Onions! Onion bread, onion necklaces, onion toys, and onion songs. It’s that time of year again: the Zwiebelfest (Onion Festival) in Weimar. There seems to be nothing that doesn’t benefit from an onion or two, or twenty. These little figures on the left … Read more
The Basketball Court
It was hard to photograph using the camera on my out-of-date Blackberry. But look closely: stretched across the rooftops of stone houses inside Dubrovnik’s Medieval walls is a basketball court. Oddly shaped, but there it sits, perched three stories up. Isn’t it clever? Well, where … Read more
St. Donatus in Zadar
I’m currently traveling in Croatia with a Smithsonian group. Fortunately, the high season is beginning to wind down. You can almost hear these historic buildings and cobblestone streets breathe a sigh of relief. It will be a while before I sort everything out and present … Read more
Nena’s Room
A neo-Gothic church almost touches the back of the Schweitzerhof Hotel here in Lucerne, Switzerland. The Matheus Church is where Richard Wagner and Cosima von Bülow were married on August 25, 1870. They had to convert to Protestantism to marry there, as their divorces were … Read more
The Abbey of Cluny
Cluny. A name on a music history test. A place in Burgundy, at the Eastern edge of France, where something or other important happened about a monastery and Abbey in the early Medieval period. That much I remembered—couldn’t forget it if I tried, really, since … Read more
Potsdam and the Shape of 20th-Century Europe
It wasn’t a bend in the river, but a terrace on land that fascinated many of us during our Smithsonian Journey’s 2015 Elbe River tour. On a day boasting luminous skies and perfect temperature, we visited Cecelienhof to retrace the events of the Potsdam Conference. Although … Read more
Moscow Has Changed
It’s not a Moscow I recognize any more. When I first came to the Soviet Union in 1981, the grey, quiet streets of Moscow moved at an Adagio, with a formality that bespoke centuries of burden. The sufferings of the Second World still reflected in … Read more
Playing the Tour Leader
This is my third tour in the past year as Study Leader on an intense, rewarding Smithsonian Journey called “Old World Europe.” Out my window shimmers the fairy-tale façade of the Hungarian Parliament, casting its reflection upon the dark waters of the Danube. The Margarite … Read more
The Cats of the Hermitage
When I saw that headline, I assumed the story would be about cats in paintings. I was pretty excited, since lots of dogs appear in masterwork paintings. But cats? The beauty of a headline is just that: it’s a headline, designed to grab attention. Somewhere … Read more