I hung out the other day with a 50-something-year-old Bulgarian bus driver named Boris. He'd taken one of my classes on a field trip, and I’d offered to buy him and the tour guide a …
June 10, 2013
Literate
Sofia, Bulgaria: rakia with Boris
Il Dolce Far Niente: Rome to Firenze
"Il dolce far niente": The sweetness of doing nothing. Pleasant leisure. The joy of relaxation. Rome was a mighty city; an ominous feeling swept through the maze of narrow cobblestone streets and left me with …
Mali: my almost nomad wife
In my capacity as a travel writer, I journeyed through much of Mali's Sahara Desert with the fabled Blue Men in the years before it was desecrated by Al-Qaida. For two thousand years, Tuareg nomads …
May 16, 2013
Other people's luggage
Imagine any Mr. and Mrs. Smith and their six-year-old daughter Suzie from Cairo, Illinois. They have just finished touring England on a bus. At Heathrow, they check in for their flight home. They give their …
Bridging the gap in Haiti
Only three hours in Haiti, I'd seen forms of travel that spanned hundreds of years – a woman on a mule, a man on a horse, people walking, riding bicycles and on mopeds, brightly colored …
Darkness and Light in Rwanda
I was the only one in the vehicle awake, excluding the driver. There were four of us. Two were snoring loudly, and I was trying to read my book and failing. Perhaps because of the …
April 12, 2013
Vacation Evolutis
The majority of non-business travel is for one special thing, “Vacation.” The word within the word vacation is "vacate" ("4. an act or an instance of vacating," Merriam-Webster), so by extension looking at it as …
April 8, 2013
A Discovery: Prague's Josefov
“Josefov.” The center of Jewish influence in Prague. A few other temples are scattered around the oldest part of the city, but Josefov is the vortex of Prague’s Jewish past. It was this name of …
March 21, 2013
Death Valley – Why?
Deep in the belly of Death Valley National Park, I pitched my tent up against sage bushes looking out at snowcapped mountains. Campers sat in their vehicles, some huddled in their tents, all dodging the …
March 8, 2013
What's Wrong with Switzerland?
The problem with travel writing in Switzerland is that there are no problems. Every writer knows there has to be a little sand in his shoe, some gritty irritation to kick off a story either …
February 22, 2013
The Magic of Salento
There was more than just a luscious countryside of diversified vegetation and smooth, rolling hills, where a clean river ran steady and uninhibited over gardens of round stones. More than just untouched wax palm trees, …
February 19, 2013