London may not be the world’s most beautiful city but it is probably its most storied. Almost every street corner has a story to tell: about rock music, Charles Dickens, Jack the Ripper and so on – the list of themes is virtually endless. London is also the capital of spy stories, and the most…
MEDVIEDENKO Of all the cities you visited when you were abroad, Doctor, which one did you like the best? DORN Genoa. TREPLIEFF Why Genoa? DORN Because there is such a splendid crowd in its streets. When you leave the hotel in the evening, and throw yourself into the heart of that throng, and move with…
Earlier in the year, we took you on a “sculp-tour” through the city of Münster (in northwest Germany), which hosts an internationally famous sculpture exhibition every ten years and which – since 1977 – has become one of Europe’s hot spots for urban modern art. The city, one of Germany’s finest, is equally well-known for its…
For most of its history, Rimini – established by the Romans more than 2000 years ago – was a sleepy provincial town on the Adriatic coast. Within 20 years after the end of WWII, however, two dramatic changes occurred: first came the arrival of mass tourism. And then a local boy, the scion of a…
For our recent journey through Emilia Romagna, a region in northern and central Italy, we decided to hire a car – something we had not done for several years, generally preferring to make our way on public transport and, of course, on foot. After so many years of not using a car for our journeys, I…
I must have advised you several times already that, if you take a trip to the French Riviera, you should combine this with a brief visit to Italy. On my list of suggestions, this is one of the top “Things To Do on the French Riviera” (right behind gate-crashing Brad Pitt’s yacht-warming party at the film…
Leipzig, of course, is more than “Hypezig”, as the scene quarter of Plagwitz is sometimes known So in today’s post, I will first tell you what we did to explore this interesting and historical Old Town of Leipzig in the heart of Germany, and then what we should have done. We started our walk to…
There are not many things that East Germany (that most joyless country in the annals of the world) and Italy have in common, but here is one: a conservation policy that closely mirrors the principles of “triage”. In analogy to the requirements of battlefield medicine, both Italy and East Germany divided their cities or cultural…
Last week, I told you about the bus company Zest and its daily tours from Menton into the arrière pays, the French Riviera’s mountainous back country. Of these altogether ten different day trips, most are going to places that also are, in principle, available on Zest’s ordinary lines. The problem is that the schedules of…
Movement 4: the Adagio at the Danube in Bratislava … which is just another word for “taking it very, very easy” On its way from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Danube passes through ten countries: there are longer rivers in the world, but none that are more international. Can you name all ten states…