I have from time to time seen photos of Hungarian horsemen riding their horses while standing on the horse. Finally, a couple of years ago, I had the chance to see this. I was traveling with a few other travel writers. Our excursion from Budapest was typical of what any
There are a lot of onions at a festival that celebrates the onion. So, I suppose it sounds a bit odd when I say I thought I would see even more at the Onion Festival in Weimar, Germany, in the fall of 2015. There were countless stands displaying and selling
This fall (2015), a friend and I aimed to spend a weekend in Weimar, in the former East Germany, when the Onion Festival was on there. But we could not get a hotel room in Weimar. Erfurt, a larger city about a 15-minute train ride from Weimar, was our fallback.
I’ve been clearing out old files, all to reduce clutter and, no doubt, to make room for more of the same. Rifling through old papers has jogged many a memory, recalling long-ago trips to destinations no longer safe to visit and, in particular, the trips I hosted to Europe for
In early September of 2014, I walked on a bog in Estonia. I hasten to add that, given I was not adept at this, the walk was very short. Within minutes, I had gotten my boot buried past my ankle in the waterlogged moss that I was supposed to stay
I have a foster elephant, and her name is Kamok. Actually, quite a few people are foster “parents” to the same elephant. This youngster, born in September 2013 in Kenya, was orphaned at birth (natural causes, it says on her paperwork). David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust’s orphanage for elephants and rhinos,
This summer (2014), I watched two impalas butt heads while another closely guarded his harem, giraffes munch in the treetops, wildebeests run across a river by the hundreds, a young orphaned elephant drink milk from a bottle and sleepy lions yawn so broadly you could count their teeth. And one
Rex Fritschi is a long-time travel agent, now based in Wisconsin. But he was born in Switzerland and he occasionally returns to the homeland. He called me after a recent trip to discuss prices, meaning high prices. Mind you, he knew about the prices — after all, he is an
I did a lot of research about the Atacama, the world’s driest desert, for my book of travel trivia, but nothing beats seeing the place — which I finally was able to do when visiting Chile in 2012. My press group saw a wide range of “wondersome” natural attractions as
Sightseeing in Morocco’s Marrakech had to include the souks, or open-air markets, many of them identified with specific goods, such as jewelry, carpets, spices and so forth. The souks are a maze of narrow walking streets and alleyways that never head anywhere in a straight line, hugged on both sides
