Guten Morgan from Friedrichshafen, It’s funny how something can go from an absolute symbol of technical success one day to the exact opposite the next day. The Zeppelin has this dubious distinction. Yesterday, we visited the Zeppelin museum in Friedrichshafen on the picturesque Bodensee in Southern Germany. It’s here that the zeppelins were manufactured …Read More
Goede middag van Eindhoven, Linda is fulfilling a lifelong ambition by visiting The Netherlands this week. The neat and picturesque countryside is keeping her smiling broadly and over-using that favourite adjective of hers (“lovely”). We have been bicycling breezily from one quaint village to another enjoying the art history here in the south …Read More
Bonjour from Paris, Why do people want to visit places like the Château de Versailles? A recent survey of a sample of the forty million annual visitors helps to answer this question. 4% of respondents say they are concerned about the human condition, hoping that witnessing such excesses helps to stave off …Read More
Salve dal Sud Tirol, I don’t suppose Copper Age man was paying too much attention to the scenery five thousand years ago, but today Sud Tirol is one of the most picturesque places in Europe (as well as the richest). After staying the night at Laghetti – having been the guests of honour at …Read More
Bongiorno from Venezia, What does a business do when competitors copy their product? It’s a big problem for some, including here on Murano island in Italy. Branded motorbikes are assembled in Indonesia and Ghana but they don’t come from the company whose brand they bear. Smartphones were quickly replicated by other companies after Apple introduced …Read More
Živijo iž Bleda, If Portugal and Việt Nam were the cool destinations last decade, and Iceland and Cuba are the cool destinations now, what’s next? Slovenia! That’s my tip. It’s been the genuine surprise packet of our trip so far. When Tino from Tarvisio (on the Italian side of the border) said, “Slovenia …Read More
Guten Morgan zum Lindau, As predicted, Linda has fallen in love with Austria (“ I thought Italy was beautiful . . . “). It’s not so much the countryside (“It’s so green, it’s kinda like it’s fake.”). No, not the quaint villages (“look at that dear little town”). It’s not even the lakes …Read More
Bongiorno from Tarvisio, I don’t get why car racing is classified as a sport. I don’t get why Asian women with beautiful complexions want to lighten their skin. And I don’t get why people choose to wear conspicuous brand names. While these things puzzle me, I’m completely flummoxed on another modern phenomenon: why people …Read More
Guten tag von Altaussee, This is a story about heroism under duress, about refusal to obey dishonourable instructions from above and about rectifying a wrong wrought by Hollywood. We are in the Austrian Alps, where even Linda has exhausted the superlatives about the scenery. It’s also where ‘bad’ means ‘spa’, and the salt has …Read More
Guten tag von Wien, I suppose we perceive castles and palaces of long-gone royalty as a curiosity; our visits as tourists a pause for relief (relieved that we no longer govern ourselves like that) or a nod to the decadence, and a determination not to let it happen again. On the other hand, …Read More