my year(s) teaching English in France
One day during our honeymoon in Switzerland, we drove to Täsch and then took a train to Zermatt, which is where you visit if you want to see the famed Matterhorn, sometimes referred to as the Mountain of Mountains, or Berg de Berge in German. As we walked Zermatt's long main street to reach the …
Continue reading röstigraben: crossing the invisible potato border
Switzerland in a word: cozy. As is my tendency, I had given the country an embarrassingly little amount of thought until I visited. Roger Federer. Watches? I had once been warned away from visiting for a weekend, told there was nothing to do. But a short visit last week (our honeymoon!) was enough to pique …
Continue reading winter wonderland: honeymoon in the swiss alps
Experiencing my own country with a foreigner is maybe as close to really traveling in it as I've ever gotten. Here with Victor, I delight in the little quirks that may surprise him. I explain why we always tip, and how much to plan on. I smile as he fumbles with the standard American how are you?, which tends …
Continue reading half a mile of the american dream: a glimpse of route 66
When Victor came to visit for two weeks in July, our travel plans were quite literally a rough sketch. The napkin on which I had scribbled ideas during a phone call became the backbone of our road trip. As the day of Victor's flight approached, we had little more than city names, a few reserved …
Continue reading “make no little plans”: in chicago, the road trip begins
Travel by gondola: a centuries-old tradition that is in no way vital to the city's operations...but surely vital to its heart.
Venezia is a city composed of tiny islands. 120 of them, spanned by 400 bridges. Wooden or stone, humble or showy, everywhere bridges. Every time you cross a bridge you step onto a new island. Long ago, these borders determined micro-communities, islands like tribes. People didn't know their neighbors across the water. The communities were …
Not the city that never sleeps (it does), maybe it's the city that's never still. Built on the water, Venice sloshes, splashes, seems to breathe. Venice is sinking. Venice has always been improbable.
