“How long have you lived here?” someone asked me on my first night in Moscow. I loved it. It meant that I had managed to get to the heart of things right away. I ended up at the top floor bar of a fancy 19th century building on my first night in town by having …
“We smoke like Turks. And like similar sugary desserts,” says Ljiljana when we break for soya lattes midway a four-hour street art walking tour. We’re sitting on one of the numerous Belgrade terraces enjoying the mild early May weather. I’m surprised to hear the admission of similarities to Turks from a Serbian as the hundreds …
As much as I’ve traveled, perhaps one of the most exotic places I’ve ever visited, at least to other people, is the Finnish Lapland. Why I don’t quite notice its exoticism as quickly as others is because I go there every single summer. In fact, I’ve been there every summer without fail since I remember, even though …
When I tell people I meet about the wine trips we organize to Georgia, I’ve heard may times the comment — “Georgian wines, really?” – with the accompanying tone of suspicion or ridicule. For sure Georgian wines still don’t have the same reputation as French, Napa Valley or Chilean wines, but from what I’ve seen, …
Sweating in a tiny sauna, by the Baltic Sea in Southwestern Finland the other night, I was thinking about the meaning of home. I used to use the word to describe New York City, where I lived about as long as I ever lived in Finland, until moving to Shanghai. Traveling the world, I often …
How many capitals in the world are named after hot springs or something to do with bathing? I should know the answer, being the bathhouse traveler I am, but only one name pops immediately to mind: Tbilisi, Georgia. The ancient capital was named after and built around its sulfur baths, at least according to a …