Borscht and other Belarus delicacies

The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita) was also a butterfly expert. I thought of him when I saw this beautiful specimen along th...

Spain’s museums celebrate the simpler life

We are not that far out of the village. Some of the museums we visited on our trip through Spain got me thinking about the unrecorded histor...

Beijing revisited, 23 years later

I spent a week running around Beijing to meet journalists and people connected to the business journalism program at Tsinghua University whe...

We didn’t run into a lot of Americans in Spain

The sun and beaches are a big attraction for residents of cooler, cloudier northern Europe. There are three ferries a week from Portsmouth a...

How to spend 9 weeks in Europe without losing your shirt

When I completed my contract in Mexico in December without having another one lined up, Cindy came up with the idea of taking two or three m...

A visit to Paris to meet our French cousin

Cindy, Laurent and me.  Seven or eight years ago, I got an email from one Laurent Brener, who lives in Paris and said he was a distant cousi...

Basque language has mysterious origins

During our seven weeks in Spain, I enjoyed noting the language differences by region, and Basque is in a class by itself. It predates the ar...