WorldcrunchBertrand Hauger is a graduate of La Sorbonne Nouvelle school of bilingual journalism, and joined Worldcrunch after working briefly as a reporter in a local newspaper in his native eastern France. He now serves as Worldcrunch’s deputy editor-in-chief and director of content.
DALLAS — Greg Lucas wasn’t feeling at the top of his game. He’d gained weight, and the machines at the gym filled him with apprehension. “Sex wasn’t tops, but that wasn’t the problem,” he says. “I felt tired. I was dragging myself around.” Lucas was then 25 years old. He decided to go and see […]
You can’t tour the world for nearly 60 years without a few rainy days. Sure, rain is annoying — but it also makes for interesting, if gloomy, pictures.
Mario Vargas Llosa sits down with Clarin in the Nobel laureate’s home to explore why the hopes at Communism’s fall have been replaced by deep religious hatred and a secular cynicism.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees enemies everywhere: Assad, Kurds, but not the murderous Islamist radical group just across the border in Syria.
A Turkish immigrant playwright in Germany explores the meaning and theater of a religious rite that divides modern society.
It doesn’t matter how many pictures of the Taj Mahal you’ve seen before, or how often you’ve seen the Iguazu Falls on TV: Seeing the world’s wonders in the flesh will always leave you awestruck. Same goes for Monument Valley’s gigantic sandstone buttes — yes, this speck of dust in the foreground is a car.
A German expat in California explains why American microbrews get it all wrong.
The Breton word “Bigouden” was first used to designate the very distinctive, sugarloaf-shaped lace bonnet traditionally worn by the women in the southwestern tip of the French region of Brittany. Then the meaning expanded, and “Bigouden” was used to identify the women themselves, then all the inhabitants of the region — then the region itself! […]
My grandson, who’s just got back from his honeymoon in Brazil, tells me he could have taken a very similar picture there, today. From the cotton candy to the still ubiquitous VW Beetle and Camper, it looks like 1989 Mexico City and 2014 Rio de Janeiro have a lot in common.
Only five years after the end of Word War II, the mayor of Montbéliard (my hometown in eastern France) and the mayor of Ludwigsburg in western Germany started talking about making “sister cities” out of their respective localities. The choir of traditional folk singing I ended up conducting played a significant role in this local […]
In a Tibetan refugee camp in central Nepal, we came across this little boy having a blast with a dungchen, or Tibetan horn.
In 1962, the Sovietization of Eastern Europe was at its height. It was hard enough to get into Czechoslovakia (we had to wait three hours at the border), but getting out was where things got dicey. From a watchtower, a guard had seen me take pictures of the Iron Curtain, and asked me to open […]
-OpEd- BEIJING — There has been a recent spate of Chinese celebrities, including Jaycee Chan, son of the Hong Kong martial arts film star Jackie Chan, detained on drug charges. Others in the entertainment business have been accused or frequenting prostitutes. Last week, China’s State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) issued a formal […]
Exclusive: A historian has identified Pope Francis’ birthplace in Buenos Aires, after false reports of where he was born circulated following his election last year.
Abu Simbel, Amalienborg Castle, the Acropolis of Athens … Many of the famous landmarks I ended up visiting in real life are featured at Legoland Billund, the original Legoland park in central Denmark. Just to give you an idea, it took 1,500,000 Lego bricks to build this 12-meter-tall (40 ft) reproduction of the Mount Rushmore […]
Bolivians have given Evo Morales a clear presidential mandate, a vote of approval for his political skills and the benefits of an oil-driven economy. He now must shape a legacy for the future.
I was not expecting to find my surname in the list of immigrants featured on Ellis Island’s Wall of Honor. But after all, mallards are migratory birds, aren’t they?
PARIS — With all due respect to the Cassandras of national decline and lovers of French bashing — the cherished pastime of denigrating all things French at every turn — Patrick Modiano’s Nobel Prize for Literature win is excellent news. Lovers of French literature will be the first to rejoice, but the prize is also […]
German officials confirm that contraband cigarettes laced with Strontium 90, which is used in nuclear weapons, were intercepted at a Warsaw airport in June. Was it a personal attack?
In the 1960s, the Great Temple of Ramesses II in Abu Simbel was relocated 200 meters back from the banks of the Nile — and raised 65 meters — because of the building of the Aswan High Dam and the threat of rising waters. The tiny tourists at the bottom of this slide give you […]
DUSSELDORF — Something happened on a Friday night in the atrium of Düsseldorf’s most beautiful hotel that caused DJ Antoine“s normally enviably good mood to sour. He was talking about a few of the items he’d bought now that he earned the kind of money to buy beautiful things. Then, somewhere between the very expensive […]
This is just a brief note to say that our journey is taking a momentary hiatus, but for a very good reason: My collaborator in this project, le petit-fils (the grandson), Bertrand, and his beautiful new bride Amandine have set off on their honeymoon — in Brazil! Wishing them much happiness together, and of course, […]
BEIJING — China’s Internet heavyweights all seem to be joining a kind of film industry gold rush. Sohu, one of China’s largest Internet portal operators, has acquired a 6.4% stake in KeyEast, a South Korean entertainment company, and Sohu CEO Charles Zhang has announced that it will consider producing films once the company’s downloading platform […]
In Afrikaans, the name of this South African mountain range means “the dragon’s mountain.” The closest thing we saw to dragons were wooden hippos. In Drakensberg, much like everywhere else, peddlers made their way to even the most remote places.
MONROVIA— “Welcome to hell.“ There is no cynicism and no irony in the voice of the young French volunteer from Médecins sans frontières (Doctors without Borders). The deep rings of fatigue under his eyes tell the same tale. This “hell” is Elwa in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Elwa is the largest treatment center ever […]
In 1966, it was still affordable to stay in the center of Venice. We went there twice in the 1960s, and both times we rented a room from la Signora Nardi (I remember her well), just five minutes from the Rialto and Piazza San Marco whose Santa Maria della Salute church is in the background.
I’ve already told you about Rajasthan’s colorful nomadic culture, but this close-up allows us to better see how society standards vary from one world to another: For instance, the huge nose ring this woman was wearing is regarded as a mark of beauty and social standing there.
Photo: Sachyn Mital James Murphy, the 44-year-old American musician of LCD Soundsystem fame, announced at the start of the 2014 U.S. Open that he was teaming up with IBM to create an algorithm that would turn raw data from tennis matches into music. Now that the tournament is over and Serena Williams and Marin Cilic […]
BEIJING — While September is the moment for most children go back to school or start for the first time, more than 80% of the approximately 500,000 school-aged disabled children from China’s migrant families have never been schooled. Twenty Chinese organizations have just published a public letter calling on the Ministry of Education to change […]
This is probably one of the oldest pictures you will see here. I was 5 when we drove to Villersexel in eastern France, in my dad’s brand new Peugeot 201. We visited the city’s famous château, which you can see in the background and which is said to have been partly built by both Charles […]
SEOUL — Thanks to the popularity of South Korean television series in China, a wave of Chinese capital is flowing to South Korea. For the first half of this year Chinese investment to South Korea reached $70.8 million, an increase of more than 600% compared with the same period last year. Investment in real estate […]
MUNICH — Munich’s Oktoberfest has an ugly side. Alexandra Stigger is all too familiar with it but says it’s nevertheless a great celebration. Stigger, 29, is a Munich native who grew up attending it every year, and now she works there — not in one of the beer tents but in a service center where […]
Don’t worry, I haven’t traveled that far. This was just one of the tourist attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood back in 1988.
Compared to radical Sunni terrorist organizations like ISIS, the regime in Tehran can seem relatively tame. But don’t be fooled.
Well look at that: It’s Friday again! Time to check out some of the songs currently topping the charts around the world. Turkmenistan: Anna Sedokova – “Chto Ya Nadelala” Qatar: Nico & Vinz – “Am I Wrong” Argentina: Gustavo Cerati – “Crimen” Egypt: Hassan El Shafei feat. Abla Fahita – “Mayestahlushi” France: Lilly Wood & […]
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well that’s lucky, because I don’t really remember what happened here. I’ll let you imagine the misfortunes of these two Swazi men.
A growing number of China’s upper class are investing in a foreign education for their children. There are costs and benefits, debates about teaching styles — and always some surprises.
Dutch aerospace student Boyan Slat, 20, has an idea that could conceivably remove millions of tons of toxic trash from the world’s waters. It even has a revenue model. But will it work?
By the end of the 1990s, it was decided that flowing rivers were not the best way to transport timber, and log drives were gradually abandoned in Canada — much to the dismay of local kids who had to bid adieu to their log rolling competitions. But in 1994 logging was still going on along […]