Worldcrunch
The red-brick Gothic castle on the Lithuanian island of Trakai looks like it’s straight out of a fairy tale. However the spell was broken when a full garrison of soldiers made their rowdy entrance in the courtyard.
The Italian border is just a four-hour drive from my hometown. Over the years, I ended up going to Italy with my family dozens of times, to enjoy the seaside, the beautiful architecture, the warm climate, the history — and yes, la pasta.
The 1960s was a momentous period for the French island of Corsica, caught between opening up to tourism and dealing with a growing nationalistic movement. But in Ajaccio on that sunny spring day, it was just fishing business as usual.
There’s a lot happening in this shot of an open-air market at Lafayette’s big jazz, arts and crafts festival, in Louisiana. The dolls in the foreground, the little girl sewing, the guy in the crutches — you can even spot a red box of Danish cookies!
In northern Norway, this Sámi family was wearing colored gákti costumes. And I don’t think it was merely for tourists — in the 1960s, some northern families were still in the habit of wearing traditional clothing when selling hides at the local market, or herding reindeer.
Although there have been all-inclusive winter resorts by “Club Méditerranée” since the 1950s, it was still strange to come across one in the mountainous landscape of the Austrian Tirol.
On the northern tip of the island nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, this man was determined to try his hand at surfing. I took a picture of him just before he fell into the water — the first of many tumbles.
There are no more “Beguines” in the Beguinage: In the early 20th century, these lay nuns were replaced by Benedictines, pictured here walking in front of the convent, with Bruges’ Church of Our Lady visible through the leaves.
Aleppo’s al-Madina souk, the world’s largest covered historic market, was a highlight on our visit to what was then a bustling, cosmopolitan and altogether very pleasant city. It has been sad to watch from afar as so much of it has been devastated during the ongoing Syrian Civil War.
My daughter Cécile had climbed the steps all the way up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She smiled for the camera, but you can tell she didn’t feel so safe close to the tilted edge.
The many rivers in Indonesia provide an endless stream of picturesque moments, like this man in Jakarta wearing a traditional caping conical hat.
On a warm Spring day at the southern tip of the French island of Corsica, it was time to go home and take a siesta.
Boasting astounding collections of artists, both Spanish (Velázquez, Goya) and international, (Rubens, Rembrandt …) the Museo del Prado in Madrid is one of the most visited museums in the world. When I went there more than 50 years ago, there was no queue in sight.
A few tourists were willing to give this man a couple of rupees to be allowed to approach and touch his chained baby elephant.
I’m not the only one to find the Alyscamps, near Arles in the south of France, picturesque. Both Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin immortalized the alley of sarcophagi in this great Roman necropolis.
This was a souvlaki of epic proportions, near the ancient site of Mycenae in southern Greece.
The style of mailboxes around the world varies considerably. This opulent one, in eastern Germany, looked like it could have been used by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Straw hats, maracas, decoratives masks … The ancient Sri Lankan city of Anuradhapura is considered sacred to the Buddhist world, and a great place to buy just about anything!
In our own modest way, we contributed to Spain’s economic boom in the 1960s, back when the country, then led by Gen. Francisco Franco, opened up to tourism. This is Toledo’s wonderful Alcázar, with the Tagus River in the foreground.
This monument on Minsk’s Island of Tears is dedicated to the memory of the Belarusian soldiers who died in the 1979-1988 Soviet-Afghan war.
The choir of traditional French music I was part of was often invited to folk festivals at home and abroad. One time in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, in southern France, I was picked as a judge for a bourrée competition, and ended up watching people dance for hours under a scorching July sun. Needless to say, the dancers […]
Denmark, much like the Netherlands, is mostly flat. That helps explains why cycling has been the country’s transportation mode of choice for decades.
Democracy flourishing in the tiniest hamlets deep in the Brazilian rainforest, as a city council campaign takes root in the northern state of Pará.
When in Rome, on a particularly hot day, do as the Romans do: Leave town, head for the nearby Villa d’Este and walk behind the water of the Fontana dell’Ovato.
A saiga antelope’s head, dried seahorses, horn powder and God knows what else was in those jars … Much like La Paz, Singapore was a great place to buy exotic souvenirs.
Participating in the world-famous Fêtes de Cornouaille with my choir of traditional folk singing in Britanny, I got to take some candid snapshots of a life that was still very much turned toward the sea.
Larissa in eastern Greece is traditionally held to be the birthplace of Achilles. This would-be motorcycle hero was also destined to fall, caught by the heel by a local traffic cop.
I could tell you about the state of traffic in Indonesia, about the refined paintings adorning Bali’s rickshaws, or pretend I took this shot to show the hardships of precarious workers in Southeast Asia. But really, it boils down to the fact that I thought “Muncul” sounds like “my a**” in French.
When my grandson went on his honeymoon in Brazil two years ago, I advised him to go to Paraty, a highly picturesque colonial village south of Rio, with its very colorful harbor and cobblestone streets. He had better weather than I did.
Mountains, bison herds, petrified forests, geysers, waterfalls … Yellowstone is one the world’s great national parks. Founded in 1872, it is also widely considered to be the first.
Constantine, in northern Algeria, was French for about a century, from the middle of the 19th century until 1962 — just seven years before I drove down there with my family. My wife Claudine and daughter Cécile were gazing into the impressive ravine that surrounds the city, with the viaduct over the Rhumel river in […]
No matter where we went or how long, my wife and I would always take the time to write a couple of postcards to family and friends. And as far as I can tell, there’s no fixed rule for how many days it’d take for them to arrive.
It’s a two-hour drive between my hometown and this picturesque village of Morat in Switzerland. On our way home through the still white-capped Jura mountains, my then 10-year-old grandson and I got into a merciless snowball fight. That’s the kind of warm memory that sticks far more than any quaint village scenery.
When we went to eastern Tunisia in the 1970s, Monastir-born Habib Bourguiba was then serving as the country’s first president, having replaced King Muhammad VIII when the monarchy was abolished in 1957.
The fishermen“s wives of yore used to wear seven colorful petticoats; some say to represent the seven waves in a set, others say to keep warm while awaiting their husbands’ return. In the late 1950s, these women working at Nazaré“s seafood market already considered it folklore, as they found it doubtlessly easier to carry their […]
On the western Indonesian island of Sumatra, this man was using a bamboo ladder to harvest sap from a tree, which would then be processed into sugar at the local refinery.
This kite looked a bit lonely, flying on its own in the gray skies above Tiananmen Square.
This Indian camel (or dromadaire, as we call them in French) had just been for a refill at the watering trough, drinking its usual 20 gallons at a time. Just so you know, contrary to popular belief, the water is not stored its hump, but in its bloodstream.
This big plant we came across in Guadeloupe is nicknamed “traveller’s tree,” supposedly because its sheaths can hold rainwater. But the murky and foul-smelling water this one held made me glad I never was that thirsty.
In the barren plains of Hungary, one of these csikós wranglers was getting ready to perform the “Puszta-five”: riding five horses at the same time while standing on their bare backs.