Worldcrunch
Though it has long, cold and snowy winters, Finland’s northernmost province of Lapland, famous for being the traditional home of Santa Claus, has warm (enough) summers. Here, my wife Claudine, my daughter Cécile and I are posing for a sunny family portrait along the polar circle.
In southern Indonesia’s Torajan villages, water buffalo horns are displayed on the houses’ facades as a mark of social standing.
Howard Zerangue served more than 25 years as sheriff of Opelousas, Louisiana. I wonder why that is …
Corsica has been part of France for nearly two-and-a-half centuries, but relations with Paris have always been complicated: Last week, Corsican nationalist and independence movements scored big during the country’s regional elections. French or otherwise, it was postcard beautiful on my most recent of three visits to the island.
Blue sky, blue car, blue bicycle, and a very blue pub.
Visiting the Schwarzwälder Freilichtmuseum Vogtsbauernhof is like getting lost in a fairy tale. The open air museum, in the middle of the Black Forest, takes you back to rural Germany 400 years ago. Is that Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother sewing something for Hansel and Gretel?
How impeccably dressed and well-behaved these students appeared when we visited the University of Coimbra in central Portugal. The university, the country’s oldest, is also well known for its annual Queima das Fitas, a massive and sometimes rowdy “burning of the ribbons” student festival that lasts for eight days each spring.
Many such “blue caves” hide under the chalky cliffs of Paxi, the small group of islands near Corfu in western Greece, where I was two months ago — marking my 12th visit to Greece in the past 53 years.
Looks can be deceiving: These Hindu women in northern India’s Rajasthan region were not carrying flowers on their head (the flowers were actually in the background) but rather heavy concrete blocks for construction.
The elk-antler sculpture that arches across Highway 89 in Afton, Wyoming is the largest in the world. Are there others? An impressive 15-ton agglomeration of more than 3,000 antlers, it looked quite solid to me. My wife, however, decided it was safer to stand under the little arch next to it.
The mural on the northern wall of Mexico City’s Central Library, on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico — the largest university in Latin America — is a sight to behold. The central section depicts the mythical founding of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, the former capital of the Mexican Empire, with an eagle eating a […]
In the fairy tale, the evil queen disguises herself as an old woman and tries to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple. What the story left out is that she then moved to Cyprus to sell jars of marmalade.
We all know that the black-and-white coats of zebras act as camouflage. But it’s only after you’ve spent time on safari squinting to try and spot them that you really understand it.
This Orthodox bishop in the Greek city of Patras was on his way to St Andrew’s Cathedral, the largest church in the country.
This picture of the 14th-century Valentré stone arch bridge in southwestern France (one of the oldest in the country) is one of the very first photographs I took with my Exakta Varex camera. Though the German Ihagee brand is now defunct, the slides held pretty well — and are now digitized for all eternity with […]
Here’s a Moroccan version of “like a bull in a china shop.” I must say “like three sheep in a pottery souk” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
During this cold night of May, the lake had frozen, and in the morning the banks were sparkling like diamonds … Beautiful, but chilly. Thankfully, at the Lake Louise Inn where we stayed, there was a fireplace in our bedroom.
My wife was walking with a lei garland of flowers around her neck on a on the beach near Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Luckily, it was a windy day, so the ocean breeze kept the smell of the local fish away from us!
The baroque Merced church is something of a curiosity in Antigua, Guatemala, a city famous for its ruins of colonial churches: It held up admirably well after a series of devastating earthquakes in the 18th and 19th centuries, after which the capital was moved from Antigua to its current location, Guatemala City.
Watching the acrobatic show at the Shanghai Circus, one can’t help but think, “There’s got to be a trick.” But no, the stunning tower of chairs is genuine — the result of gestures perfected over 2,000 years in the quest for perfect balance.
The village of Mandrogi, by the Svir River, is a tourist destination built in 1996 at the site of a village destroyed in World War II. The buildings, recreated in the traditional northern Russian style, house craft workshops and retail shops.
Singing and dancing groups from all over the world, including the choir I conducted at the time, met in Middlesbrough, northern England, for the Teesside International Eisteddfod — a folk traditions festival so prestigious it was broadcast on the BBC.
On the French island of Martinique, the La Mauny distillery is one of the biggest in the Lesser Antilles. About 30,000 tons of sugarcane are ground there every year, to produce three million liters of rum. Cheers!
There’s a famous nursery rhyme about the bridge of Avignon, in southern France, that goes: Sur le Pont d’Avignon L’on y danse, l’on y danse Sur le Pont d’Avignon L’on y danse tous en rond (On the bridge of Avignon We’re all dancing, we’re all dancing On the bridge of Avignon We’re all dancing in […]
“Tony” the Cypriot shoe seller definitely had a knack for presenting shoes in a novel way.
In the late 1950s, some villages in southern Portugal still didn’t have access to running water. I guess you could call this walking water?
This isn’t even the most famous or the most monumental of the 27 gates in northern Morocco“s city of Meknes.
Andorra, one of the smallest nations in the world nestled between France and Spain, is a monarchy headed by two Co-Princes: the Spanish-Roman Catholic Bishop of Urgell and … and the president of France. Back when we visited, the latter was of course Charles de Gaulle.
The lunar landscapes of the Tabernas Desert, near Almeria in southern Spain, were used as filming locations for some of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns in the 1960s. When my wife and I went there in the 1980s it was pretty much abandoned, but it has since become a major tourist attraction.
Our dog, whom we had gotten soon after the end of World War II and named “Jeep,” was keeping a benevolent eye on our cat.
This stork decided to keep company with these Romanian haymakers near Covasna, a scene reminiscent of my childhood in the French countryside.
Oysters are my péché mignon — literally my “cute sin,” or guilty pleasure. I’ll have a shovelful or two, thank you very much.
Hopefully this bakery in central Turkey didn’t get its flour delivered the way it did its coal.
I’ve never skied in my life, but luckily you don’t have to be a winter sports enthusiast to appreciate the glaciers and dense pine forests of the Canadian Rockies. A cozy part of the scenery was Lake Louise Inn, nestled among the snowy peaks of Banff National Park in the western province of Alberta.
In southern Indonesia’s Torajan villages, traditional weaving and wood carving compete for tourists’ attention.
This is no ordinary stone. For the Ancient Greeks, the omphalos represented the navel of the world, determined by Zeus when he sent his two eagles across the world to meet at its center. The eagles may have gotten lost along the way, as there are several such stones around the Mediterranean Sea, Delphi merely […]
These garlic garlands, in southeastern France’s Provence region, may have been destined for a batch of aioli: a local kind of mayonnaise that also includes olive oil and sometimes egg yolks, and a squeeze of lemon juice.
There wasn’t much to see in this remote and destitute Bulgarian village. And then, around the corner, there was this huge advertisement for the local communist party, in Bulgarian and … French. This defied logic in a town where not a soul seemed to speak French.
Between Mexico and Guatemala lies the small, lesser known Belize, the only country in Central America whose official language is English. The former colony, once called “British Honduras,” was granted full independence only eight years before we visited.
Visiting Sarajevo 43 years ago was virtually a feat in itself because the roads leading to what was then part of the socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were mostly unpaved, and there were very few hotels to welcome tourists. But the city was nice and quiet, and kept its distinct Ottoman charm.