Worldcrunch
The vast majority of the inhabitants of Pec are Kosovo Albanians — and in the 1960s, the highlanders still wore the traditional qeleshe, a white brimless felt cap. I brought one back, obviously.
The tanning pits at Fes” Chouara tannery look like a giant painter’s palette. But the tanning process requires that hides be first soaked in a mixture of cow urine, quicklime, water, and salt. The stench is such that tour guides will often provide visitors with sprigs of fresh mint to help them face the odor.
Over the years, we saw Prague transition from austere Soviet Czechoslovakia to the more tourist-friendly Czech Republic. I took this picture of my wife in the Old Town Square — one of Europe’s most beautiful squares — just about eight months before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
With the choir of traditional folk singing I was part of, we went to many national — and international — gatherings of groups of singers and dancers who were trying to preserve their local cultural heritage. I took this picture of these two Cannettes with my very first camera, an Exacta Varex.
Living a stone’s throw from Switzerland has its perks. People can go for a swim in the beautiful lakes — such as Lake Brienz here — but I’m more interested in Fendant, a dry and fruity white wine that’s particularly refreshing on a hot July day.
On our way to Ürgüp and its strange rocks, we drove past a couple of field workers. The whole scene threw me back to my childhood, when I would watch farmers harvest in eastern France.
Sidi Bou Said in northern Tunisia is famous for its crisp blue and bright white houses of Ottoman and Andalusian influence. But a few of my slides from the 1970s (probably because of the film I used during that period) have lost a bit of their original color — and the village looks a bit […]
My wife Claudine was taking a break from the vigorous April sun, resting under the lush azaleas bording the steps that lead to the top of Rome“s Capitoline Hill.
I like Don Quixote enough to dress as him for Carnival. But unlike Miguel de Cervantes’ character, I don’t go about attacking windmills, which is lucky, considering we’ve encountered quite a few during our travels.
Balinese woodcarvings are exquisitely refined. I brought one back from the village of Mas, in southern Indonesia, and hung it in my study.
“Le Ventre de Paris,” as French writer Émile Zola called it, has changed considerably during the past century. The Halles de Paris, this gigantic cast iron and glass food market right in the middle of the capital, was demolished in the early 1970s and replaced with the questionable Forum des Halles shopping mall. Today it […]
For their First Communion, these German mädchen were still dressed as little brides, before albs became more customary.
Forty-nine years ago, the gondola traffic jams on Venice“s Grand Canal somehow seemed more manageable than today.
I was a young philosophy teacher in eastern France when we went to Berlin, then divided in two. My wife took this picture of me at the crossroads between Leibnizstrasse and Kantsstrasse — though Spinoza has always been my favorite.
Driving on the rugged roads of Northern Greece in our valiant Simca Aronde, we stumbled upon a couple of quaint surprises — enormous piles of watermelons, for instance.
Al Karak, with its famous Crusader castle, used to be an important place of power because of its control over the caravan route between Damascus and Egypt, and the pilgrimage route from Damascus to Mecca. But that was a long, long time ago. Just three months before we went there in 1996, there were food […]
The Bay of Brest, in northwestern France’s Brittany region, has been an important military port for centuries. I walked a hundred meters or so on a forbidden but unguarded path overlooking a naval base to take a picture of this fine example of our glorious French fleet.
Romania was one of the largest automobile producers in Central and Eastern Europe during the Communist period. But that doesn’t mean horse-driven carts were entirely discontinued, especially on a traditional wedding day like this one.
Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome’s Piazza Navona, with its four allegorical statues representing the Nile, the Ganges, the Rio de la Plata and the Danube, contains one of the most comical pieces of sculpture I’ve ever seen. Actually, Nile’s head (center) is covered with a piece of cloth because at the time […]
Back in the 1960s, many Greek widows, like these two in the northern Pindus mountains, still chose to dress in black for the rest of their lives after the death of their husbands. Nowadays the mourning period tends to be somewhat shorter, although traditionally not less than 40 days.
Coravin, which allows you to sample the finest bottle without uncorking it, is being hailed as a game-changer for the wine industry. It was greeted with mixed reviews in the city that may still matter most.
From the Place d’Austerlitz, the statue of Napoleon watches over Ajaccio, the town in which he was born. Some may see a resemblance with Prague’s Stalin Monument, but the statue of the French emperor is significantly smaller — adding to the myth that Napoleon was short in stature when in fact he was 5 feet […]
However neatly and methodically organized my 20,000 slides may be, in more than 60 years of travels I am bound to draw some blanks here and there. So whenever I can’t remember where I snapped this windmill or that mosque, my grandson puts his Internet detective hat on and helps me track it down. In […]
I remember discussing the topic of veiled women with a local in the souk of Fes, where I took this picture 40 years ago. He said wearing a full niqab was considered “surprising” in Morocco.
Of all the boats I’ve ever seen, to me the bamboo rafts on the Li River seem the most hazardous.
A stone’s throw away from Santiago de Compostela, I took this picture of a hórreo — a kind of granary built above ground and characteristic of Spain’s northwestern Galicia region. The pillars end in flat stones to prevent rats from accessing the grain stored there. When I took this shot in the month of July, […]
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 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.
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 […]
We visited Rome often, and almost always made sure to pass by to admire the majestic Fontana di Trevi. We never took part in the tourist tradition of tossing a coin over your left shoulder and making a wish to return some day to the eternal city. Our many Roman returns confirmed my doubts about […]
Can you spot the Citroën deux chevaux parked next to that boat in the port of la Rochelle? Built from 1948 to 1990, the iconic “deuche,” as it is known here, leaves no room for doubt: It really is “la France.”
What’s most interesting about this shot is not the Swiss wrestlers (or Schwingen) in the foreground — meaning no disrespect, guys — but instead the rapt audience in the background, all wearing their Sunday best.
We saw what most agree are the three most impressive waterfalls in the world: Victoria Falls, between Zambia and Zimbabwe; Niagara Falls, between the U.S. and Canada; and Iguazu Falls, between Argentina and Brazil. If I had to choose one, it would definitely be what you’re looking at here. Niagara is awesome, but doesn’t have […]
We went to Finland multiple times. Once we even brought a Finnish dictionary with us to try and understand a few words of the very peculiar suomi language … Many headaches ensued!
To be honest, with such strange feet, I’m not surprised Buddha preferred to lie down … To give you a rough idea of the size of this reclining Buddha in the Wat Pho temple, there’s a man at the bottom left corner of the slide.
Things were getting heated in West Berlin in the summer of 1967. The conflict was escalating between the government and the West German student movement, peaking with the police shooting dead a young protester just one month before we went there. This photo shows the ongoing construction of the Berlin Wall, six years after the […]
Some of you won’t know what I’m talking about — but when you’re using a projector, sometimes you come across a slide that was misplaced in the carousel, or a photo that was taken vertically. Which means that your audience (family members in my case) all tilt their heads sideways at the same time. And […]
I like the symmetry in this photo, taken on the doorstep of a Hindu temple in Kathmandu. The subjects are so kindred — except for the fact that the statue isn’t wearing an expensive-looking watch.
The building in the background is Copenhagen’s 17th century Borsen, the oldest stock exchange in Denmark. With its intriguing spire made of four dragon tails twined together, I wondered if Danish bankers appreciated the architect’s twisted sense of humor…