While most of the country is under snow from the recent cold snap, it is a beautiful day in the low 60s here in Los Angeles, sandwiched between a couple of (unfortunately rare) late season rain storms. In other words, it is a perfect day to find a neighborhood to explore, getting to know my…
It is a beautiful fall afternoon in Munich’s English Garden, and the city has come out to enjoy it. An area larger than New York’s Central Park, the English Garden is a vast urban green space of wide lawns, man-made streams created by diverted water from the Isar River, monuments, tall trees, and beer gardens.…
Editor’s note: back before I was a writer, I worked in the Jewish community doing major gifts fundraising. One organization I worked for hosted a community trip to Tbilisi - about two months before I started there. So I missed out. Sam’s article about the city - and all the things he saw in a…
Munich is, comparatively speaking, a modern city. While some cities trace back to Roman times, Munich itself is only mentioned as a city with a bridge over the river Isar from the year 1158. However, over the centuries, it went from a tiny settlement of Benedictine monks to the capital of a Germanic kingdom. Any…
This is my favorite way to travel. I love to find a long-term (at least a few weeks) home base to explore, and to use it as a hub to see some of the region. This trip has been too much of a whirlwind - with too many location changes - to do much of…
The history of Germany is so different from that of most of Western Europe. While countries like Spain, France, and the Netherlands have existed for centuries, in some cases even with relatively unchanged borders, Germany as a country didn’t really exist until 1871, when the German Empire was born, led by the northern kingdom of…
Some things just fascinate me, and become consuming, burning desires. Such it has been with this corner in Los Angeles, the corner of Adams Boulevard and Figueroa Street, which has long been on my list of places I just had to visit and write about. The story is shockingly uninteresting. Early on during the pandemic,…
A crisp October morning feels a bit colder in the shadows. While it is already almost 10am, the sun has yet to peek above the mountains marking the border between Liechtenstein and Austria, mountains towering over 8,000 feet, rising steeply from the Rhine Valley below. I crossed the Rhine this morning from my hotel in…
Editor’s note: while a bit out of order with Sam’s Caucuses trip, I felt it important to present his side trip into Armenia after his articles from Azerbaijan. Georgia will be next. For more of Sam’s awesome travels, click here to visit his index page. One of the greatest surprises and inspirations for my travels…
Vienna is my favorite city in Europe. That was only reinforced after my most recent visit, my third time in the Austrian capital. It is a city of culture, of history, of food, and of beauty. It is a place that should be at the top of every traveler’s wish list. Magnificent buildings like this…