Unfortunately, Algeria is going through a bit of a rough patch this week, as riots have broken out to protest the soaring prices of food staples such as sugar. However, as I plan to do in the Year of Geography, I’m going to focus less on news and more on history and culture. And when […]

As British writer David Aaronovitch points out in the introduction to his 2000 travel book/memoir, Paddling to Jerusalem, in the last few years writers have walked around England under the guise of just about every gimmick imaginable. From south to north, around the coast, up the middle, round the sides, in wheelchairs, on one leg, […]

It’s a doozy of a title: The Third Tower Up from the Road: A Compilation of Columns from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency’s Kevin Dolgin Tells You About Places You Should Go. And the cover photo of the Great Wall of China is a bit misleading. Yes, there’s a funny, lovely column in the collection about Dolgin’s […]

OK, this is THE coolest thing I’ve stumbled across on the Internet all week: a Finnish bhangra band! According to its website, Shava “is guaranteed to be the world’s only Finnish bhangra group.” I can’t argue with that. I first came across them in an article chronicling their recent appearance on a Finnish TV network. […]

Looking to keep your eyes–or ears–on the wider world, even when you’re curled up safe at home? Here are five great places to start. The Economist: This venerable, London-based magazine may be a bit stodgy for some, but there are few better consumer publications when it comes to covering just about every corner of the […]

Although I strongly suspect these two Aussie women, Pip and Kym, are playing up their Aussieness for the cameras, I still enjoyed this little video that tries to teach non-Australians a bit of Down Under culture–from how to make bush tea to what the heck “Good on ya” means. It’s a promo to draw attention […]

OK, I realize I’m very late to this party–the book came out three years ago. But I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea, the story of mountain climber-turned-philanthropist Greg Mortenson, and I was captivated. For those of you who, like me, somehow missed this book when it first came out, here’s the scoop. After […]

I’m sure most of you who have been to Europe have done some part of the “famous old churches” circuit. Westminster Abbey? Been there. Notre-Dame? Seen it. Lovely as they are, once you’ve seen 10 of them, they all start to blur together a bit. Another problem with some of Europe’s historic churches is that […]

It all started when I began wondering where passports came from. I pitched every magazine editor I knew on a story about the history of passports, but no one–and I mean no one–was interested. Fine, I thought. I’ll broaden the concept and make it into a book. The history of passports eventually became a chapter […]

My husband and I stood uncertainly on the front step of a tall, 17th-century canal house in Amsterdam’s infamous Red Light District. We’d never done anything like this before, and we weren’t at all sure how it was going to turn out. We’d even come up with a signal we could use if one of […]