Corona’s surprising effect on an evening at the theater My favorite small theater has reopened after months of lockdown and we are attending a two-woman show called Primacomedy. I return here with mixed feelings. Would it be full? How will they deal with the social distancing inside the theater? I…

Germans are world-renowned for their punctuality, but taking a train on the Munich transportation system will rattle even the most stalwart believer of this myth. Like when the train lurches mysteriously to a halt in the middle of a field. Then the train driver mumbles something in Bavarian dialect over…

All across Germany, volunteers are working tirelessly to help Ukrainian refugees. In my town, a small group of people is teaching German to Ukrainians, from schoolchildren to grandmothers. I don’t feel especially qualified to instruct German, but I have been trained to teach English as a foreign language and did…

Read by the author You might think a person who left their home country to live abroad would have figured out the luggage thing after a few decades of traveling to and fro. In this case, you’d be wrong. It never fails to evoke smirks from He Who Shall Remain…

Read by the author 3 July 2022 It started with a visit to Dairy Queen in the Allegheny Mountains in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Instead of a nostalgic trip down ice cream lane, we had to stay in the car and order at the drive-through since the dining room was closed…

Read by the author Denver is a key city in the American West with a Western-style bar to prove it: the Grizzly Rose. Located in an unlikely industrial district at the edge of town, it’s a place where cowboy boots, hats and Western-style shirts are not just normal, they’re practically…

Read by the author Each area of the U.S. has its own subculture and is influenced by different ethnicities, climates, histories and geographies. In Colorado, the state’s topography breeds athletes that put the rest of the country to shame — and me especially. On the East Coast, people are obsessed…

Read by the author German immigration to the U.S. peaked in the late 19th century; Ellis Island processed masses of Europeans seeking a better life. But a visit to New York today makes it clear that they are still coming, they just choose to go back home again. …

Read by the author Medieval serfs didn’t need to have a sense of direction, since they never left their village. But now that I think of it, maybe that’s what kept them in place. If they didn’t know how to get around out there in the world, it was preferable…