"Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller" –Ibn Battuta
Salam Aleikum. Have you ever dreamed of appearing in one of the magical tales of “One Thousands and One Nights” or personally witnessing the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia or camel crossing the Empty Quarter? I have, ever since I was a little girl! And my trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia brought my…
“Nine leagues from Valencia, on the old road from this city to Zaragoza, and five from Sagunto, where today the corridor connects with the railroad from Valencia to Barcelona to the west and near the famous Idubeda, there is a beautiful almost circular plain one and two leagues in diameter, surrounded by picturesque and even…
“Whoever wants to live in Central Europe must never sober up.” Writer Bohumil Hrabal “Beer is a sign of national identity, a medium of camaraderie, a gift from heaven and a character from a story.” Craig Cravens The slim spires of Gothic architecture are the dominant feature of the Prague‘s centuries-old skyline, the city known as…
“Anything can happen if we want to, if we just pull together, and we’ll be laughing on the Ghetto’s ruins”. Lyrics of a Karl Svenk’s cabaret song. “Beasts of burden, we shouldered bundled of what pieces of past we were allowed to keep as we joined the river of fear, a current of shuffling feet,…
“You will fall in love with the city itself. There is nothing left over in your heart for anyone else” – Peggy Guggenheim “Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” Marco Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at one, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of…
“When I went to Venice, my dream became my life.” – Marcel Proust “Venice opens her arms to all whom others shun. She lifts up all whom others abase. She welcomes those whom others persecute. She cheers the mourner in his grief and defends the disposed and the destitute with charity and love. And so…
When I think of Florida, I always remember the amazing experiences I have when visiting it, from the amusement parks in Orlando to Winter Music Conference in South Beach and from diving in one of the most exciting places in the US (and the world) – Key Largo to ecological diversity of Everglades and the history of…
“In Mexico, Spaniards encountered history as well as geography. This history is still alive: it is a present rather than a past. The temples and gods of pre-Colombian Mexico are a pile of ruins, but the spirit that breathed life into that world has not disappeared: it speaks to the hermetic language of myth, legend,…
The Alps we already knew, and the Pyrenees, but this was finer than anything we had ever seen or even imagined in our wildest dreams! This was the Caucasus….How I wish I had brought my copy of Aeschylus! Alexandre Dumas père (1858) “It is a magical place, Georgia,” wrote John Steinbeck during a visit in…
The countries of the South Caucasus have always been the “lands in-between”. In between the Black and Caspian seas, Europe and Asia, Russia and the Middle East, Christianity and Islam and, more recently, democracy and dictatorship. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia and the territories around them have the mixed blessing of being at the crossing-place of…