I’m not proud of it. For two decades worth of border crossings and passport stamps, I’d avoided the habit. Portable hard drives chocked full of images from lands near and far and it had never come up. Then, after two distinct moments, it happened: I became a “country lister.” Moment 1: I started working at […]
“The thrill of take off: the burn of reentry.” Or it could be less of a burn: a mild irritation, perhaps. But if you’ve returned from overseas back to your place of birth after enough time to settle into a daily routine in a foreign country, chances are you’ve experienced reverse culture shock. What was […]
Grandiose, Ostentatious, Awe-inspriring, Humbling … Such is the way that religious institutions—churches, synagogues, temples, mosques—are described around the world. Their designers created physical tributes to the deities that guided many lives throughout the centuries. Even today, in an age when our attention is torn from one flashing screen to another, these monuments still stop us […]
Sure, it’s a weird thing to obsess over. But once I noticed my first, it was impossible to stop looking for more. And I found them, all over France. This story starts in Port de Vannes market on our first weekend together in Paris. This market is a veritable orgy for the antique browser, tables […]
Three shapes emerge when you look at a map of Paris: a circle, a spiral, and a horseshoe. The peripherique is the 35km circular highway that defines the boundaries of “Paris proper.” The spiral is provided by the twenty arrondissements (or “neighborhoods”) of Paris that—in an effort to disorient tourists—begin in the middle and spiral out […]
There you are: jet-lagged and in a park near your hotel, before dawn, binoculars in hand. It’s the beginning of your European vacation and your family is still passed out upstairs. How nice of you to let them sleep. As the morning begins to brighten in Paris (or maybe London, or Berlin) an unfamiliar dawn […]
I’ve written about the risk, and in some neighborhoods the statistical inevitability, of stepping in dog crap in Paris. I never thought I’d write about dodging fresh cow dung in the City of Light, but I also hadn’t yet heard of the Salon International de l’Agriculture. The “International Exhibition of Agriculture” is a week-long showcase of […]
It happened again. The sky looked damned tempting when I glanced out of our window: puffy balls of cotton back-dropped by dark storm clouds. In between those clouds was a celestial commodity that had grown rare in recent weeks: blue sky. I threw the tripod and camera in to my backpack and headed to the […]
Say “Parisian Arch” and most will think of the Arc de Triomphe. For good reason, too: the “Triumphal Arch” is one of the most famous monuments in Paris. The 164 foot stone structure was commissioned in 1806 by Emperor Napoleon after he defeated the Russo-Austrian Army at the Battle of Austerlitz (and completed three decades later). […]
When my eyes met binoculars in 2012, they were likely in pursuit of the feathered occupants of Paris, from tits to creepers. My wife and I moved to the capital of France in early June and I averaged about one morning of birding every week until late November, when we traveled back home to Seattle […]