Smaller text Larger text

Destination: Uncategorized

Posted on

Video: Joyful Celebration at the Bern Buskers Festival

Buskers (street musicians and entertainers) are a fun part of travel. You spend a lot of time walking as a traveler, and it’s nice to experience a little audio color as you stroll.

I’m traveling through Switzerland right now, and I really lucked out: My itinerary aligned perfectly with the capital city of Bern’s annual three-day busker blowout. The city was inundated with festival-goers (which made my restaurant research a bit less productive — everyone was eating on the streets), and the entire Old Town was a joyful celebration. (Including herbal joy, which I just noticed in this clip at 0:07.)

My favorite band from the festival, an English group called Tankus the Henge, was an extremely physical explosion of musical fun. Check them out!

Posted on

Video: Getting Mellow — But Not High — With Swiss Weed

Here in Switzerland, I’ve been noticing sterile, pharmacy-type shops that advertise themselves with marijuana leaves. Popping into several of them, I’ve learned about the Swiss approach to pot. In Switzerland, you can legally use marijuana with less than 1% THC to get relaxed…but not high. (To me, this notion is kind of like, “OK, you can sit in the boat…but you can’t pull up the anchor.”) In this video, join me on a visit to a Swiss “Hanftheke.”

Posted on

Video: Easy Travels in a Modern Swiss Train Station

I’m in Luzern, at one of Switzerland’s many modern train stations. Traveling here, it occurs to me that a big part of the fun of being in Europe is just enjoying the everyday mechanisms of life over here: using ticket machines, jumping on trams, pushing buttons…just doing stuff. I’m generally pretty slow when it comes to getting things from machines, but lately, I’ve been impressed by how easy it is, across Europe, to get a ticket without waiting in line. (They’ve thought of everything — language barriers, different currencies, American credit cards — and it all works beautifully.) As you can see in this fun clip, ticket machines and train stations are getting really slick.

 

Posted on

Video: Connecting with France’s Tasty Cultural Treats — from Yesterday and Today

I make sure to spend some time in France every year with Steve Smith, my co-author and coach in all things French. Our mission: to update our France guidebook. This year, we’re double-teaming Alsace and the WWI sights, and I’m loving France more than ever.

This clip illustrates that France’s romantic, idyllic yesterday — as well as its vibrant today — is all yours when you know where to find it.

Posted on

Video: In the Hometown of Bartholdi, Who Gave Us the Statue of Liberty

Wherever you travel, there are artistic and cultural riches waiting to be appreciated. Just be there, take the time to notice it, add information, and shake. That’s our challenge as travelers.

I have spent 40 years teaching budget travel tips. But only recently have I discovered the most important budget tip of all: Understand what you are experiencing, and it becomes twice as rewarding. Think about it: If you equip yourself with good information and use it, a travel moment — for the same price —  is suddenly worth double. That’s been my theme this year as I’ve worked on my guidebooks from Sicily to Lisbon, Belfast to Orkney, and now here in France.

Join me in a quiet Colmar courtyard to simply appreciate a statue by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the man who made our Statue of Liberty. He devoted much of his life to blessing our country with a statue that celebrates what he believed makes America great. And in this smaller statue — celebrating the great pillars of the world — Bartholdi trumpets many of the same values: hard work, education, justice, and patriotism.