By Craig Wilkins
Rick’s Café (Latin)American
I am a night person. Always have been. I’ve never understood the need for anything to begin early in the day and phrases that purport to educate me in this area — like “Early to bed, early to rise…blah, blah, blah” or “The early bird catches the worm” have only served [...]

By Anke Snow
Hello, my name is Anke, and I’m a souveniraholic.
I am not exactly sure how I came to realize this. Maybe it had something to do with a general dissatisfaction I felt about my vacations, as if I hadn’t gotten the most out of them. But why hadn’t I?
On a six-week trip to France [...]

By Jeff Vize
I have a thing about haircuts – an addiction almost. I’ll do them anywhere, anytime. I get them once a week sometimes. Especially when I’m traveling. And especially when I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I justify my pathological behavior in a couple of ways: First, I have a shaved head, and I prefer [...]

By Peter Delevett
It was Christmastime in Germany, oom-pah music and the scent of bratwurst wafting through the air.
And my wife wanted to go to Dachau.
To me, visiting the Munich suburb where some 40,000 people died in Nazi Germany’s first and longest-running concentration camp didn’t sound like a very cheery Christmas outing.
I know how that sounds. [...]

By Lenny Karpman
Faces, tattoos, and empty mothers’ arms flailing after lost children flashed before my eyes. I sobbed. From deeper within me, the sobs crescendoed into the wail of a wounded animal. A comforting hand massaged my shoulder. A voice told me in Yiddish that it was good to cry here, that this was “our [...]

By Stacey Tuel
“Traveling is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.” – Agnes Repplier
What is it about traveling that gives us hope for our own lives? Can traveling reveal to us secrets unknown about ourselves? Is it possible to travel across the world, into an unfamiliar land, surround ourselves with unfamiliar faces and words, and [...]

By Bharti Kirchner
It was with an eager, vegetarian appetite that I arrived in Seoul. Korean restaurants in the U.S. had spoiled me with their soups, noodles, and dumplings, but I instinctively understood that a great deal more could be expected from this earthy, fiery cuisine.
My layover here would amount to only a few days before [...]

By Tom Weller
The soldier sat down, uninvited, next to me. He wore dusty, faded green fatigues and shower sandals. He swung his battered automatic riffle off his shoulder and leaned it against the table nonchalantly, like a man shrugging off a golf bag after playing a quick nine holes. He turned toward me with an [...]

By Matthew Frank
The front room is filled with fresh pastas and truffle emulsions, meter-long grissini breadsticks and lady-kiss baci di dama cookies. I am in Barolo, Italy’s Panetteria, the sole local bakery, and am enjoying its silence, its farmland smells, the sight of three shadowed heads work-bobbing behind the kitchen’s glass door. They don’t see [...]

By Jeff Vize
Trains were built for China. China was built for trains.
Either way you frame the statement, the Middle Kingdom is undeniably a country for trains. It’s not just because the rail network in this country includes some 50,000 kilometers of track, or because its trains are comfortable and cheap. And it’s not just because [...]