Month: March 2016

My friend Joachim, Josef and Marlies’ son, was diagnosed with cancer in October 2010. When his wife, Kristine, told me the news, I was struck dumb. Joachim and I had been together as friends for over 25 years. He was, in many ways, my soul mate. He had prospered, a…

The most bothersome thing about travel but that makes up most of travel is waiting. We wait for the next train for several hours. We wait in line at the food shop. We wait to get into the museum. It’s fair to say that I spend the majority of my…

Washington, DC, is probably one of the most diverse places I’ve ever been. People from all over the world inhabit the nation’s capital. Immigrants fill the city. Indians owned the hotel where we stayed. Restaurants were owned and filled with brown people who had accents. Many bureaucrats, taxi drivers, and…

The Southwest Chief takes you out of Kansas City through the most dismal part of town. Dismal, that is, if you think that the post-industrial landscape is anything but beautiful. For me, however, the scenes of concrete, empty warehouses, and forlorn factories—including the skeleton of the old Armco Steel plant…