The afternoon of 9/11
My office in 2001 was on the fifth floor of a six-story building in the unfashionable Gallus quarter of Frankfurt. At around three in the afternoon (German time) on a Tuesday my colleague from the next office came in and told me she had just received a strange phone call Read More ...
Mitterrand and the Panthéon
Every time I ride past the Panthéon in Paris I am reminded of a man I met in Berkeley, California when I was living there in 1967. I was working at that time as News Director of a non-commercial radio station. In the mornings I always walked to work, and one Read More ...
Conversation and more B2
The photos in this post are by a professional photographer, Rolf Oeser, who happens to be a long-time participant in one of my English courses at the Frankfurt Adult Education Center (VHS). Rolf’s photos appear nearly every day in the Frankfurter Rundschau, one of the city’s three daily newspapers. He Read More ...
The square of Gavroche’s elephant
There is a persistent urban legend about American tourists going to the Place de la Bastille in Paris and feeling cheated when they discover that the Bastille Fortress isn’t even there any more. Perhaps this has really happened at one time or another, but I think most tourists from all Read More ...
The Bridge of Aspiration
Floral Street might at first look like an ordinary London street, with older brick buildings on one side and a newer stone building on the other, until you look up and notice that two of the buildings are joined by an unusual construction that stretches across the street like a Read More ...
Françoise d’Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon
She was born in jail, where her father was a prisoner and her mother was a jail keeper’s daughter. To make matters worse, her father was a Huguenot (Protestant) and her mother was a Catholic, in a century when these religious differences were taken very seriously. Although her grandfather was Read More ...
Mozart’s operas
Here’s my list of the operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), including a few that were never completed or are sometimes listed as something else. As on my Verdi list, I have listed the opera titles in different colors: Red means I have seen the opera at least once in Read More ...
Operas by Giuseppe Verdi
During his long career, Giuseppe Verdi composed twenty-six operas — or twenty-eight, depending what you count as what. The following list is the 28-opera version, with the year of the world premiere in parentheses after each title. I have listed the opera titles in different colors: Red means I have Read More ...
Händel as an opera composer
The Händel House in Halle has an interesting exhibit on “Händel, composer of opera” where visitors can sit and watch Georg Friedrich Händel (as a sort of Monty-Python-style figure) come in, sit down at the cembalo and explain some of his operas. The spectators can push buttons to choose which Read More ...
Tito’s Glasses in Osnabrück
After arriving at Osnabrück station, checking in to my hotel and picking up my rental bike, I rode over to the tourist information office and asked for a calendar of events, to see if anything special was happening that evening. It turned out that something very special was happening. The Read More ...
Arrival in Tân Ba 1964
From October 1964 to March 1965 I was the lowest ranking member of a five-man American “advisory team” stationed in a small Vietnamese village called Tân Ba on the bank of the Dong Nai River. At night we could see the lights of Biên Hòa air base across the river Read More ...
Vélib’ 2020
In January 2020 I was proud of myself for getting organized and booking some travel well in advance, including two trips to Paris — trains, hotels and operas — for April and July. For the April visit, I reserved a room at a hotel on the Boulevard Magenta, in the Read More ...