While riding my bike through the Westend district of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, I came across this unusual and heartwarming scene. A policeman — one of the few Frankfurt policemen who patrols by bicycle — was writing out a parking ticket for a fat, shiny, black upper-class car, and a Read More …
When I checked in to my hotel in Oldenburg, the man at reception told me he was giving me the “mini room”, sounding as though he was doing me some kind of big favor. Of course, I thought he just meant a small room, which didn’t surprise me because I Read More …
Since electing its first Socialist mayor in 2001, the city of Paris has made considerable progress in re-allocating public space: widening sidewalks, narrowing streets, creating bus and bicycle lanes and reducing the space devoted to cars. But the problem is so widespread that numerous streets in Paris still have grotesquely Read More …
The Arc de Triomphe was commissioned by the Emperor Napoléon I in 1806 to celebrate the triumph of his armies over the rest of Europe in the early nineteenth century, particularly his triumph over the Russian and Austrian Empires at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. In recent decades, however, Read More …
In one word I can tell you what’s wrong with the Avenue des Champs-Élysées: cars. (Not to mention motorcycles and trucks.) This street is marketed as “the most beautiful avenue in the world”, and it really is beautiful except for the fact that there is an ugly ten-lane highway running right Read More …
Groningen, the northernmost city in the Netherlands, is famous for having the highest percentage of bicycle use in the Western world. An estimated 57 % of the 190,000 residents use bicycles as their main form of daily transportation within the city. 59 % of all journeys within the city are Read More …
Scheinfeld is a happy town in the Steiger Forest in Franconia, northern Bavaria. You can tell it’s a happy town because some internet-savvy person has written “:D” with a felt-tipped marker in the upper left-hand corner of the sign. Up on a hill overlooking the town there is a castle Read More …
In the database of the now-defunct website VirtualTourist (VT) there were four places in Germany called Frankfurt. One was a large city in Land Hessen called Frankfurt am Main, which is best known for its huge, noisy airport. Frankfurt am Main is where I live and is also the home Read More …
For his second term as Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë set as one of his major goals the “transformation of the Seine riverbanks” so that “Parisians and visitors alike can once again access the magnificent landscape provided by the river.” The first step of this project was the transformation of Read More …
For nearly half a century, from 1967 to 2016, this is what the right bank of the Seine looked like in the center of Paris. An endless stream of motor vehicles clogged the notorious Voie Express Georges Pompidou, spewing out noise and filth and denying people access to the river Read More …