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Smoke on the Water

Why is a small Swiss town at Lake Geneva is forever connected to both Deep Purple and Queen? And how do we somehow manage to draw a straight line  from them to international express trains? Smoke on the water, fire in the skySmoke on the waterThey burned down the gambling houseIt died with an awful […]

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Juvenile Delinquent

The first time I went to Cinque Terre, my mother’s wallet was pick pocked from her purse on a bus on the way to Rome’s Termini train station. This was decades ago, when we lived in Italy and had adopted a certain Latin flair for dealing with life’s small problems. So, although we no longer

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Ghost station

If you would like to get a feel for what life in Berlin was like during the Cold War – the Wall, the Stasi secret police, the machine gun-toting border guards – you should visit this underground station.  I visited Französische Strasse when it was one of the scariest underground stations in the world, officially

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Bad Spaghetti

More Austrian than Italian, this could be the worst place in Italy to get pasta. But on every other score, Bolzano and South Tyrol is fairy-tale territory, with stunning mountains and this perfectly beautiful small town. Last year, I suffered through probably the worst spaghetti dish ever served to me in a restaurant in Italy.

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Alcohol kills

Visit one of the finest vineyards in the world, high above the scenic Mosel river. But watch your step: This is also one of the very steepest. I know alcohol kills, but this is ridiculous. Premature death from wine is not supposed to happen suddenly and instantly, a sharp jab of pain immediately followed by

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