Wine

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

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

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

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.

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