This is the second half of my piece on Nagasaki. Part 1 can be found here. My other posts in my “Strange Places” series include Milwaukee, South Florida, and Knoxville. Many places have pest problems, but nothing could have prepared me for…
Author’s Note: When I set out to write this piece, I didn’t think it would take so long to fully convey my complex feelings about Nagasaki. As such, it has become a series within a series, divided into two parts.…
Author’s note: this is a follow up to my piece “Working to Live or Living to Work?” And if you’ve not seen “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” this is my spoiler alert! One of my favorite movies of the…
The Danes have a great deal to be proud of. They’re the World’s Happiest People. They have a high level of social cohesion, equality, and standard of living. They have some of the best restaurants in the world. They thumbed…
Americans generally feel a close connection to their European brethren for a variety of reasons. We share many of the same Enlightenment values (e.g. freedom of speech), most American families have ties to Europe through heritage, and our strongest military…
Perhaps it is harsh to call a city of a quarter of a million people “Nowhere” straight from the outset, I know I would be duly offended if and when someone refers to my own similarly sized town of Knoxville…
At various points throughout Patagonia, we had declared ourselves to be at “The End of the World.” Clearly our perceptions were flawed, as there was always somewhere further down the road to go. But by the time we reached Punta…
Note: So, this post is only about 5 months late. And I believe apologies are in order to my good friend Dr. Lt. Rhett, for sharing his tales of travel woes, but I promise it has a happy ending. The…
I’ve been in Germany for three months now, and in that time I’ve remained fairly silent on the issue. My silence has not been due to a lack of compelling stories, but rather (I think) from a desire to get…
On my most recent flight from Charlotte to Miami, I struck up a conversation with the two ladies seated in my row. Within moments of sitting down, they enthusiastically agreed that they hated flying, and then turned to me to…
For our last hurrah in South America, Christine and I found ourselves in Iquitos, Peru, the largest city in the world that is inaccessible by car. Once again, proving that the backpacking circuit is much smaller than one would expect,…
I remember first hearing about Bolivia’s “Death Road” from my former roommate and Serbian brother Nick. He eagerly pulled up a YouTube video showcasing “The World’s Most Dangerous Road.” When it was finished, I looked at him the way I…
