Writer, Explorer and Travel Philosopher
I had an unexpected glimpse of a friend from the distant past last week.
I was staying up late watching a French Canadian film called The Decline of the American Empire. Around thirty minutes in, just as I’m taking a sip of Crown Royal on ice, a telephone rings. The character in the shot stiffens in his chair, and then the camera pans to a side table, where we see…
Sunday in the Tiergarten…
Sunday afternoon in the Tiergarten.
A group of four shirtless guys sit on the grass, smoking pot and rolling a soccer ball in listless circles.
At Hellisheidi, above Vindfellsfjall, Iceland…
Lawrence Millman is the author of eleven books, including Northern Latitudes, Last Places, An Evening Among Headhunters, and Lost in the Arctic. His travel articles have appeared in such magazines as Smithsonian, National Geographic Adventure, The Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, and Islands.
Old Glory by Jonathan Raban
After a childhood of river dreams inspired by readings of Huckleberry Finn, Jonathan Raban set out to travel the length of the Mississippi River from north to south in a 16-foot open aluminum boat.
The unfinished Nazi Party Kongresshalle…
Nuremberg was once one of the wealthiest and most important trading centres in medieval Europe. And between 1050 and 1571, it was the closest thing to a capital under the Holy Roman Empire, seat of the imperial Diet.
Bamberg: Germany’s biertown…
My friends called Bamberg “biertown”, and I would soon discover why.
We took the high speed ICE train down to this beautiful town in northern Franconia a couple weeks ago. It’s less than four hours from Berlin-Südkreuz to Bamberg, but I’d never been to Bavaria before.
Coasting by Jonathan Raban
In 1982, Jonathan Raban bought a wooden two-masted sailing boat and circumnavigated England in a slow, wandering, unhurried way.
He called this manner of travel “coasting”: moving along with the tide, letting the wind decide the direction of travel, and living “on the shifting frontier where the land meets the water and the water shades into the land.”
I always find something amazing in the travel lit section…
My last London day was a short one. We had a flight to catch that evening, but there was still time to shift the scope of my trip back to books.
The Blurred Crusade — live, electric, and in its entirety…
The centrepiece of this packed London weekend I’ve been telling you about was two days of music with The Church at Bush Hall.
I travelled by thought with The Church long before I ever set out on the road for real.
A mausoleum fit for an explorer…
We had a packed agenda on this 3-day London trip, but as luck would have it, there was a two hour window of free time on Saturday morning.
