The Stuttgart Beer Festival: Better Than Oktoberfest?

  The calendar is on its tenth turn, I’m wearing a checked shirt, grasping a frothy stein of beer, standing on a bench singing – well, mumbling at a very high volume – the words to German folk songs in a tent with thousands of other revelers. Obviously, it’s Oktoberfest Munich time again. (insert record …

You Could Always Go to Bologna, Italy

When we dream of going to Italy (and we all dream of going to Italy at some point), we don’t typically spend much too much time thinking about Bologna. Naah, it’s usually the ‘big three’ of Rome, Venice, and Florence that tend to star in our Italian fantasy films, with places like Cinque Terre , …

Here’s A Laundry List of Reasons to Love Ljubljana, Slovenia

  It happened a few years ago. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, reading (thumbing) through the pages of my trusty European guide book.  I stumbled across a place called Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ljubljana was described in cliché phrases such as a ‘cozy’  ‘cafe-centric’ ‘split by a romantic river’, ‘crowned by a stoic castle’, …