Striking Out I didn’t know what to expect on my first trip overseas. Outside of trips to the East Coast or to Florida to visit my grandma, the prospect of getting on a plane and flying to the other side of the ocean was… well… foreign to me. I recall the excitement and the apprehension. The idea that two years of high school Spanish would allow me to communicate with these exotic people. I recall the feeling that even though I was looking forward to the adventure, I hoped that I would be able to manage it as best as I could, that the whole experience would not be too foreign. This was my me ..read more

In the winter, the people of the Netherlands for good reason generally seem to seek someplace warmer. Our neighbors went to the Canary Islands. The French Riviera is popular. Some even fly all the way to the Caribbean and pass the days laying on a beautiful sandy beach in America. So naturally, when our family considered where to spend our Christmas, we chose one of the coldest spots in Europe: the Bavarian Alps. Choosing Winter Wonder over Warmth On the morning of our departure, I found myself at the Hertz desk, talking to the kind lady about snow tires and German chain laws while most of ..read more

Wanderlust When I transformed this blog from a policy and politics focus into a travel blog over seven years ago, I set out with the goal of recounting a short reflection from each of my travels around the world. It took a few years (and is still ongoing), but it was an enjoyable and rewarding project to take on. Ever since, I have found myself more aware when traveling, more in the moment. I find myself more reflective and thinking about how to describe or remember a place if I were to write about it: the smell of the salt air blowing in from the ocean at Fortaleza do Gunicho in Sintra, the l ..read more

A Winter Long Past I can still remember it: that Christmas morning in 2000 when my stepdad, Ken, bought me a bike. I insisted on riding it all around the freshly fallen snow of Leebrook Drive in Cincinnati. Sliding on the small hills of the empty streets, all of the sane kids still warm in their living rooms unwrapping gifts, we braved the midwest cold. Poor Ken biked behind me, doing his best to ensure he didn’t have to report back to my mom that I had busted my head open on Christmas. That bike would go back in the garage until spring when bicycle riding became a sensible activity, yet stil ..read more

Getting There The short walk from Trafalgar Square down to Big Ben was fraught with many tears, comments that walking was not an acceptable form of transportation, and demands that an Uber must be called immediately under the threat of a meltdown which was already partially underway. This walk, a mere few blocks, was one that I thought could be endured by the group, but halfway in, literally 1,000 ft from where we started, we called an Uber and were off to our next destination, the Natural History Museum. As a London first-timer, I didn’t even realize that we had caught the Uber right in fr ..read more

Preface:  The small municipality of Acquafondata lay high in the mountains at the nexus of the Winter Line and the Gustav Line, the fortified Axis defense lines where Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring’s Army Group C made their stand against the US 5th Army as it pushed towards Rome. This tiny handful of less than a hundred houses was so remote that it was coveted by both Axis and Allies alike as a shelter from which artillery could harass the forward battle lines.  The stories that follow are based on events that the people in an around Acquafondata in 1943-1944 endured. It ..read more

Beware that what follows is a raw account of a dad granted an unexpected hall pass to embark on a solo journey to Oktoberfest in the heart of Germany. You may be wondering: How did this man return to tell the tale? Allow me to regale you with the story. On a seemingly ordinary Wednesday, an Instagram ad infiltrated my feed, undoubtedly fueled by the algorithm’s knowledge of my penchant for all things ‘dad’ and ‘beer.’ It announced the commencement of Oktoberfest in Germany, and with haste, I presented the brilliant notion to Jenn. I argued that seizing this unique opportunity to immerse ou ..read more

In September of 1944, the German army in the Netherlands found itself in disarray. Only four short months prior, the Allies had stormed the beaches of Normandy, their relentless advance carving through France and now Belgium with an alarming haste. The recent capture of Antwerp, Europe’s second-largest port, brought them close to the Dutch border. German soldiers, once formidable, were now deserting their posts, some even seeking directions to the German border from Dutch civilians whom they had effectively imprisoned for five long years. Reports circulated that the Wehrmacht’s fighting sp ..read more

In the flat plains of West Flanders, Belgium, Bruges was our first travel destination as expats in the Netherlands. We had been together a few years ago and while it is a town to enjoy as unencumbered adults, it was also a place that we were excited to show our kids someday. So when Jenn’s dad and step mom were coming into town and were looking for a halfway point between Paris and Amsterdam to spend a weekend on their way to Normandy, Bruges was an obvious choice.   There is a stillness to Bruges that even though thousands of tourists of every nationality descend upon its quiet stree ..read more

I don’t know where our dog or our seven bags are but the line into passport control is quick only because we waited twenty minutes for the ground crew to fish out our stroller from the plane that we thought we needed given the six hour layover we were about to endure. We just got off of a Boeing 787 after a nine and a half hour flight yet the kids are still surprisingly well behaved and rested. As we stumble into customs in Frankfurt the young gentleman sees that we are on our way to Amsterdam and asks “why are you going there?”… I look at him in a jet-lagged daze yet not wanting to let my d ..read more