Tag: culture
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Growing Together: Moldova’s Family-Run Et Cetera Winery
On a quest to experience Moldova’s autumn grape harvest, we discover the perfect blend of family tradition and modern winemaking at Et Cetera Winery.
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Germany’s Sommertagszug Tradition: Greeting Spring & Bidding Farewell to Winter
In parts of Germany three weeks before Easter, it’s customary to celebrate spring’s return with a summer procession, or Sommertagszug. Believed to have pagan origins, the fest celebrates spring’s return and winter’s banishing. Children take to the streets with sticks adorned with colorful, ruffled ribbons, topped with pretzels and eggs. In Heidelberg, they walk along…
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Fasching Festivities, German Style
For the ten years I called Heidelberg, Germany home, I was lucky to have a bird’s-eye view when Fasching festivities took the university town by storm, as I’m sure they did today.
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A Vietnamese New Year’s Reminiscence
When I unpacked the paper ox ornament last week, it reminded me why I love travel: serendipitous happenings, cultural immersion, and the opportunity to mingle with “citizen diplomats.” With today being the Lunar New Year (called Tết in Vietnamese), it seems fitting to reminisce on a special memory that I made while visiting Hanoi, Vietnam back in 2009.
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Dizzied by a Dazzling Array of Dirndls in Bavaria
Whenever I see Bavarians dressed in traditional German attire, I can’t help but recall a playful prank that my former American colleagues routinely played on friends and family who would come to visit them in Germany. The husband and wife would get laced up in their finest Trachten-wear (German traditional dress consisting of men’s Lederhosen…
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Of Angels & Alphornists – Out & About in Oberammergau, Germany
We had merely set out on a routine errand to find a hair stylist and pharmacy in Oberammergau, Germany. Instead, we found ourselves pleasantly distracted by something quite out of the ordinary, at least for us: the soothing, foghorn-like sound of Alphorns, playfully known as ‘Ricola horns’.
