Travels with Tricia

Category: Travelogues

  • A Love Lesson from a Moroccan Wall

    “The love we give away is the only love we keep.” Elbert Hubbard On a salmon-pink back alleyway in Marrakech, Morocco, I discovered a tribute to love’s enduring nature. Its medium was white chalk. The hand that drew it undoubtedly belonged to a child. Its canvas was a rugged wall. That spring, as I explored…

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The village of Oberammergau's St. Peter and Paul Cemetery Germany, covered in snow

    Angels, Busts, and Saints Dressed in Snow: A Wintry Visit to Oberammergau’s Cemetery

    Perhaps it is a bit macabre, but I find cemeteries – particularly those in foreign locales – to be fascinating and fitting spots to reflect upon a place’s culture and history, and upon life itself. When my husband and I last visited Paris, we spent several hours strolling through the city’s famous Père Lachaise Cemetery, passing headstones of…

  • 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…

  • Twisting Tongues in Bavaria

    German words have a reputation for being exceedingly long. Sometimes they’re also rather descriptive. The German language’s penchant for precision is perhaps best described in Mark Twain’s humorous essay, The Awful German Language, which you can read here. Twain penned The Awful German Language in an attempt to describe the frustration he felt while learning German. Twain’s essay…