Bruges, Belgium: First Impressions

Bruges, Belgium: First Impressions

Bruges is a small medieval city in Belgium’s West Flanders province, near the Atlantic coast. Even the grandiose “tourist wonderland” may understate. UNESCO named the whole durn city center as a world heritage site. Lonely Planet, Rick Steves, Fodors and TripAdvisor gush about Bruges unreservedly. ‘Why visit?’ answers itself. A better question for a retired…

A Weekend in Galicia, Spain

A Weekend in Galicia, Spain

Galicia is a Hawaii-sized state autonomous community on Spain’s northwest corner. I asked Spaniards if I should visit. “¡Por supuesto!,” said they, while suggesting that Galicia would be: (♦) Beautiful! Woodsy green hamlets fronting windswept Atlantic coastlines. Like that. (♦) Rainy! Maybe not as wet as San Sebastian, but up there. (♦) Relatively isolated. Spain’s high-speed…

Madrid Impressions: Round Five

The latest installment: VENEZUELAN DIASPORA I meet Ecuadorans and Colombians in Madrid — and should, according to immigration-to-Spain stats — but not as often as I meet Venezuelans: two waiters and a manager in one restaurant; the part-owner of another; students, job seekers, new arrivals. Ties between the two countries are old, run deep. Some…

Transit vs Car: a Few Conclusions

“You were mostly a stay-put teacher, Tim, and now (you lucky, worthless bum, Tim) you’ve chased trams and metros in cities around the world. How has this affected your transit views?” De-lighted you ask! * * * * * In Zurich, Copenhagen, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Stockholm and Amsterdam I traveled on transit networks that struck me…

About those transit gulags

Stockholm’s new towns — no longer very new, and referred to as gulags only playfully — are the clusters of housing and commercial development herded about the outlying stations of the T-bana metro system.  Transit guru Robert Cervero beamed about them in Transit Metropolis, and here I was jetting off to Europe anyway.  I figured…