bsktcase

One of the best places on the planet is the Friedrichsbad, a true pleasure palace in the spa town of Baden-Baden, Germany. In the 3rd-century, the Soldatenbäder(Soldier's Baths) and the Roman village of Aquae Aureliae were located here. Their ruins were rediscovered in 1846, and the neo-Renaissance "historic bathing temple" was constructed at the mineral springs in 1877. I'm fortunate to have extended family nearby, so I've been able to make two pilgrimages ( in 2005, and I'd swear I came back in 2008 but apparently didn't blog it). You can read about the experience at the New York Times or on Rick Steves' site, or ... read more

We'll just start with the obvious. Taking my work laptop on a pleasure-only vacation was a dumb idea, no matter how lightweight it is, how much bigger its screen, how much smoother its keyboard, how much more comfortable on the lap, or how much of a mild inconvenience it would have been to have installed my camera and photo management software on my personal Surface before I left. A dumb idea. Readers, if presented with this decision in your futures, your choice is clear. I got out said laptop at our hosts' home on Monday evening for some very excellent or terrible reason, I don't recall. As our conversation picked up, it was time to close the laptop ("flaps down", a client of mine once said) and set it aside to focus appropriately on the people ... read more

Astute readers will remember from a previous trip () that serendipitous events make some of the best travel experiences. To that end, on my last work trip to Budapest in June I noticed that the entire nation of Hungary, even without a qualifying national team, took great interest even in the earliest rounds of the FIFA World Cup. A public viewing station was set up in a park directly outside my hotel room (! - fortunately I was happy to watch along), and some friends and I viewed one match in spectacular early-evening weather at the delightful outdoor pub Aqvárium, in Pest. As I learned more about the schedule for the World Cup, I began to wonder if lightning might strike twice, and we might get lucky enough to see some really exciting football, with real ... read more

Anne lived with us in Seattle for a year, 2011-12, attended Highline High School as a member of the senior class, and got to walk in the commencement ceremony at the end of the school year. Of course our entire noisy mob of a family attended commencement and did our best to embarrass our kid at it, as loving families must do. When she came home to Hamburg, she still had two years of Gymnasiumahead of her: not university, not high school, not quite but probably closest to what American students do at community college when they're planning to transfer to a four-year university to complete a Bachelor's degree later. Anne told us Gymnasium has nothing like the American high school graduation ceremony, and she wasn't wrong, but she didn't entirely give us the complete picture ... read more

After 15 months of business travel that turned my and our family's life upside-down, I've wrapped up my international client engagement and we're celebrating with a 3.5-week family vacation to reconnect with our loved ones in Deutschland. This week, we're all together in Schenefeld, outside Hamburg, to see Anne, Lars, Andrea, and Ulf, our German family. Truly they're enough like our siblings that it's just easier to describe them that way, except Anne was our daughter for a year, so "niece" doesn't quite cut it, but whatever, family. :) Tuesday, our arrival night, was a comedy of drowsy. Greg and I got in about noon from Amsterdam and were whisked away in a taxi by Ulf and Laura, who arrived here last week. A couple of hours later, Barb and Joe arrived from Reykjavik and were ... read more