Author Archives: thewriterontheroad

I love opera! The music, the stories, the drama! Opera is life on steroids, and I’m always in awe when I watch it live on a stage or listen to it at home or in the car. I was in Berlin when I learned that my ‘reliable’ contact to get me tickets for the BayreuthContinue reading “Bayreuth and Wagner”

When my Grandma talked about people she deemed ‘important’, in her tightly-knit German community of Southern Brazil, she would refer to them as “people who eat off Meissen plates.” As a child, I thought that the handmade plates from Germany were a privilege of very special people. Grandma passed away many years ago (at 96!)Continue reading “MEISSEN – the royal porcelain”

In ‘Faust’, Goethe’s masterpiece, one of the characters calls Leipzig ‘little Paris,’ for its beauty and love of arts. Long hidden behind the Iron Curtain, in communist East Germany, Leipzig’s beauty can now be seen again by the whole world. Art is everywhere in the city, even my hotel doubled as an art gallery forContinue reading “Leipzig, Germany – hidden no more”

Viewed from the Elbe River, Dresden has a striking silhouette: delicate spirals, soaring towers and imposing palace domes. Some buildings are still covered by layers of dark dust, a reminder of the Allied bombings the city endured at the end of World War II. Locked away behind the Iron Curtain since the end of WWII,Continue reading “Dresden, Germany – from ashes to glory”

I love to travel by train in Germany; it’s the best way to see the beautiful countryside. I once took a train in Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof Station to go to Dresden, a city long on my bucket list, but when I arrived there everything went wrong. My hotel faced the train tracks. My room had noContinue reading “Scared in Dresden, Germany”

Arriving in Berlin for the first time felt like going back home. That’s because my grandparents were German immigrants, and the language I heard growing up was German. Maybe because of that, and of the stories I heard about World War II as a child, Berlin touched me deeply. The German capital is a cityContinue reading “Berlin and the Wall”

I lived in New York for 31 years. I’m no longer there, but New York felt like home from day one, when from the window of my plane I saw the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center shining under the morning sun. Born and raised in Brazil, I was in my 20’s when IContinue reading “I LOVE NEW YORK!”

As of September, 2020, Americans are still not allowed to travel to Europe, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And while travel restrictions might be lifted at any time, it is a good idea to play safe and avoid traveling to crowded places, even after things go back to normal.   That’s why I’m thinking ofContinue reading “Top 10 places to visit in Brittany after COVID-19”

On a visit to Bretagne (Brittanny), in France, my daughter Clara and I saw two of the best-known Parish Closes of Lower Bretagne: Saint-Thégonnec and Sizun. They were stunning monuments to the religious fervor of the 16th and 17th centuries, and a reminder of the enormous wealth brought to the region by the linen trade.Continue reading “The Parish Closes (Les Enclos Paroissiaux) of Brittany”

Have you ever been to a place so beautiful, so peaceful and relaxed that you felt like never leaving it? I have, and that place for me was Léhon, a small French medieval village near Dinan, in Bretagne (Brittany), France. I arrived there after a 30-minute walk, following a trail from Dinan. It was aContinue reading “LÉHON, Brittany – a pretty surprise in France”