John M. Edwards thinks the most exotic experience Americans have in Paris these days is ordering macaroons in a Piere Hermé boutique, even though similar macaroons are now available in Sausalito, CA, Asbury Park, NJ, and points in between. But John remembers a time in the 1990s when, between apartments and girlfriends, Paris still rhymed with bewildering encounters and doomed relationships. * * * My new apartment in Paris seemed too big for its size: too big even for five people. Plus,… Read more

John M. Edwards offers backpackers the perfect 24-hour schedule to enjoy the unbearable lightness of being on “Prague Spring” break, including cobblestones, the Charles Bridge, Staropramen, Slovakian wine, Kafka’s house, Good King Wenceslaus, cheap foie gras, clubbing, and an afternoon nap. 09.00 Emerging from your hotel in the Starometske Namesti (Old Town), break in your new Rockport walking shoes on the Kafkaesque cobbles and enter the Ebel Coffee House (behind the Tyn Church,… Read more

DISPATCH: INTERNATIONAL ARTS SMUGGLING… John M. Edwards, alias Tom James, disguises himself as a crackerjack “stringer” and sets off in search of one of his favorite artworks. . . . * * * In 22 August 2004, two masked thieves pulled Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (“Skrik” in Old Norse) off the wall of The Munch Museum in Norway, and then made a daring escape in a black Audi getaway car, waving a gun at witnesses. The stolen Munch along with a purloined painting of a… Read more

Travel writer John M. Edwards stalks the heretical ghost of Polish astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus in his hometown of Torun, Poland, and stops for kielbasa and pivo polska along the way. * * * Here’s a question nobody, not even Steven Hawking (A Brief History of Time) or Erich von Daniken (Chariots of the Gods), can answer: How large is the universe? How can it be infinite if it is “expanding”? I decided the only scientist worth his salt who could posit a legitimate satisfactory… Read more

In which Gary Lee Kraut visits the Herodion, Herod’s fortress palace nine miles southeast of Jerusalem, and encounters luxury, love, loneliness, revolt, religion and old stones, where one day there will be a café. The sight: The Herodion, site of the summer palace of Herod the Great, Judean king 37-4 B.C. (or B.C.E., Before the Common Era, as it’s written here), overseen and operated by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. The location: Nine miles southeast of Jerusalem, three miles… Read more