Category: 2022 Friends and Family Tour
- 24 – Jun
- 22 – Jun
- 02 – Jun
- 17 – May
- 17 – May
- 16 – May
- 11 – May
- 09 – May
- 08 – May
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THE LEGEND OF THE ULM SPARROW
24 June 2022My friend, Karl-Heinz Linke, has a reputation for exaggerating the truth when he tells stories. He’s the kind of guy who is always pulling your leg, so to speak. So, when he told Padma and me about the legend of the Ulm Sparrow, we assumed it was another one of his yarns. Karl-Heinz insisted it […] -
MY COUSIN WOLFGANG OF HERXHEIM
22 June 2022Can ‘home’ be a place where you’ve never lived? And a place you only learned about late in life? I discovered Herxheim only 20 years ago but when Padma and I travelled there in mid-June it felt like going home. Herxheim is the ancestral home of my father’s father’s family. My great-grandfather, Jacob Adam, was […] -
THE JEAN AND EARL OF AMERY
2 June 2022I get stumped when asked ‘where are you from?’ or ‘where’s home?’ Australia has been my physical home for 27 years but when it comes to home of the heart I’d have to point to a little city in north-western Wisconsin. I only lived in Amery for seven years from 1969 to 1976 but they […] -
RAIN, RIVER AND A PINT IN DUBLIN
17 May 2022In mid-May 2022 Padma and I met up in Dublin with my sister Jenni and her husband Russ for a couple of days of steady wandering. We set out along the River Liffey on our first evening, crossing between the north and south quays as the light faded. Dublin is a city that reveals itself […] -
A PEACOCK, A BRAMEL AND A WINDY RIDGE
17 May 2022For a number of years, Padma and I have been hearing about a home on a hill in County Cork of southwestern Ireland. Despite numerous invitations from its owners, our friends John Peacock and Paula Bramel, we could never make the trip. But now we finally got a chance to visit our friends and learn […] -
A CATALAN FRIENDSHIP
16 May 2022The Pyrenees, that long mountain range extending east to west and creating the border between France and Spain, have captivated me for years. As a university student I read Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Summer Morning, which became one of my favourite travel books. At the end Lee secretly crosses the Pyrenees and […] -
OUR LITTLE CLIO
11 May 2022Fifty years or so ago, the French government wanted to encourage tourism by offering long-term car leases to tourists. The Government offered an incentive scheme to the French car companies – Renault, Citroën and Peugeot – to offer the leases. Padma and I are travelling for two months so we took advantage of the program. […] -
AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
9 May 2022In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and […] -
THE LASHERMES OF VACQUIÈRES
8 May 2022The second principal destination of our Northern Hemisphere Friends and Family tour was Vacquières, a village of no more than 600 people just north of Montpelier, France. Two long-time residents are our friends from our Syrian Football Night Dinners, Philippe and Catherine Lashermes. Philippe and Catherine left Syria in 1992 and after a short stint […]
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THE LEGEND OF THE ULM SPARROW
My friend, Karl-Heinz Linke, has a reputation for exaggerating the truth when he tells stories. He’s the kind of guy who is always pulling your leg, so to speak. So, when he told Padma and me about the legend of the Ulm Sparrow, we assumed it was another one of his yarns. Karl-Heinz insisted it was true and to prove it he and his wife, Hiltrud, took us to Ulm to learn of the legend ourselves. We were told that 80% of the city had been destroyed during World War II,…
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MY COUSIN WOLFGANG OF HERXHEIM
Can ‘home’ be a place where you’ve never lived? And a place you only learned about late in life? I discovered Herxheim only 20 years ago but when Padma and I travelled there in mid-June it felt like going home. Herxheim is the ancestral home of my father’s father’s family. My great-grandfather, Jacob Adam, was born in Herxheim in 1864 but immigrated to Cincinnati in 1880. He left behind a long string of Adam ancestors stretching back at least to my eight great grandfather Johann Georg Michael Adam who was born…
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THE JEAN AND EARL OF AMERY
I get stumped when asked ‘where are you from?’ or ‘where’s home?’ Australia has been my physical home for 27 years but when it comes to home of the heart I’d have to point to a little city in north-western Wisconsin. I only lived in Amery for seven years from 1969 to 1976 but they were my formative years … the years that most made me who I am today. Home also lies where your parents live. My mother still lives in Amery … so Padma and I came ‘home’ for…
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RAIN, RIVER AND A PINT IN DUBLIN
In mid-May 2022 Padma and I met up in Dublin with my sister Jenni and her husband Russ for a couple of days of steady wandering. We set out along the River Liffey on our first evening, crossing between the north and south quays as the light faded. Dublin is a city that reveals itself at walking pace – Georgian terraces, bridges stitched across the river, the dome of the Custom House catching the last of the sun. Later that night the weather turned and we pulled our jackets tighter, strolling…
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A PEACOCK, A BRAMEL AND A WINDY RIDGE
For a number of years, Padma and I have been hearing about a home on a hill in County Cork of southwestern Ireland. Despite numerous invitations from its owners, our friends John Peacock and Paula Bramel, we could never make the trip. But now we finally got a chance to visit our friends and learn of their adopted homeland. Padma and I knew John when we were all living in Syria in the early 1990s. We met Paula when she and John travelled to Australia in 2013 and then in one…
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A CATALAN FRIENDSHIP
The Pyrenees, that long mountain range extending east to west and creating the border between France and Spain, have captivated me for years. As a university student I read Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Summer Morning, which became one of my favourite travel books. At the end Lee secretly crosses the Pyrenees and enters Spain at the onset of the Spanish Civil War and I began to feel a calling to one day visit the region. It wasn’t so much the jagged, snow-capped peaks, shimmering lakes and raging rivers…
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OUR LITTLE CLIO
Fifty years or so ago, the French government wanted to encourage tourism by offering long-term car leases to tourists. The Government offered an incentive scheme to the French car companies – Renault, Citroën and Peugeot – to offer the leases. Padma and I are travelling for two months so we took advantage of the program. On arrival in Rome, we picked up a Renault Clio Hybrid straight from the factory. A brand-new car for us. A rep of the agency gave us a tour of our new car and showed all…
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AN APPARITION IN LOURDES
In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous and her sister and friend were out collecting firewood outside the village of Lourdes in the French Pyrenees. They wandered into a grotto where they claim a “a tiny maiden” wearing a flowing white robe spoke to them. The tiny maiden appeared 18 times that year in the area and during one visit declared to Bernadette “que soy era immaculada concepciou” – I am the Immaculate Conception. In 1862, the local bishop endorsed the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes and in February 1876,…
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THE LASHERMES OF VACQUIÈRES
The second principal destination of our Northern Hemisphere Friends and Family tour was Vacquières, a village of no more than 600 people just north of Montpelier, France. Two long-time residents are our friends from our Syrian Football Night Dinners, Philippe and Catherine Lashermes. Philippe and Catherine left Syria in 1992 and after a short stint in Cote d’Ivoire they bought an old farm home in a village and fixed it up and had three children along the way. Philippe commutes to work in Montpelier as an agricultural researcher by ebike. We…
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