Mark Twain in Berlin and Vienna

Mark Twain, whose passport bore the name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, crossed the Atlantic Ocean 49 times. In Europe the American writer visited many German-speaking cities, from Berlin to Vienna, and many points in-between. The future globetrotter’s first foreign...

The 49-euro Deutschlandticket

Inspired by the 9-Euro Ticket Following a December 2022 summit meeting between Germany’s federal government and the heads of the 16 Bundesländer (federal states) over how to finance it, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was happy finally to announce that the...

The Crazy Bavarian and Kauai’s Russian Fort

Germans, Baltic Germans, and Native Hawaiians So how many German connections for a so-called Russian Fort on the Hawaiian island of Kauai could there be? More than you might expect. We’ll start with a Bavarian/Franconian physician and adventurer named Georg...