Category Reviews

Live from Oslo!

September 7, 2014 · by · in Reviews, Traveling · Leave a comment

I have a couple of hours until my night bus to Stockholm, so I thought I’d give y’all a live update on how my Great Northern Tour is going so far (Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, and Krakow are on the agenda.). I flew into Oslo so late on Friday night that no trains were running, […]

Prague City Guide

May 14, 2014 · by · in Culture, Reviews, Traveling · Leave a comment

I have been lucky enough to visit Prague twice in 2014 (and once in 2011), and it has become one of my favorite European cities. It’s super accessible to me, only a four hour bus ride from Linz, and has a ton of cool sights, quirky museums, literary history, and gorgeous outdoor spaces. Plus, it’s […]

My Reading List: Austria

October 1, 2013 · by · in Culture, Reviews, Traveling · 5 Comments

Since January, I have been making a concerted effort to read books about Austria–history books, travel books, and the nebulous “general interest” books, all together in a somewhat indiscriminate jumble of Austrian-ness. Now, because my inner scholar/librarian is pushing at me, I’m organizing that jumble into a casual annotated bibliography. If you are interested in […]

How to Make Friends with Austrians

August 6, 2013 · by · in Culture, Planning, Quotes, Reviews · Leave a comment

In my recent obsession with travel guides, old and new, I purchased this gem of a book from 1992: Europeans Customs and Manners: How to Make Friends and do Business in Europe by Nancy L. Briganti and Elizabeth Devine. It is a fascinating look at an American view of Europe in the wake of the Iron Curtain’s […]

Review: DuoLingo

June 23, 2013 · by · in German, Links, Reviews · 3 Comments

This past week I had more of a part-time work schedule, so I thought I would get serious about reviewing German before my class starts in July. My friend Caitlin suggested that I try DuoLingo, a free language learning website that she is using to brush up on Spanish. I was kind of skeptical, because […]

Book Review–The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire

April 2, 2013 · by · in Reviews · 1 Comment

So, lately I’ve been reading a lot of books about Austria, and there has been a certain amount of trial and error involved. I am not at the point where I can read history books in German (I’m only kind of at the point where I can read fairy tales in German, which will be […]