studentsineurope

Improbably high on Amazon.com’s bestseller list is an anarchist tract written anonymously by a group of radicals living in a rural commune in France.  Glenn Beck helped push their dangerous little book (titled “The Coming Insurrection”) to the top by declaring it “possibly the most evil thing I’ve ever read,” but he wasn’t the first [...]

The fast and easy way to plan your next trip to France.

No one can deny that Paris is a haven for fashion lovers.  Each year its fashion shows and designers set the trends around the world, and only New York and Tokyo come even close to its fashion star status.
Which is why when I when to Paris this past weekend on a spur of the moment [...]

A trip to Le Mont Saint-Michel will leave you breathless

I had never heard of hard-to-classify Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949) when I stumbled upon an exhibition of his work at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris recently, but when I saw the purple-tinted Ming vase topped with a grinning skull in a dainty Victorian hat, I knew I’d probably like his stuff. Such was Ensor’s off-beat, even macabre wit [...]

A continuation of brief reviews of films across the cultural, chronological, and cinematic spectrum.
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)– A riveting suspense set in the dying days of Romanian communism, this film revolves around a young, unexpectedly pregnant woman and her faithful friend.  They face the crisis together in a country where abortion [...]

Despite the recent employee strike and its revocation of free admission for international youth, Paris’s Louvre remains the world’s most visited museum. 8.5 million patrons took a walk through its relics in 2009 – the same amount as in the year prior.
What’s the Louvre’s winning factor? The display of the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, [...]

Film has a special appeal for the traveler.  It provides an intriguing visual backdrop, a source of nostalgic pleasure, and a cultural window into a particular place and time.  Movies are also, of course, works of art that can say a lot about their origins.  Here are several movies from different places in Europe, recommended [...]

Paris is a vintage city sans doute. You may find it exceptionally classic, though, this Saturday.
That’s because the Vincennes en Anciennes Association will host its 10th annual, 17-mile-long  Traversée de Paris. More than 500 vehicles (cars, motorcycles and even buses) will parade around the city, leaving at 8:00 from the Château de Vincennes and heading [...]

Over the course of 33 years, ending in the early 20th century, a French postman named Ferdinand Cheval gathered stones every day on his mail route to build himself “The Ideal Palace” (Le Palais Ideal) near his village of Hauterives.  We aren’t talking about a little stone igloo – this man created a rather large and [...]