culture
Get the authentic cultural experience on your next foreign jaunt. Wander like a local; here, there, and everywhere.
Turf houses: Iceland's original 'green' buildings
With its lonely lava fields, sheer bluffs and stark boulder-strewn plains, Iceland is one of Europe's most barren countries. Across much of the island, the utter remoteness is striking, and that's especially true in the far-flung Northwestern Region, where I had come to learn about how Icelanders were able to settle one of the least hospitable and most volcanically active places on Earth.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Wander
The untranslatable word that connects Wales
A small harbour I know well appears on an Instagram story, catching me by surprise with its flash of familiar cobbled streets and blue skies. It's Wales: the land I grew up in and home to memories of afternoons spent fishing for crabs on that very harbourside in Porthmadog, long sand-dune walks along the north-west coastline and the inescapable smell of the sea.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Wander
Frances Mayes on the enduring allure of Italy
In the last 24 years, no other writer has likely lured more travellers to Italy than Frances Mayes. Her 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun tells the story of how she fell in love with a rundown 200-year-old villa outside Cortona, and how she painstakingly restored it alongside her Italian neighbours. The book remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two and a half years, was made into a feature film starring Diane Lane and has led Mayes to write a series of subsequent love letters to Italy that have inspired many of her readers to dream of relocating to the bel paese.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Wander
'Ghillies': Scotland's little-known Highlanders
On Scotland’s formidably wild Isle of Skye, there were hoof trails everywhere at first light. Trails in the mud, trails curving across the moorland, trails on the far side of the burn where they vanished into the murk of the pine forest. To the east, the land swooped uphill onto the ruggedly beautiful shoulder of Sgùrr a' Mhadaidh Ruaidh, with a vantage point over the Trotternish peninsula. West, and downhill from where Mitchell Partridge was standing, the loose contours of Glenhinnisdal valley dropped to Loch Snizort and the Isle of Skye’s coastline. There was a feeling of waiting for the stag rut to begin.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Wander
Quilting: An Irish tradition fit for pandemic times
When Sarah Harris moved from her home of 20 years in Ireland back to her native Colorado, she brought the quilting business she’d started in County Wicklow with her, making commissions of "memory quilts", patchwork designs composed of baby blankets, graduation gowns or old clothes from deceased loved ones. Before she’d turned it into a business, quilting was something she did for herself – a way of connecting with her mother and grandmother, both quilters in the US, in spirit and in practice.
By Turnell Feliu3 years ago in Wander
Khasis: India's indigenous matrilineal society
During my travels across mainland India, especially in small towns and villages in the north, I hardly saw any women-run shops or marketplaces. In a sit-down eatery in Uttar Pradesh, I watched men make flatbreads and mash vegetables for curries while male customers gobbled them up. Between Kolkata and Gorakhpur, I sat sandwiched between men in passenger trains passing through the rural countryside. On most occasions, women were absent from public spaces.
By Copperchaleu3 years ago in Wander
