A traditional café in Vienna is more than just a place to drink coffee. It’s a place where, regardless of appearance, all are welcome as they are. It’s a place where life seems to move at its own rather Viennese pace, where reading the world’s newspapers can easily pass a day.
Open the panorama below and enter Café Sperl, a traditional Viennese cafe dating from the 1880s. Meet its charismatic 80-year-old owner, Mr. Staub, and hear the story of how the walls became yellow and why he now chooses to hire women rather than men (and no, it’s not about looks). Continue Reading »
Do yourself the most mundane – yet valuable – of favors in the new year: back up your data.
If a hard drive has ever failed you, you’ll know the feeling. It’s like that scene in the horror movie when the victim, in the stroke of a nanosecond, realizes the peril. At that point, the knife is through the curtain and the damage is done. It’s all over.
And you’re asking yourself, “Why didn’t she just run when she had the chance?”
So why didn’t you back up your data when you had the chance? Continue Reading »
- Our Office-less Office
- Lensbaby, GPS upgrade, and a Mac: What’s New in Our Packs
- Backing Up Is Hard to Do
“What has been your best travel experience?”
Often asked, but impossible to answer.
However, if we were locked away and forced to choose just one experience in order to get out, the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal just might be it. This uber-trek (we took 17 days, some opt for several-day segments and others take a month or more) combines some of the best of what travel has to offer: rich culture, diverse people, stunning landscape, lurking adventure, breathtaking exertion and profound circumstances to clear the mind. Continue Reading »
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been uploading the remaining photos from our travels through India and Nepal in 2008 (This New Year’s resolution, if you’re wondering: NEVER EVER allow ourselves to get this far behind on photos.)
Experiences, emotions, and even memories of certain smells came back to me as I added labels and descriptions.
Sometimes a story behind a photo really stays with you. While sifting through our images from Udaipur (a terrific town in the Indian state of Rajasthan), I came across this photo of a girl we’d met in the market there. In some ways, it looks like so many of our other photos of children and people in India – colorful, human, evocative. But to me, this image carried a story — and a lesson.
Continue Reading »
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Blogging by Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
“We didn’t travel very much this past year, did we?” If we had a nickel for every time this thought passed through one of our heads as the year came to a close, we’d be able to match our Google Adsense earnings for the year.
Before we get to a rundown of which articles and topics you seemed to like this year and a slideshow of some of our favorite moments, some reflection. We dug deep into our 2010 chronology and learned a lesson: before you jump to conclusions, it is always a good idea to check your assumptions with some actual data. In 2010 we found upon further inspection that we traveled to 5 continents, 13 countries. Continue Reading »
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Panorama by Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
Smack dab in the middle of Tamil Nadu in southern India is the city of Tiruchirappalli (say that three times fast), or Trichy (much easier to say, isn’t it?). It boasts several famous Hindu temples, including Sri Ranganathaswamy (You can say that three times fast, too, if you like.)
What you see is classic India: one part deep history of layered carvings and colorful paintings and another part everyday life of bicycles, shops, street stalls and kids trying to pronounce Audrey’s name. Continue Reading »
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Thailand by Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
As Christmas and the new year approaches, we’re sending holiday wishes your way…and getting a little help from our friends.
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For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
We often share stories of ordinary people who humble us by showing resilience and kindness in the face of challenges. In doing so, we highlight the positive — so much so that you might be thinking: “Do these guys only run into good people on their travels? Is the world really like that? Are all people around the world really that good?”
Not always. Sometimes you meet people who grind you to the edge.
And then, you must find your way back. Continue Reading »
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Panorama by Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
We have a weakness for coffee. But, like so many people, we didn’t truly understand where it came from or who the people were behind the process. Then we took a rather adventurous drive along Guatemala’s Lake Atitlan from San Pedro to Santiago and met these friendly guys shoveling coffee berries into 50 kilo bags for transport to the nearest coffee cooperative. Continue Reading »
Q: What’s the proper way to greet family you’ve never met before?
A: In Argentina: with kisses, warmth — and a heck of a lot of steak.
Earlier this year, with a visit to relatives in Argentina only days away, I received my first email in Spanish from my grandmother. This may not sound noteworthy, but the fact that she wrote it in her mother tongue transformed it for me from a simple letter into a welcome to a part of my family I hadn’t known before: the Argentine side.
Author’s note: Our visit to Argentina was months ago, so why am I writing about this now? With the holidays coming, I began to reflect on tradition, family and what it means to be “far away.” Continue Reading »
