Anyone who’s been to France knows fairly quickly…they are definitely not in Kansas anymore. There’s a pretty hefty bibliography of books that can help you bridge this culture gap you’re bound to hit when you visit France. We’d like to help you get from “what the heck?!” to “vive la difference!” in as short a…
When you head out on your next (or first, which, in that case, will definitely not be your last) vacation in Provence, after you make sure your bags are packed, your plane is on time, and all your cares in the world are placed neatly in the corner of your closet, remember to make reservations…
Our Untourist of the Week is Steve Savel, who with his wife Karen have gone on 20 different UnTours. We feature Steve during our France month, because they’ve gone to Alsace twice, but they really are the definitive Renaissance Untourists…they do it all! 1. “Tell us a little bit about your most recent Untour.” My…
In between helping my dad, Hal Taussig, get UnTours started in the 70’s and returning in the 00’s (once I had a family to raise and expose to international travel the way my father had done for me), I had another job. For about a decade, I taught cultural diversity workshops to corporate employees. It’s…
When planning today’s blog post about getting around Paris by bus, Dodge Amaral (our resident Paris Expert) shared this piece he received a few years ago from longtime Untourist Judith Wagner. She writes of a trip to Paris with her mother and how taking the buses gave her a much more Parisian experience. Enjoy! Riding…
1.”Tell us a little bit about your most recent Untour.” Our most recent UnTours trip was two weeks in Alsace last May/June. It was our fourth UnTours, the others being Provence, Andalusia, and Umbria, in that order over the past few years. Each trip was two weeks. They were all marvelous. We selected Alsace with…
It may be true what they say: “In Europe, one speaks with one’s hands and feet!” and it is certainly true in the gestures that accompany the beautiful French language. Of all the gestures, one has its own name: the Gallic shrug. It gets our vote for one of the most versatile and subtle ways…
Paris just feels right, doesn’t it? I was there this past fall for work and just fell in love with La Ville-Lumière all over again. In fact, in this month’s UnTours Eurozine, I wrote about how Paris makes me feel. Here’s an excerpt: “The first time I went to Paris, I was barely out of…
1 and 2. We asked Bill two questions:”Tell us a little bit about your most recent Untour.” and “What is your favorite UnTours memory?” and here’s his answer: Late in October 2009, we took an Air France flight out of Dulles to Paris. My wife needs assistance in walking, so we were placed on the…
From the Alsace region of France, a Tarte Flambée (or Flammeküeche in the Alsatian language, a dialect of German) is unique to this region. That being said, given it’s reliance on heavy cream, bacon and onions, one can discern it’s very French and German roots, like nearly everything else in Alsace! One legend is that…