Marilee Taussig

I have had a double career at Untours, with graduate school in between. First I was a member of the founding few in the 70s and 80s, working alongside my mom and dad, Norma and Hal Taussig, in Untours' one-room office. Then I set off for a grad program in organizational psychology, eventually writing and training in the corporate sector on the topic of cultural diversity. In 2001 I returned to Untours, in part for the fun of showing my daughter the wider world, thanks to the occasional international assignment.

I was born on my mom and dad's cattle ranch outside Kremmling, CO. When I was five, my dad gave up ranching and moved to the Philadelphia area to pursue a teaching career, bringing the family along. While I've had significant sojourns to the Midwestern US, California, and Europe, Philadelphia has remained the geographical center for me. What I call "home" is a bigger question, made less clear by the permanent case of wanderlust I caught when my Dad took my Mom and me to Europe when I was 14. We traveled all around the continent, while Dad home-schooled me and researched a book on his sabbatical year. I'm not sure I ever could choose one home after that year of falling in love with so many different ones: West Sussex, Berlin, Copenhagen, Switzerland, Venice, and Paris are just a few places we stopped and rented apartments. That year was the birth of Untours and my permanent crush on Europe.

Of all my travels, I remember most distinctly one spring morning's solitary hike in the Verzasca Valley in Swiss Ticino, especially sitting on the sun-drenched enormous rocks in the Verzasca River. Or maybe it's the light in Provence. Or the castle in Bavaria in June, when the roses climb up four stories of the inner courtyard. Or, or, or...it's so hard to choose between so many memories.

I'm a culture junkie. Something about discovering the intimate, under-the-surface codes that come with each culture draws me. There are secret recipes and rituals of how to get along as human beings that differ among cultures—like leaving the tea-pouring to the hostess in England; never, ever littering in Switzerland; or always saying 'bonjour' to the French storeowner. Learning to use each "culture code" makes travel endlessly fascinating for me.