Arriving in Paris without your luggage might seem like a huge damper for the start of a mini–Euro trip. But with the sights and sounds of the City of Lights, all thoughts of my lost …

Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture is not an esoteric piece of music. The overture is quite popular, in and of itself. The overture is not a freestanding piece, though. It was written as incidental music for a …

The island of Lanzarote, part of Spain’s Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, is for many budget tourists synonymous with cookie-cutter resort towns and all-inclusive holiday packages. The truth is that the island’s …

Let’s get a little crazy and combine a summer piece of music with the esoteric pick of the week. The power of this concept is overwhelming me. It’s the perfect summer storm. Faure composed his …

Berlin was always on our list of places to go someday, but the timing just never seemed right for one reason or another. As it turned out, May 2015 was the 70th anniversary of the …

Fresh from an April junket with his wife in the Bavarian Alps paid for by nonprofit foundations backed by German industrialists, House Democrat Juan Vargas embarked alone on another free foreign journey in May, thanks …

On a steep narrow country road 3,700 feet above sea level, my travel partner accelerated the engine, heading toward the sound of alpine bells. As herdsmen rallied the cows to graze on the undulating pastures …

Lamb’s Players fine production of West Side Story raises a question. The musical based Tony and Maria on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. But where did the Bard’s star-crossed lovers come from? And were they real? …

Mozart’s Haffner Symphony is a fairly famous piece of music, but who the hell was Haffner? Haffer got not just the symphony but also a 55-minute-long serenade. That’s about 90 minutes of music by Mozart …

Poland is the forerunner in the Eastern European craft brewing world. Serbia and Bulgaria are right behind.

Some men there are whose love becomes true only after long converse, much contemplation, and extended familiarity. Such a one is likely to persist and to be steadfast in his affection, untouched by the passage …

Dear Hipster: What would be the ultimate hipster vacation destination for this summer? — Deb, Golden Hill Well, until recently that might have stumped me enough to cop something lamely ironic, and overzealously punctuated, like, …

Last year, Belgium celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax. His birthplace and important milestones occurred in the Wallonia (French-flavored) part of the country. It’s his inventions …

Rhodes is probably best known as the island once home to the Colossus of Rhodes, a 98-foot-high statue of the Greek god Helios and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Today, the …

My friend Saba and I decided to take a trip outside of Istanbul to Ağva, a vacation village in the mountains, by the Black Sea. Saba is a native Turk, but she majored in American …