Europe

REPORT ON GERMANY…

by Julie Skurdenis (part 2 of 3 on the Balkans)

When my husband, John, and I were in Roscommon, Ireland, in June 2011, we contacted Sarah Browne (Antogher Rd., Roscommon, Co. Roscommon; phone 0879439446) to set up a cooking experience featuring Irish food.

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the United States.) There are no restrictions on length. The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is GLENN SCHMIDT of Sun Prairie, WI:

It’s a beautiful afternoon in Sorrento, Italy, in November ’09 as we board the last ferry of the day to Naples.

Starting in Geneva, our small group of six took a train to Visp, then rode the Glacier Express for an hour through breathtaking Alpine valleys to Zermatt to see the Matterhorn. The mountain was awesome, but our most lingering memory is most likely to be Hotel Aristella (Steinmattweg 7, 3920 Zermatt, Switzerland; phone +41 0 27 967 20 41).

by Harriet Hughes; Alexandria, VA

We asked any of you who attended a concert, a recital or any music or dance performance or stage production outside of the US in the last couple of years to tell us how you learned about it and how you obtained tickets. We requested the following.

I am so grateful to ITN subscriber Nancy Anderson (Feb. ’07, pg. 67), who told of her excellent experiences with Mehmet Ozbalci, owner of Turfantastik (Millet cad. Inan Is Hani No. 5/610, Aksaray, Istanbul, Turkey; phone [90] 212 589 33 25). I had kept her article, as I knew I wanted to visit Turkey.

My partner, Carolyn, and I took a three-week trip to Switzerland, Bulgaria and Romania, Feb. 26-March 19, 2011, with Far West Ski Association (310/319-3757). This trip, like others organized by the FWSA about March every year, was part skiing and part touring.

Each week could be booked separately, but the cost for all three weeks was about $4,200 per person. That included transatlantic airfare from San Francisco or Los Angeles; 20 hotel nights in three- and four-star hotels; all breakfasts and most dinners, and a number of parties.

My friend Sue and I, both in our eighties, are always looking for a destination to which neither of us has been. Therefore, we were delighted when our travel agent recommended a cruise on the Douro River, which originates in northern Spain and flows west across the northern part of Portugal into the Atlantic at the city of Porto.