Sports
Six Nations Rugby Tournament and Learn the Basics
This coming weekend sees the 4th round of matches in the annual Six Nations rugby tournament, contested by the main rugby playing nations in Europe. The four British countries are joined by France and, since 2000, Italy (prior to that it was cunningly known as the Five Nations tournament). The format is pretty straightforward; over Read more…
Highland Games – Inside What Inspired the Modern Olympics
Recently London hosted something of an extended Sports Day, which you might have seen mentioned on TV. Anyway, in 1889 Baron Pierre de Coubertin was visiting the World’s Fair in Paris (which the Eiffel Tower was built as an entrance way to) and his attention was drawn to one of the areas which featured Read more…
17 Good to Know Cultural Differences Before You Travel
An esteemed American, following a visit to the Netherlands some years back, was back at home and regaling his co-worker with tales of cultural differences he had encountered. His summary was simple, “it’s the little things.” Recently, a few Tour Directors in Europe were asked to come up with a few cultural differences about which Read more…
Cheese Rolling in Gloucestershire, Would You Chase It?
As you may have noticed, people in Britain have recently celebrated the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. There was a two day public holiday added on to the weekend as well as various events up and down the country. Also, as you might expect, various products attempted to get in on the event and used traditional labelling Read more…
Euro 2012 Taking Over This Summer
Just a couple of weeks ago I posted on the rather fabulous Eurovision song contest. This pan-European spectacle (won by Sweden this time around) is a lot of fun and offers a bit of light-hearted competition. It also teaches us that in Lithuania they are not big on metaphor as the singer wore a blindfold Read more…
Eurovision in 2012 and Engelbert Humperdinck?
Just last week, May 15th, was the anniversary of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) which brought to an end the Thirty Years War (which, up to that point was probably known as the Twenty-Nine Years and Counting War). Anyway, the treaty did away with much of the power of the Holy Roman Empire and returned Read more…
Travel to Europe in June for Midsummer Celebrations
If you want to join in with something a little different from the normal EF tour day then hopefully you will bump into some of the following while touring Europe in June. Midsummer celebrations – Watching sunrise on the longest day at Stonehenge is quite the experience but not always the most practical to arrange. Read more…
Interview With EF’s Johann Fulks
Once again we have asked someone from behind the scenes at EF to complete a travel survey that appears regularly in the Independent newspaper. Johann Fulks grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He has worked for EF Tours since 2003 in a variety of roles within the Operations Department in Lucerne, Switzerland, most recently as Director Read more…
Champions League Final in London
I just checked last night’s baseball scores and notice that my team lost. I follow the Chicago Cubs and they lost to the Boston Red Sox, who I am also supposed to like as I lived there and EF operate from just across the water in Cambridge and I used to go to Fenway Park. Read more…
Where haven’t you been?
“Paul is a tour director who has been to a ridiculous number of countries on an even more absurd number of tours …” is something I see a lot when my bio appears for any EF event (not a problem, because I wrote it). Most tour directors have been to a lot of countries. In Read more…
