It used to be that New England was a zippy place to get around by train. White River Junction, now a moribund little town near Dartmouth College on the Connecticut River, saw fifty trains a day headed in all directions - south to Connecticut and New York, southeast to Boston, northwest to Montreal, northeast into the posh hotels of the White Mountains. The railroad here died …

Warsaw has a river running down its middle, an unassuming and turpid ribbon of water with a stairstep concrete enbankment along both of its banks, where you can often find retirees fishing (only people on fixed incomes or those close to death would dare eat fish from the Vistula). In between the embankment and the touristy downtown on the western side of the river runs a lo…

I was warned that it was utter madness to arrive in Warsaw on the last day of April, the day before Poland and nine other countries were slated to join the European Union. There was a meeting of the World Trade Organization under way, the city was filled to the gills with prime ministers, central bank heads and other luminaries, and fully half of the city center had been design…