From 1982 until 1992, I visited London quite often. At least four extended stays in the city and the surrounding countryside. Twice, to cover Wimbledon, from start to finish, in 1985 and 1986. However, before today, the last time I was in London was 1993, and that was soccer-related, too. I was on my way […]

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A fun discovery at the breakfast spread, here at the Grandhotel Lienz in Austria: The Kleine Zeitung. That translates as Little Newspaper, and nothing could be more direct. This is a quarter-size newspaper, in one section. Like a tabloid, except about half the sheet size. (I placed a Bic pen on the paper, in the […]

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I didn’t think they existed — Lutherans in Austria. But when I was walking back to the hotel from the soccer training ground a few days ago, the bells were banging, on the stroke of 7 p.m, at a church across the street, and I decided to take a closer look. The ivy-covered church (interior, […]

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I am in the city of Lienz, Austria. Not Linz, Austria, which is a fairly big town near the German border. This is Lienz, a skiing village of about 10,000 people here in the Tyrol region of the country. Just north of the border with Italy, actually. I am here to do some stories on […]

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Sharjah is the San Bernardino of the UAE. Lots of hard-working people there, but many of them without much money, and if a really goofy story happens in the UAE, it’s a fairly safe bet to suggest: “And it happened in Sharjah, right?” Just as in San Bernardino or, maybe, Vernon or even Compton in […]

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Andy Murray is in the final at Wimbledon. This is news, in the queen’s country. Mainly because Liz the Deuce is 86 and seems to have been alive for ever … but even she was only a girl of 11 when Britain last put a man in the Wimby final, that being the wonderfully named […]

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The National opened for business in April of 2008, and the newspaper had a website from the start. Of course. But in the past year or so, efforts to get readers to the site have intensified, and more people are involved on the web side of things, and page views have gone up dramatically. So, […]

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The UAE has two cities of real significance: –The political capital of the country, Abu Dhabi. –The economic and tourist capital, Dubai. As you might expect, the cities are rivals. Residents of each are likely to defend their home city and belittle the other. And this applies across the economic spectrum. Emiratis of the two […]

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A vanity among residents of greater Los Angeles is that they breath the world’s worst air. Not even close. It might have been true for a stretch in the 1950s and 1960s, but strict controls on automobile emissions have turned SoCal air from horrible to just bad — and that doesn’t cut it among cities […]

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I have watched nearly every minute of England’s Euro 2012 campaign, and after looking at them for 270 minutes, what most impresses me about them is this: They really are not very good.

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