In 1974, Portugal rose up, deposed it's dictatorship and embraced democracy. It was a heady time, filled with freedoms bottled up during over 40 years of totalitarian regime.

At about the same time, with Portugal's former colonies claiming their independence, shiploads of Portuguese soldiers and bureaucrats were returning home...

Politics in Greece is all about the ruling families, they say here. The vast majority of the country's leadership, from whichever party, has grown up in the same expensive neighborhoods, gone to the same exclusive schools, partied on the same boats and married into the same families. Their kids are...

It was Napoleon's troops who first brought it over, carting home the mysterious dried leaf called hashish from Egypt in the early 1800s. Soon, it was being sold in pharmacies across France and gaining adherents, especially among the bohemian intellectual crowd.

Jacques-Joseph Moreau, a medical doctor who was one of...

It's not the Anne Frank house they are here to see.

Wearing matching t-shirts emblazoned with a photo of their friend with a big slice of ham on his face and "Hamface's stag do," written on the back, these young men are in town for a good time.

What is...

MADRID, Spain.

One could be forgiven for being a little confused about what exactly is going on.

Colorful hand-painted signs -- thousands upon thousands of them -- are strung up from every tree, and pasted on every surface in and around the central square: "End the corruption!" they scream. "We...

Think "Ashram" and visions of a hermitage in, say, India, appear before your eyes. Perhaps you are already imagining the guru there -- gentle and quiet -- guiding you to an inner peace. You are surrounded by mountains. You feel tranquil. You feel spiritual. Om.

Now, type "The Ashram" into...

JUBA, South Sudan.

The Kibbutz movement is dying? Don't tell that to Emmanuel Logoro. "I have a dream," he says, sitting in his hut near a plastic Christmas tree he brought home from Eilat, and taking out a briefcase filled with diagrams about kibbutz structure. "I have plans."

Logoro,...

Coventry, England -- It's the day after Christmas and all of England is snug at home, admiring their holiday presents and eating leftover ham.

Except, of course, for the Jews. They are in Golders Green, schlepping suitcases through the foot-high snow to coaches that will take them north, to...

Valletta, Malta

In Malta, just like everywhere else in the world, not all marriages work out as planned.

Sometimes the couple grows apart. Sometimes it turns out they were never suited to begin with. Sometimes one of the two falls in love with someone else.

Just like other...

"Why Papua?" my mom asks me. And where is it anyway? I have no immediate answers. But a week later I have not only found it on a map and purchased all forms of cool camping paraphernalia (think quick dry towels and waterproof socks), but also come up with a...

Surf (v): to ride on the crest of a wave, typically toward the shore, while riding on a surfboard.

I cannot surf. Something about that spring up from the belly onto the board eludes me and I always end up losing my balance, crashing into the wave instead of...

Istanbul, Turkey -- The special welcome begins at Attaturk airport. The line to purchase visas snakes down the corridor and halfway to Iran. I stand dejectedly in it for a moment and then notice that while Americans and Europeans, along with almost every national I can make out, need the...