Did you ever read about those little cell-like hotels they have in Japan? Oddly fascinating, aren’t they? Now, if you’ve always wanted to experience something similar, you don’t have to trek all the way to Asia to do so. On Sunday, July 1, the Yotel will debut at London’s Gatwick Airport.  

A friend and colleague kindly provided me with an interesting flier from DB Reisebüro, with an offer that seems tailor-made to indecisive types.

Seeking reader input to a list of the best festivals in Germany.

The season of the fest is well upon us. If you’ve lived in Germany for a while, you already have your favorites. If you’re new in town, be sure to get out and experience one if not several over the next few months. Because not all fests are created equal.

There’s something magical about summer nights in the far northern latitudes, when shadows grow long and a dusky yellow twilight descends, but true darkness never really takes over. While the so-called White Nights are most commonly associated with St. Petersburg, there are a handful of other wonderful cities where you can experience something similar. If you can get away at short notice, there’s no better time than now to head to places such as Bergen, Norway, Tallinn, Estonia or Helsinki, Finland.

If you’re based in England and always wanted to strain your neck watching the cyclists in the world’s most famous bike race whipping by you, this is your lucky year. Each year the first leg of the Tour de France starts in a different location, either in France or another country. This year, it’s coming to London and Kent, with Saturday, July 7 as the big kickoff and prologue to the race.

So you thought you had no chance of witnessing that historic event, the first-ever NFL game to be played outside of North America. The game between the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants takes place at London’s Wembley Stadium on Oct. 28. The first batch of 40,000 tickets was snapped up in just 90 minutes, and while a second batch will go on sale June 28, the only people eligible to purchase them will be the winners of a lottery who had first expressed their interest in tickets at www.nfluk.com when the game was announced in February.

School’s out for the summer! Surely there are many little faces wearing big grins these days. Now comes the agony of choice -- where to go on a family vacation. Ideas, anyone?

Our little Frankfurt Hahn Airport is all grown up. Or so it seemed to me on Memorial Day weekend, when we flew to the UK on Ryanair. At the risk of sounding like an old coot, I remember the good old days….