Americans celebrate fall with Halloween, but Germans have St. Martin. Children carry lit lanterns in processions through the dark, singing. It sounds so lovely, until you’re the one out there battling the cold wind to keep the lantern lit. This...

Halloween used to be unknown in Germany. That has changed and there are now pumpkins for sale on every street corner and sometimes kids go trick-or-treating too.

The English language has its downsides. But when you compare it to German, French and Spanish it suddenly looks surprisingly efficient and user-friendly.

It’s that time of year again: The leaf blowers are back! They add to an increasingly noisy world, but it’s also possible to create pleasant sounds or eliminate them altogether.

I thought my French was good enough to get me around southern France. But language skills were not enough.