Travelogues and Reflections

This book is about the travels of Laszlo Gyermek, MD, PhD, a retired physician and researcher who has immigrated to the USA from Hungary in 1957 after the defeat of the uprising against the Soviet occupation and oppression of his native country. The source of his travelogues has been the numerous trips he has taken from the United States to more than sixty countries, particularly in the last three decades, which encompass mostly recreational trips/vacations, reflecting the author's wide-ranging interests in geographic and cultural explorations all over the world, but particularly in Europe, where he has established two regional residences: one in Southern France in 1983 and another one in Budapest, Hungary, in 2000. From these bases he originated many of these trips. The book is narrated in a unique, perhaps scattered and unusual, style, considering the many destinations in different time frames, often repeatedly, and covering the common, practical aspects of today's travels into foreign lands: from ticket purchases to challenges during travel-e.g., jet lag and other health problems. There is varied information from many social, economical, educational, and artistic aspects about many European countries first and, in the second half of the book, encountered in several overseas countries on five continents. The last part of the book deals with episodes in selected cities in the United States and abroad, often with a humoristic veneer. In essence, the reader is presented with a lot of material and with analytically aspired, but often critical and subjective, stories. Still, the author believes that the contents are worth going through and pondering about.