Hospitality

The Sarajevo ‘War Hostel’ takes tourists back in time to a dark period in Europe’s resent history during one of its bloodiest sieges. Tourists passing through Bosnia-Herzegovina are given the opportunity to experience the siege of the Bosnian capital during the Balkan conflict in the 1990s. Guests will spend their time in war-time conditions, sleeping on sponge mattresses under military blankets and reading newspaper clippings by candlelight. RT.com reports: The hostel is run by a family who survived the three-year-long siege.

Apologies for my absence for a while, but I spent the past four days in Iceland, one of my wife’s favorite places on earth, celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary. We had a delightful time, traveling by super-jeep into the interior to visit the sanctuary of Landmannalaugar, hiking across a glacier, soaking in the ubiquitous geothermally-heated pools, and generally relaxing. The only thing we didn’t do that we hoped to was see the northern lights — they’re temperamental performers, and they didn’t feel like showing off for us I guess.

Two recent reports from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) show that efforts to encourage Americans to lose weight aren't working.

In one study of more than 5,400 adults, the results show that 33% of US adults are overweight, and 38% of US adults are obese. Breaking the data down a bit further, the report writes that "the age-adjusted prevalence of obesity in 2013-2014 was 35% among men, and 40.4% among women." Additionally, more than 5% of men and nearly 10% of women came in morbidly obese.