For many years, it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months, travel the world, through coups d'etat, assassinations, famines, massacres and tsunamis, and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.

American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.

This June, I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. For many years, my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event for the past seven years, my daughter, Claudine, has been my cooking partner on stage.