Welcome to our travel section!

t certain points in their lives, if not all their lives, most people experience the need to venture out, to see new places, interact with different people, experience other cultures and climates, taste new foods and listen to unfamiliar sounds.

So far, not even the most advanced electronic media can offer satisfactory substitutes for real travel, but the media can provide travel tips, just as people we know can. Most printed and electronic travel tips come from business enterprises or their supporters and have the interests of typical tourists or business travelers in mind. Not so the ones we aim to provide here. We provide them free of charge and without commercial considerations. However, we would be happy if some exposure resulted in economic benefits to less wealthy communities, without ecological and cultural detriments.

The Global Pilot Please click on an area on the map for a regional index. The Lowlands and their global extensions. Regions with recent Lowlands (mostly English) influences are not marked.

This presentation of Lowlands-L is about welcoming everyone to our home. But our home is our world; it includes the places where we live now, our ancestral homes, our spiritual homes, the places we have only passed through, but have been at home.

If you can’t physically travel to the places we talk about, we invite you to accompany us on virtual trips by browsing through our presentation, looking at the pictures and reading the descriptions. If you will, let us be your tour guides, and let your mind travel with us. You may learn a thing or two, and you are likely to have a good time doing so.

Can you identify the Lowlands languages? Click on the list to find the answers.

We here at Lowlands-L are happy to share with you some of the things we love, enjoy or find just interesting or remarkable. This includes places to visit, things that cannot be fully experienced and learned at home. We are particularly interested in places and things that get little or no coverage in guide books. If you find any of this interesting and enticing, we hope it will make your travel planning easier and your travel experiences enjoyable, out of the ordinary, educational and rewarding.

Our area of interest may seem rather limited, but it actually encompasses large regions of the world. Our focal point is what we call the “Lowlands.” These are the so-called “Low Countries” including French Flanders and Northern Germany — regions whose Germanic languages and cultures are closely related. Also included are regions to which these languages and cultures were transplanted and further developed in early times: the British Isles and the old Hanseatic settlements of the Nordic and Baltic Countries. Also included are various overseas locations whose languages and cultures are partly derived from the Lowlands (for instance North America, Southern Africa, Australia, New Zealand and various former Belgian, British and Dutch colonies). We are also interested in “intruding” and neighboring languages that have taken on Lowlands color, such as Jutish, Kashubian, Walloon and Northern German.

And all of these and related ones are by and large the regions we hope to cover in this travel section.

The bits and pieces of information from different people gathered here are not meant to be exhaustive and authoritative. They are subjective tips and descriptions for you to browse through and hopefully enjoy. You may not agree with some of them. We as an organization can not vouch for their accuracy and fairness, nor do we stand behind every opinion expressed here. Furthermore, since nothing ever remains the same, some of the information may be outdated. At any rate, we hope that it will at least help you come up with new travel ideas and will draw your attention to regions and places you would not have considered otherwise. For instance, large numbers of overseas travelers visit Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Southern Germany, perhaps Berlin, and they typically skip Northern Germany even though it has much to offer. It isn’t what especially North Americans have come to expect Germany to be like. And this is the interesting part. The original language and culture of that region wasn’t German. Its home-grown language and traditions have more in common with those of the Low Countries, and some of us would argue they do belong to the Low Countries, the “Lowlands.”

Not only members of Lowlands-L but anyone may submit travel tips and descriptions for inclusion here. Those who do so are welcome to add a few words about themselves. By submitting any of the mentioned material they give us permission to share them here.

Please read our Submission page for details and ideas.

If you wish to comment on any works or on the travel section in general, please send us a message with the subject line “LL-L Travels” and let us know whether or not we may publish it online. We will do so if your comments are relevant, fair and non-abusive. Please feel free to use any language you prefer when you write to us.

If you are a publisher, anthologist, agent, curator or researcher and are interested in us and/or in any specific person or work, please send us a message, and we will assist you in any way we can.

Reinhard (“Ron”) F. Hahn
Co-Founder & Chief Editor, Lowlands-L