Sweets can stir up feelings and evoke memories of particular times of the year in a way that other foods can’t. This is particularly true in Naples, where there is a dessert for every holiday: struffoli (small fried dough balls doused in honey) and cassata (sponge cake with ricotta and candied fruit) call to mind lively and colorful Christmas celebrations, while the pastiera (a cake filled with ricotta cheese, eggs and custard) reminds us of the exuberance of Easter. While those sweets are certainly indulgent, they don’t hold a candle to chiacchiere (a sweet crispy pastry sprinkled with powdered sugar) and sanguinaccio (black chocolate pudding), which immediately bring to mind the most eccentric and unruly party of the year: Carnival.

After an awful 2016 punctuated by bomb attacks and a failed coup attempt, Istanbulites were clinging to the desperate hope that tensions would ease in the new year. Then, shortly after bottles had been popped and toasts had been made, news suddenly poured in that the city’s ritziest nightclub had been sprayed with bullets in a shocking and tragic attack that claimed the lives of 39 people. Though the year started off with the kind of bang I wasn’t expecting, things have calmed down in 2017. This has afforded Istanbulites the opportunity to spend less time worried about their own personal safety and more time focused on the still-troubling political situation that clouds Turkey today.

The Neapolitan pastry landscape is dominated by three sweet treats: sfogliatella, a shell-shaped pastry with a variety of fillings; pastiera, a type of tart flavored with orange flower water and most commonly served at Easter; and babà, a small yeast cake soaked in a liquor syrup. The first two cakes were born and raised in Naples, thanks to the gifted pastry-making skills of the nuns and monks in the Neapolitan convents. But babàs, although considered by many Neapolitans to be homegrown, are not, in fact, an indigenous sweet – our beloved baba was imported from France, where they were invented by a Polish gourmet.

On the night of June 22, a fire is lit at the top of Canigó mountain in the Pyrenees. All through the night, hundreds of volunteer torchbearers carry the flame to towns and villages throughout the four provinces of Catalonia. The arrival of the flame the next day signals the start of the Revetlla de Sant Joan (St. John’s Eve celebration). Bonfires, firecrackers and fireworks light up the night, and people while away the hours drinking, eating and dancing in public squares and beaches or at parties. Fire, noisemaking and dancing are the main ingredients of St. John’s Eve, the Christian adaptation of ancient pagan celebrations of the summer solstice.

Think of Ramadan, which just began in many parts of the world, as a kind of monthlong biathlon that consists of an all-day race to beat back the hunger and thirst of fasting, followed by an all-night marathon of eating and drinking in order to fortify the body for the next day’s fast. In recent years in Turkey, iftar, the traditional break fast meal that used to mostly consist of some dates and a freshly baked round of Ramadan pide, has started to become an increasingly trendy affair, with ministers, businessmen and regular people trying to make an impression by hosting ever more lavish meals.

The afternoon was gray, drizzly and, even for a Good Friday, doleful. So the brightly colored sign in the restaurant window – had someone scooped up all the highlighters at the stationery store? – shone out all the more. "FANESCA," it announced in bold block letters. We hadn't given thought to fanesca since we read an account by writer Calvin Trillin, some years earlier, of his quest for this Easter-season soup. After all, we had no plans to follow Trillin to the cobbled streets of Cuenca, or to anywhere else in Ecuador, anytime soon. But we remembered the name fanesca, and we stepped inside the restaurant for a restorative bowl. The sign in the window was true to its word: “Deliciosa!”

Julian Ramirez started out at the age of 14 as a shop boy at a busy bakery in Colonia Guerrero in 1959, then a bustling blue-collar neighborhood, easily connected to downtown by streetcar. Back then, at La Antigua del Guerrero, he learned the business: wiping windows, sweeping up and eventually making deliveries on his bike. One nibble at a time, he picked up the art of cake- and bread-making from the shop’s master bakers. Those trade secrets would serve him over the next 63 years and beyond as they pass on to his kids and theirs. Many of Mexico’s classic bakeries like the Guerrero operation fell one by one with the introduction of mass-produced bread, tearing at a staple of communities across the capital.

Close to Jardim do Príncipe Real, the singular, beautiful park built in the 18th century above one of many underground cisterns of Lisbon’s public water system, is a cozy, rustic Portuguese eatery defying – while also benefiting from – the trends of its surroundings. Tascardoso is a typical tasca often frequented by tourists in the increasingly chic Principe Real neighbourhood, which tops one of the city’s seven hills and commands that soft Lisbon light until the last moment of the day. While fad food and French-owned business ventures abound, the restaurant’s popularity has risen with the booming interest in the area: it is especially difficult to get a table at Tascadorso for dinner.

Located just beneath Istanbul’s first Bosphorus Bridge in the Anatolian side district of Üsküdar is a secluded slice of Trabzon, the Black Sea province known for its otherworldly lush green forests, hot-tempered inhabitants and distinctly deep cuisine. The Trabzon Kültür Derneği (Trabzon Cultural Association) is something of a clubhouse for folks who grew up in the province and later moved to Istanbul for school and work. Founded in 1970 and having changed locations a number of times, the association set up shop in Üsküdar’s Beylerbeyi neighborhood at the turn of the millennium and crafted a miniature version of home in the heart of Turkey’s largest, ever-sprawling city.

Ramadan fasters in Istanbul may not love the endless daylight hours in summer nor the susuzluk (no water), but when the reward is a leisurely iftar under the trees on Kadinlar Pazar, the pedestrianized market known as Little Siirt (named after the southeastern Turkish city where many of the local shop and restaurant owners hail from), it must surely seem worth it. A February iftar would not be quite the same, at least not in Turkey. As we walked through the twilight to Siirt Şeref Büryan Kebap Salonu at the end of the square last Saturday, hundreds of fasters waited in front of cling-filmed plates of iceberg lettuce and ciǧ köfte for the Ramadan cannon to signal “breakfast” time.

When Edu, owner of the Barcelona wine bar Celler Cal Marino, was growing up in the 1980s in the neighborhood of Sant Antoni, he would confuse Rafel Jordana with the iconic German soccer player and coach Bern Schuster (“Schuster is in the bar, daddy!”). Jordana, owner of the bodega that bears his name, is not so famous internationally, but he is undoubtedly one of the icons of Sant Antoni and of the old-school bodega-bar culture in Barcelona. La Bodega d’en Rafel has served as a location for a number of films and television series (such as “Cites,” the Catalan version of “Dates”), a subject of many articles and profiles and an important touchstone for a larger community that connects Barcelona locals with their identity.

Before thousands of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants arrived in Rio at the beginning of the 20th century, colonists organized the old city according to geography, chance and Spanish and Portuguese planning conventions. This meant stores in the same category – ironware, shoes, musical instruments – were grouped together, sometimes even allotted their own street. If you needed wholesale fabric, you headed to a different road than if you needed a new kitchen pot. When hard fortunes amidst the breakup of the Ottoman Empire brought residents of the regions surrounding Syria and Lebanon to Rio, many put down roots in an area then called “Little Turkey” on Alfândega Street, near the port

The popular saying that Rio is known more for its bar culture than for its café culture has serious counter-evidence in the old city. Beginning in 1808, when Portuguese emperor Dom João fled Napoleon and relocated his imperial court to Rio, European architects, businessmen and intellectuals followed him and attempted to show that their society could thrive in a tropical land. Many stayed on after the royal family returned to Portugal in 1822, and over the course of the 19th century filled the old city’s cobblestone streets with neoclassical row houses, Baroque revival churches and a Beaux-Arts theater. Into this mix, Frenchman Charles Cavé founded a bakery in 1860 in a pink Victorian building as frosted in white trim as the pastries it purveyed.

“It is betrayal,” As’ad Salloura declared from behind his giant wooden desk at the Salloura factory, tucked away on the outskirts of Istanbul. From here, he runs the transplanted 150-year-old sweets empire that is his family’s namesake. It had been three months since he’d last seen Ahmed, his most cherished employee, Rashed, another integral part of the staff, and two others. “No one told me they were leaving…I found out by chance maybe four or five hours before they left [for Europe],” he said, his thick dimpled fingers thumping the table as he spoke between sips of cigarettes and mate, an herbal caffeinated tea popular in Syria.

It was a hot, humid June in Istanbul. A deadline hovered over Ahmed. He gave himself three months to make the biggest decision of his life: Would he stay? Or would he go? The reasons to leave Istanbul far outnumbered the ones to stay. He was working day and night for a salary that barely made ends meet. The long hours weren’t new – his life in Aleppo was work, 15 hours a day, seven days a week. But unlike in Turkey, Ahmed made more than enough in Syria: he bought a brand new house for his family just before the war; his wife, Laila, was a respected housewife, pushing her kids to study; his two older kids, Rubi and Ruseel – little Rivana wasn’t even born yet – went to good schools. Rubi even had a private English tutor.