Destination: Europe
Jan Morris Reveals her Favorite Cities
by Michael Yessis | 11.19.09 | 3:41 PM ET
She fields this question in the Guardian: What is her favorite of them all?
Dear God, what a question! To my mind cities are distillations of human life itself, in all its nuances, with all its contradictions and anomalies, changing from one year to another, changing with the weather, changing with history, changing with the state of the world, changing above all in one’s own personal responses. How can I have a favourite? Sometimes I prefer one city, sometimes another. Inconstancy governs my responses to cities—fidelity in personal matters, promiscuity in civic affairs.
Morris does have a ready answer, though, when asked about her least favorite city: Indianapolis. (Via @ben_coop)
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Yahoo! BuzzWorld Travel Watch: Demonstrations in Venezuela, Clashes in Namibia and More
by Larry Habegger | 11.19.09 | 2:10 PM ET
Larry Habegger rounds up global travel news
Astara: ‘The Tijuana of the Caspian’
by Eva Holland | 11.19.09 | 10:55 AM ET
The Atlantic’s Peter Savodnik has a fascinating, brief dispatch from the Azerbaijan-Iran border, where a small Azerbaijani town has become a sort of Sin City for Iranians looking to escape the strictures of the Islamic Republic for awhile. He writes:
Books, DVDs, fashions, and—most important—ideas that are inaccessible in Iran are ubiquitous in Azerbaijan. Iranians line up daily to cross the Astara River to buy and sell jeans, chickens, bras, laptops—and often sex and schnapps and heroin. This commerce, combined with cultural curiosity and shared Azeri bloodlines, has transformed Astara into the Tijuana of the Caspian.
Remaining Venetians Stage Mock Funeral for the City
by Eva Holland | 11.16.09 | 3:04 PM ET
Frustrated residents carried an empty coffin to the mayor’s office this weekend, in a mock funeral procession designed to highlight the city’s dwindling full-time population. Venetian officials responded by calling the funeral stunt “premature”—not the most forceful rebuttal I’ve ever heard, and none too comforting for those of us who’d like to see the city live for a long time yet.
In Defense of British Food, Redux
by Eva Holland | 11.16.09 | 10:41 AM ET
I went there a few months back. Now, Matador Nights has joined the cause, with an excellent starter guide for anyone we’ve convinced to give British food a fair shot.
The Death of the Idyll
by Frank Bures | 11.13.09 | 10:54 AM ET
Frank Bures on "The Wisdom of Tuscany" and the last, dying gasp of a travel book genre
Looking East: 20 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall
by Rick Steves | 11.11.09 | 5:08 PM ET
On the delights of the former Eastern Bloc
Video You Must See: The Northern Lights in Time Lapse
by Eva Holland | 11.11.09 | 3:44 PM ET
Photo You Must See: ‘Between the Crosses, Row on Row’
by World Hum | 11.11.09 | 2:32 PM ET
REUTERS/Luke MacGregor A Union Jack is seen among the crosses and poppies of Westminster Abbey’s Field of Remembrance. Remembrance Day services were held at the Abbey this past Sunday.
Finding T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’
by Eva Holland | 11.10.09 | 5:22 PM ET
The Guardian’s Stephen Moss visits the promenade shelter where Eliot is supposed to have written part of his most famous poem. The result is pretty grim:
There is no commemorative plaque, several panes of glass are broken or missing, and the windows on one side are emblazoned with the words FALSE TEETH in large green letters. It seems a careless way to treat the place in which the greatest poem of the 20th century was written.
Careless, true—but also strangely appropriate, don’t you think? (Via The Book Bench)
Travel Song of the Day: ‘Looking for Freedom’ by David Hasselhoff
by Eva Holland | 11.09.09 | 11:40 AM ET
The Day the Wall Came Down
by Stefanie Michaels | 11.09.09 | 10:39 AM ET
iStockPhoto The wall fell 20 years ago today. Stefanie Michaels visited Berlin recently to hear a personal recollection.
Photo You Must See: Where the Berlin Wall Once Stood
by World Hum | 11.09.09 | 10:17 AM ET
A line marks the path where the wall once cut through the streets. It’s been twenty years today since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Photo You Must See: Catching Air in Switzerland
by World Hum | 11.06.09 | 12:07 PM ET
REUTERS/Denis Balibouse A snowboarder performs a jump during a halfpipe event at the Snowboard World Cup in Saas Fee, Switzerland.
‘Ivory Coast = France = Japan’
by Michael Yessis | 11.06.09 | 10:02 AM ET
That equation comes from a James Fallows post in the Atlantic, and he’s talking about language habits.
That is: in France and Japan, the deep-down assumption is that the language is pure and difficult, that foreigners can’t really learn it, and that one’s attitude toward their attempts is either French hauteur or the elaborately over-polite and therefore inevitably patronizing Japanese response to even a word or two in their language. “Nihongo jouzu! Your Japanese is so good!”
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