Destination: Europe
English Everywhere
by Eric Lucas | 01.12.09 | 8:55 AM ET
REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom It's the universal, global, one-size-fits-all language. Eric Lucas says it's not enough.
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Yahoo! BuzzMorning Links: Museum of Broken Relationships, GlobalPost and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.09 | 8:27 AM ET
- GlobalPost begins its “bold journey to redefine international news for the digital age.”
- Two Japanese restaurants split the $100,000 bill on a bluefin tuna. Yumiko Ono says it tasted “smooth, succulent and a little on the light side.”
- Turns out cities impair our brains.
- More than 200 people are feared dead after a ferry sank off Indonesia’s Sulawesi island.
- During the last two years an estimated 1.5 billion passengers flew on U.S. airlines. Not one of them died as a result of a crash.
- The Los Angeles Times tried out Row44, “a soon-to-debut satellite Wi-Fi system” for airlines.
- Daisann McLaine tells why she always visits supermarkets when she travels.
- Kristen Wiig and Neil Patrick Harris played long-nailed air traffic controllers on Saturday Night Live.
- Alexandr Vondra, the Czech Deputy Prime Minister, says “art is to arouse emotions.” A map of European cliches and stereotypes commissioned by the Czech Republic is succeeding on that count.
- The Las Vegas Mob museum is stirring up controversy in Washington, D.C.
- The Museum of Broken Relationships—“an exhibition of the relics of failed love”—opened in Singapore last week. It’s perfect for anyone who wants to see “an axe used by a woman to break up her ex-girlfriend’s furniture, along with the broken furniture.”
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World Hum Travel Movie Club: ‘Mamma Mia!’
by Eva Holland, Eli Ellison | 01.09.09 | 5:18 PM ET
Here’s the set-up: Bride-to-be Sophie has three possible biological fathers, and all three have come from around the world—along with an international cast of oddball friends—to her destination wedding on a tiny Greek Island. The result? The year’s biggest travel-musical-comedy.
Since it sashayed onto the big screen this past summer, “Mamma Mia!”—the movie adaptation of the hit ABBA-themed musical—has smashed sales records and garnered some award nominations, too. World Hum Travel Movie Clubbers Eli Ellison and Eva Holland took the disc for a spin.
Europe’s Deep Freeze
by World Hum | 01.09.09 | 2:46 PM ET
REUTERS/Alexandra Beier Winter weather blasted across Europe this past week, creating frigid scenes across the continent.
See the full photo slideshow »
My Big Fat Greek Bus Tour
by Eva Holland | 01.08.09 | 1:39 PM ET
Here comes the latest Hollywood Euro-romance. Nia Vardalos, the writer/star of the surprise hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding, is returning to the big screen—and this time, instead of an awkward, unhappy Greek-American travel agent, she’s playing an awkward, unhappy Greek-American tour guide.
My Life in Ruins is set to hit theaters in early May, and stars Vardalos as Georgia, a dissatisfied tour guide who has to re-discover her mojo on the antiquities bus tour from hell. (Richard Dreyfuss co-stars as Irv, the wise and supportive tourist.) Sure, it looks to be a re-tread of the last flick—albeit with more Ugly American jokes this time around—but I’m looking forward to it nonetheless.
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was an unexpected bit of magic a few years back. If Vardalos can channel some of that wit, heart and self-deprecation again, she’ll already be two steps ahead of most romantic comedies.
Check out the trailer after the jump.
Kraftwerk Cofounder: Auto-Gone
by Eva Holland | 01.08.09 | 10:34 AM ET
The Telegraph is reporting that band co-founder (and Krautrock pioneer) Florian Schneider has left Kraftwerk after four decades. It’s just the excuse we need to cue up the band’s 1974 hit song “Autobahn,” which is meant to re-create the experience of highway driving:
Morning Links: Walking Across the U.S., Rebranding France and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.08.09 | 9:29 AM ET
- Video: Slate interviews “an Algerian man who just walked alone across the United States with nothing but $217 and a backpack.”
- Some “serious soul-searching in French tourism circles” helped inspire the country’s new rebranding campaign.
- Mapped: 50 United States and their Mottos. Intelligent Travel talks to the map’s creator, Emily Wick.
- Rick Steves in Iran: The preview.
- Cheap flights abound for the New Year, but, by historical standards, they’re not as cheap as you might think.
- Peter Hessler takes a road trip to the Tibetan Plateau. (It’s only an abstract, unless you’re a New Yorker subscriber.)
- USA Today looks at Twitter and travel.
- Want more Twitter in your life? Maybe attend a Twestival.
- Cunard reveals its 2009 Queen Mary 2 voyages with “literary luminaries” on board. Among the writers on the transatlantic crossings: Kathryn Harrison and Oscar Hijuelos. It is my duty to tell you that if you’re interested in going, you should first read this (pdf).
Where We’re Eating: New York, Czech Republic
by David Farley | 01.07.09 | 4:46 PM ET
Nation Branding for your iPod? Canada Votes for a National Playlist.
by Eva Holland | 01.07.09 | 11:52 AM ET
Call it change you can listen to: CBC Radio is hoping to get some made-in-Canada music onto incoming President Obama’s iPod.
The Canadian broadcaster is accepting nominations for a “definitive Canadian playlist”—dubbed “49 Songs from North of the 49th Parallel”—to be unveiled on Obama’s inauguration day. “One of the best ways to know Canada is through the depth and breadth of our artistic expression,” said a CBC representative. “We’re excited about the new president, and we want him to be excited about us.”
So how do you go about compiling a definitive national playlist? CBC producers will whittle the suggestions from the public down to a manageable 100 most-nominated songs, and then online voting will cut the shortlist down to the final 49.
Sure, the project seems a tad goofy—realistically, Obama will have bigger things to worry about on Jan. 20 than whether he prefers Stompin’ Tom Connors or Gordon Lightfoot—but it got me thinking about music and national identity.
Morning Links: T-Shirt Justice, Route 66’s International Appeal and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.06.09 | 8:35 AM ET
- The TSA and JetBlue settled with Raed Jarrar for $240,000, more than two years after he was forced to remove a T-shirt with the words “We Will Not Be Silent” in both Arabic and English before boarding a flight.
- Have centuries-old diaries of a “British explorer who saved the real-life Robinson Crusoe” been found?
- Route 66: It’s huge in Belgium and Sweden and the Czech Republic and Norway and…
- A Moscow to Atlanta flight ended up in Newfoundland because of an unruly passenger.
- Air India dismissed “overweight” flight attendants.
- New York City’s 86th Street subway station: It’s “the noisiest, if not the most unlikely, museum in the city.”
- A happy third birthday to Perceptive Travel.
- Chris Patten on “the joys of an Asia-Pacific book tour.”
- Authorities interrupted a German pair’s destination wedding. That’s apparently what happens when the couple consists of a 5-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl who try to take off for Africa while their parents are sleeping.
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Innsbruck, Austria
by World Hum | 01.05.09 | 12:34 PM ET
REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
Austria's Gregor Schlierenzauer takes flight during the third event of the four-hills ski jumping tournament yesterday in Innsbruck.
Morning Links: Stilwell Road, the Delta Queen and More
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.09 | 8:14 AM ET
Photo by David Raterman - The amazing story of Stilwell Road— written by an anonymous Los Angeles Times writer.
- Robert Reid offers some suggestions for helping struggling travelers’ destinations. Among them: An alphabet throwing contest in Rila, Bulgaria.
- Passengers “run amok” on flight from England to Cuba.
- Christopher Elliott finds seven videos the airlines don’t want you to see.
- Gawker compiles video from a month of cruise ship disasters.
- P. J. O’Rourke on Disney’s “Innoventions Dream Home,” aka the House of the Future II.
- The Delta Queen: A new endangered historic site?
- Student abroad and accused murderer Amanda Knox was voted woman of the year in an Italian poll. Her trial begins later this month.
- The Cranky Flier remembers the airlines we lost in 2008.
- The New York Times discovers buzkashi in Afghanistan. We covered it in Tajikistan in 2002 and spelled it buskaschee. What is buzkashi/buskaschee? Goat-carcass polo.
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As Eco-Tourism Grows, Struggle for Cultural Identity Remains
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.30.08 | 1:08 PM ET
In places heavy with history and natural beauty, eco-tourism often comes deeply infused with nostalgia. Consider the 300-year-old Aspros Potamos cottages in eastern Crete, where goatherds once spent wintry nights as their flocks grazed along the mountain gorge. An Athenian journalist rescued the cottages from dilapidation in 1985 and turned them into simple, solar-powered lodges for those who want to commune with nature and a disappearing culture.
This time of year, you may find young Greeks on winter holiday there, gathered around a communal campfire and singing their grandparents’ favorite folk songs. It’s as much an appreciation of Crete’s fragile natural beauty as an exercise in identity.
Stockholm and San Francisco: Two Capitals of Eco-Cool?
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.29.08 | 1:23 PM ET
Stockholm has organic jeans, eco-guidebooks and Michelin-starred chefs specializing in natural cuisine. San Francisco has eco-boutiques, enviro-warriors and dating sites for “eco-sexuals.”
The no-bad-news folks at The Optimist lavished praise on Stockholm, which has been shortlisted as a European green capital for 2010 and 2011 and even has its own eco-focused blog. The pub calls the city “eco-cool.”
Meanwhile, a Qantas blogger obsessed with the evils of plastic bags gave some love to plastic-bag-banning San Francisco.
I don’t know exactly what eco-cool means. If we’re talking style and sustainability, then I’d also give a shout out to Amsterdam, Reykjavik, Vancouver, Sydney, Copenhagen, Portland, Oregon and Boulder, Colorado.
Who would you nominate?
Smuggling Cinnamon Rolls
by Terry Ward | 12.29.08 | 12:09 PM ET
Photo by Frank Murray Terry Ward packed a couple of tubes for a trans-Atlantic flight. Then she encountered airport security.