Destination: Germany
Morning Links: Japan’s ‘Ambassadors of Cute,’ Obama’s Position on Travel and More
by Michael Yessis | 03.13.09 | 8:06 AM ET
- Australia floats a plan to offer tourists free flights to the country, provided they spend a certain amount of money while visiting. (via Jaunted)
- IgoUgo lists 10 places to go to drink iconic drinks.
- Out: Sears Tower. In: Willis Tower.
- Airport living: A Finnish woman apparently spent more than two months calling Berlin’s Tegel airport home. (via Gridskipper)
- Japan unveils its “Ambassadors of Cute.” Metro has a photo.
- Kenya slashes visa fees to encourage more travelers to visit.
- The latest Washington Post Time Zones piece: Eating in Tehran with Thomas Erdbrink.
- The White House clarified President Obama’s position on travel: Travel on federal bailout money bad. A strong travel industry good.
- Finally, in the Onion TV listings: Crash Cab. Description: “In this hit game show, unsuspecting taxi passengers must answer general knowledge trivia questions correctly to prevent their cab from careening into the nearest storefront or bridge abutment.” (via @Marilyn_Res)
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Yahoo! BuzzMorning Links: Walking on Broadway, Fees for Airline Toilets and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.27.09 | 9:43 AM ET
- New York City plans to turn parts of Broadway into pedestrian malls.
- The inevitable Coldplay reference comes only four seconds into this video about that ice music festival in northern Italy.
- Are the “taste police” out to get German bakers?
- The literature of men in boats vs. women in houses. (via Arts & Letters Daily)
- Here’s the latest Carnival of Cities.
- Happy belated 90th birthday, Grand Canyon National Park. (thanks for the reminder @evaholland and @AlisonSWellner)
- The economic downturn has boosted Peace Corps applications and the number of financial types snowboarding the Alps.
- Mule drivers in period costumes need TSA security clearance, too! So Boing Boing started a contest to create mule-driver TSA IDs.
- Will passengers soon need to pay to use the toilet on Ryanair? Just how ridiculous can the carrier get?
- Finally, this is fun to say: Sassy the Sustainable Sasquatch.
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Morning Links: The Belgian Flair for Comics, New Orleans Street Theater and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.16.09 | 8:46 AM ET
- The investigation of the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407 reveals sudden erratic movements 26 seconds before impact.
- The state of the Velib bike program in Paris isn’t good.
- The New Yorker’s Katherine Boo investigates a Mumbai slum located on land owned by the Airports Authority of India. (subscribers only)
- David Lyon looks at the comics-character murals of Brussels. He writes: “The Belgian flair for comics is as inescapable as Manneken Pis.”
- Nora Roberts’ Inn BoonsBoro—an inn in Boonsboro, Maryland, that features rooms named after literary couples—opens tomorrow.
- Wayne Curtis says “New Orleans knows how to do street theater like no other American city.”
- Benji Lanyado visits a pay-what-you-want bar in Berlin.
- Video: A woman goes wild after missing her plane in Hong Kong and becomes a YouTube hit.
- The Costa Brava is not the Bahamas—except in an ad for the Costa Brava. I’d say, “oops,” but it looks like the people behind the ad planned using the image of the Bahamas as a stand in for the Spanish coast. (via Shore Trips)
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Morning Links: Vegas to L.A. High-Speed Rail, ‘the Gifts of Travel’ and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.13.09 | 9:44 AM ET
- Continental flight 3407 crashed outside of Buffalo, New York. Fifty people died.
- Looks like the stimulus bill might contain some extra funding for a high-speed rail link between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
- How will the United States look after its economic tumble? It’s the cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic.
- In Dubai, the economic climate has brought forth an exodus of expats.
- Don George writes that “the gifts of travel are precisely what we need in daunting times like these.”
- Tom O’Neill chronicles the journeys of three North Korean defectors through China, Laos and Thailand on the way to South Korea. (Via Passport)
- Brave New Traveler asks: When does budget travel become exploitation?
- Northwest Airlines says it will start serving peanuts again on its flights. Passengers worried about peanut allergies say they will start planning trips on airlines other than Northwest.
- Germany, the U.S. and China are among the countries fighting the international battle of Ferris wheels. The Great Orlando Wheel may have the best promo video ever.
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Stuttgart, Germany
by World Hum | 01.28.09 | 10:22 AM ET
REUTERS/Michaela Rehle Workers unveil the first Porsche model type 64 from 1939 in the newly built Porsche Museum during the official opening ceremony in Stuttgart.
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.
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 »
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:
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.
Goodbye ‘White Christmas’?
by Joanna Kakissis | 12.22.08 | 3:56 PM ET
Do you want to spend the winter holidays in an idyllic, snow-fringed place just like the one Irving Berlin used to know? Berlin wrote “White Christmas” 68 years ago, when the concept still made sense in the German city of Berlin as well as the rest of the northern hemisphere. In what has become an annual reality check during the increasingly warm winter holidays, climate scientists and meteorologists are again warning that global warming is the Grinch that’s stealing snowy landscapes around the world. Reuters reports that the odds of Berlin seeing snow in 2100 will decrease to 5 percent from 20 percent a century ago. Even frigid Oslo, Norway, will see a precipitous decline in snow days, scientists told Reuters.
The Three Literary Capitals of the World?
by Eva Holland | 12.22.08 | 12:00 PM ET
Conde Nast Traveler has chosen Berlin, Dublin and Boston as its three best cities for bookworms. They’re all worthy choices, but still, I have to ask: Was this list originally titled, “Three Best Cities for Bookworms, Not Counting Paris and London”?
Eight Best Cities for Street Food
by Terry Ward | 12.15.08 | 12:16 AM ET
iStockphoto Terry Ward lifts the lid on a few of the world's tastiest places to eat the people's cuisine
Berliners Say ‘Auf Weidersehen’ to Their Love for America
by Valerie Conners | 11.03.08 | 3:21 PM ET
After living for 16 years in Berlin—a city that once named its avenues after U.S. generals, schools after U.S. leaders and squares after U.S. cities—Reuters’ Germany correspondent Erik Kirschbaum now finds the pervasive admiration is largely gone. “It was hard to imagine a more pro-American city when I first moved here in 1993,” he writes in an essay for the news agency. “Yet the wind has changed and the love affair is over.”
Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport Closes
by Valerie Conners | 10.31.08 | 11:12 AM ET
Once a critical landing point during the Berlin Airlift, historic Tempelhof Airport officially closed its doors yesterday with a farewell event marked by speeches from local VIPs, and even some protests. Auf wiedersehen.
Launching (and Hyping) the Danube Express
by Eva Holland | 10.01.08 | 10:00 AM ET
Photo by ** Maurice ** via Flickr (Creative Commons)
It seems all eyes were on the Danube Express last week as the new luxury rail route got rolling in Berlin—in fact, nearly every major British travel section devoted feature space to the story.