Destination: Germany
Big Waves Roll Through Mavericks
by Jim Benning | 01.14.08 | 10:47 AM ET
Saturday was a good time to be in northern California. Pro surfers from around the globe and thousands of spectators converged on the legendary surf spot near Half Moon Bay for the sixth edition of the Mavericks big-wave contest. The wave breaks a good distance offshore, and spectators who didn’t want to peer through binoculars had an interesting option.
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Yahoo! BuzzSurfing the Eisbach: California Culture in Bavaria
by Jim Benning | 01.14.08 | 10:33 AM ET
You don’t have to be near Mavericks, or even an ocean, to enjoy some wild surfing action. Surfers have been riding waves in rivers for years—the Amazon’s Pororoca in Brazil just might be the most dramatic example. But there are options in Europe, too. The Atlantic magazine recently covered surfing Munich’s Eisbach, a tributary of the Isar River where a standing wave has “created an enclave of borrowed California culture in the heart of Bavaria.”
Man Downs Liter of Vodka to Avoid Giving it up at Airport Security Checkpoint
by Michael Yessis | 12.13.07 | 11:03 AM ET
A 64-year-old man was given two choices by security at the Nuremberg, Germany airport: Dump his liter of vodka or pay to have it checked as luggage. He went with a third option: Chug it like a Sig Ep pledge. “The passenger was unable to stand or function and a doctor was called to the scene,” according to Spiegel Online. The not-too-surprising diagnosis: alcohol poisoning. The unnamed passenger was admitted to a Nuremberg hospital and is expected to be home in time for Christmas. I think I know what gift he’d like to find under his tree this year.
Related on World Hum:
* Airport Security to Lourdes Pilgrim: Your Holy Water is a Security Threat
* Russia: ‘Cold, Dark, Drowning in Vodka, and Ruled by the KGB’
Photo by inda.ca via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
Hostelling Seeks to Honor 100th Anniversary With U.S. Postage Stamp
by Michael Yessis | 11.16.07 | 10:39 AM ET
German schoolteacher Richard Schirrmann started the hostelling movement in 1909, and throughout its history Australia, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan and Sweden have all honored it with commemorative postage stamps. Hostelling International USA wants the United States to join those countries for the 100th anniversary of hostelling, and it’s asking travelers to help by signing an online petition.
Jan Morris in Berlin: ‘Ooh, That’s Nice!’
by Michael Yessis | 11.07.07 | 11:54 AM ET
Legendary travel writer Jan Morris had a revelation about Berlin: The city “where Hitler strutted” and that had “haunted and disturbed” her all her adult life is “really rather nice.” She writes in the Financial Times: “Was it all guileless innocence? Of course not.”
Romance By Rail: Europe Does It Better
by Julia Ross | 11.01.07 | 1:30 PM ET
The thought of finding romance on a train from Washington D.C. to New York City—a trip I’ve made many times—strikes me as unlikely. Let’s face it: There’s nothing particularly romantic about Amtrak. But a chance meeting on a European train? On atmosphere alone, I’d give it much better odds. Two train-related events in Europe this fall are reviving the romantic image of rail travel, albeit with a 21st century spin. Reuters reports that German rail operator Deutsche Bahn has introduced speed-dating on an intercity line from Nuremberg to Munich, providing an upscale alternative to the usual pub meet-and-greet, complete with champagne and roses.
Extreme Eating in East Berlin With the Stasi
by Michael Yessis | 10.08.07 | 11:11 AM ET
Bless Tom Perrotta for trying to eat local on the road, but after reading his extraordinary tale from a long-ago visit to East Berlin, I can understand why he’s hesitant to do so anymore. The author of “Election” and “Little Children” recalls that after a few beers with some locals, including two uniformed East German soldiers, he was urged to try Hackepeter, a combination of raw beef, chopped onions and raw egg. The food, he writes in the New York Times Magazine, was “quite tasty.” It was what happened afterwards that scared him.
It’s Tapped: Oktoberfest Kicks Off in Munich
by Eva Holland | 09.25.07 | 12:43 PM ET
The 174th annual Oktoberfest got under way this past weekend in Munich, Germany, and just reading the AP story about the opening keg-tapping ceremony made me thirsty. Last year, the festival attracted more than 6 million people, saw nearly 13 million pints poured and generated 1 billion euros in revenue. Similar numbers are expected this year.
German Travelers Urged to Pester ‘People in Authority’ Abroad About Human Rights
by Michael Yessis | 08.17.07 | 11:21 AM ET
Germans, as many travelers will attest, are everywhere. With their mandated multiple-week vacations and desire to see the world while sometimes wearing dark socks and open-toed footwear, they are among the world’s most avid travelers. And, according to the German government, that helps make them excellent candidates to “pester staff in foreign airports and hotels about human rights concerns.” German foreign ministry’s human rights envoy Günter Nooke said so this week, according to a Financial Times story by Hugh Williamson. Nooke had a lot of ideas for the estimated 44 million Germans who travel abroad each year.
New York’s JFK vs. Frankfurt Airport
by Jim Benning | 08.17.07 | 8:29 AM ET
Thomas Swick recently flew home from Europe, passing through Frankfurt airport and New York City’s John F. Kennedy International. According to Swick, they couldn’t have been more different. In Frankfurt’s airport, he encountered an inviting rustic tavern, walked among large windows looking out onto sun-lit planes and watched an international crowd of travelers passing Hermes, Boss and Swarovski and chatting in the Goethe Bar, near a statue of the writer. And it was only 7 a.m. “I had never seen such a wide-awake airport at such an early hour,” he writes. “It felt as if the world had left home.” And what of JFK, where Swick landed nine hours later?
Smoker’s International Airways: From Germany to Japan in a Carcinogenic Haze
by Michael Yessis | 07.26.07 | 11:47 AM ET
Sounds like hell to me. Or an Onion story. However, German entrepreneur Alexander W. Schoppmann (pictured) says he’s bringing glamour back to air travel with Smoker’s International Airways, aka Smintair, a start-up airline that plans to cater to smokers.
How to Eat Weisswurst in Munich
by World Hum | 07.12.07 | 10:49 AM ET
Photo by Chris Gray It's hard to find a restaurant in the German city that doesn't serve weisswurst. But it's said that the white sausages should never hear the noon church bells. Chris Gray explains.
Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin’: Do His Songs Still Resonate in the City That Inspired Them?
by Michael Yessis | 07.03.07 | 10:22 AM ET
In 1973 Lou Reed recorded Berlin, an album inspired by the German city that Rolling Stone called “one of the gloomiest records ever made—slow, druggy and heavily orchestrated.” At the time, the Wall cut through Berlin and the city struggled with a heroin epidemic among teens. “In other words, it was not a happy place, although it was certainly an interesting one—Berlin, in that era, had become a mecca for some of the most creative heads in rock music,” Time’s Stephanie Kirchner writes in an intriguing “Postcard from Berlin” on the magazine’s Web site.
Longest Overland Tunnel Opens in Switzerland
by Terry Ward | 06.18.07 | 11:04 AM ET
Switzerland loves its tunnels nearly as much as its timepieces, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that the country crowned the world’s longest on Friday. The AP reports the 21-mile rail link will cut train travel between Germany and Italy from 3 1/2 hours to less than two. The opening of the $3.5 billion Loetschberg Tunnel after eight years of construction is good news for Swiss locals, who hope it will ease heavy truck traffic in their mountainous land.
Tenuta de Castelfalfi: Will the Tuscan Village Go the Way of Shangri-La?
by Michael Yessis | 06.05.07 | 10:41 AM ET
The besieged faux Shangri-La, that is. German tour operator TUI has purchased the Tuscan village of Tenuta de Castelfalfi—four square miles of land with a golf course and “scores of elegantly crumbling villas,” according to the Guardian—for €250 million. TUI plans to turn the village into an Italian retreat for up to 3,200 German tourists by 2009. The Guardian’s Kate Connolly writes that it’s a move that would “make the Tuscany-loving author EM Forster turn in his grave.”