RECENT DISPATCHES
8.6.08
Like Writing on Water
In western Uganda, Christopher Vourlias met Colin, a farmer and poet who questioned the purpose of life while happily revealing the meaning of nohandika ha maiise. 7.15.08My Senegalese Cousin, the Rice-Loving Pig
When the woman selling peanuts at a Samba Dia market learned the Senegalese name adopted by Katie Krueger, negotiations took an insulting turn TRAVEL BLOGWine Spectator Gives ‘Award of Excellence’ to Fake RestaurantMadrid Crash: MD-80 is ‘One of the Safest Planes in the Sky’Profile of a Space TouristHeaded to Angkor Wat? Beware the Dengue.
ASK ROLF
How Should I Spend My Time in Spain?Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel Q&A
Paul Theroux: Invisible Man on a Ghost TrainJim Benning asks the author of “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” about his new book, aging and the challenge of disappearing in the age of the BlackBerry HOW TO
Eat Ceviche in LimaGrab a Cusqueña and get comfortable. As Nicholas Gill explains, a trip to a Peruvian cevichería can be an all-day immersion in good conversation and raw seafood. BOOKS
Unsentimental Journeys: Wrestling With Paul TherouxBronwen Dickey considers “Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: 28,000 Miles in Search of the Great Railway Bazaar” AUDIO SLIDESHOW My Travels, My FeetAfter taking one too many headless torso shots of herself, solo traveler Sophia Dembling started snapping photos of her feet around the world, from the Grand Canyon to Red Square SPEAKER'S CORNER
Affairs to Remember—On-Screen and OffFrom “Roman Holiday” to “Before Sunrise,” Hollywood has understood the appeal of the overseas fling. Eva Holland explains the staying power of the big screen Euro-romance. THE LIST
Seven Reasons to Have a Foreign FlingSure, having an overseas romance is fun. But Terry Ward points out seven other benefits to cross-border love, mon petit chou. |
ITEM7.21.06
Berlin’s DDR Museum: ‘There Must Be a Microphone Around Here Someplace’A museum chronicling life in the former East Germany recently opened in Berlin, and Richard Bernstein of the New York Times writes that it captures what it was like to live in the German Democratic Republic, aka the D.D.R., under the thumb of the Stasi. “By the time you leave the museum, you’ve been both a perpetrator and a victim,” museum founder and director Peter Kenzelmann told Bernstein. It’s not all about oppression and murder and eavesdropping. “Other exhibitions are on the East German mania for nude bathing, a freedom that was considerably reduced by new regulations after reunification,” writes Kenzelmann. “There are displays on East German rock bands, ordinary consumer products and on the press, with this barbed comment: ‘Despite 39 newspapers, two television channels and four radio stations, there was only one opinion.’” The DDR Museum hopes to capitalize on ostalgia—defined by Word Spy as “nostalgia for the goods, symbols, and culture of the former East Germany.” The museum’s Web site points to the popularity of East Germany’s traffic light man and the 2005 movie NVA. I saw another fine ostalgia movie a couple years ago, Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye Lenin! A woman falls into a coma before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, then awakens in a reunified Germany. Her son, in an effort to spare her more trauma—her doctor says any kind of excitement could be life threatening—hilariously recreates the collapsed country around her.
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