Travel Blog: News and Briefs
What Colors Represent in Different Cultures
by Michael Yessis | 05.03.10 | 10:54 AM ET
A mesmerizing graphic at Information is Beautiful highlights what colors mean in 10 different cultures. (via The Daily Dish)
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Yahoo! BuzzWhat We Loved This Week: ‘The Dharma Bums,’ the Hay-Adams and Burma VJ
by World Hum | 04.30.10 | 9:52 PM ET
Michael Yessis
I’ve lived in the Washington, D.C.-area for almost four years, and this week I finally took in the iconic view from the top of the Hay-Adams Hotel. Stunning. The shot from my iPhone hardly does it justice.
Mapped: What a Friendlier Europe Would Look Like
by Michael Yessis | 04.30.10 | 12:26 PM ET
The Economist retools the continent to make life “more logical and friendlier.” Switzerland would live between Norway and Sweden, for instance, and Great Britain would have a much warmer climate. (via The Morning News)
The Window Seat: A Photo Gallery
by Michael Yessis | 04.30.10 | 11:14 AM ET
Mark Vanhoenacker’s excellent love letter to the window seat now has the accompanying art it deserves. When his story was published last month, the New York Times called for readers to send in their own photos from the window seat. That 325-image collection is now up and browsable.
Mapped: Marge Simpson in Europe
by Eva Holland | 04.29.10 | 11:55 AM ET
Apparently, there’s even a term for this sort of geographical fun: cartozoology, or “the detection of living creatures in maps.” Very cool.
Flurry of New Flights Landing in Iraq
by Eva Holland | 04.29.10 | 10:29 AM ET
The Independent rounds up the latest news from the country’s slowly-recovering travel industry. One thing worth noting, beyond the increasing availability of Iraq-bound flights from Western Europe? Apparently Iraq received more than a million tourists from the Middle East in 2008. Here’s hoping more travelers from outside the region can soon follow.
The Humble, Messy Beauty of the Hand-Drawn Map
by Eva Holland | 04.28.10 | 3:51 PM ET
Following up on her excellent series about signs, Slate’s Julia Turner meditates on the power of homemade maps, and offers a selection from Slate readers. Here’s a taste from the intro:
Since early man first drew on his cave wall—including marks that some scholars argue were maps of local rivers and settlements—we’ve been sketching out routes to guide one another to the market and to the mountain top. These humble maps can be beautiful. They can also be messy, indecipherable, inaccurate, and unattractive.
‘Traincation’? Oh No They Didn’t.
by Eva Holland | 04.28.10 | 2:21 PM ET
The Guardian goes there. Myself, I’d prefer any of the perfectly functional terms we already have for this practice: “train travel,” “train ride,” “taking the train” or even “a voyage by rail.”
So Long, Volcano-Gate 2010
by Eva Holland | 04.28.10 | 11:37 AM ET
As air travel gets back on track and the fallout from Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud winds down, Gadling offers this top-notch graphic to remember it all by. Oh, and if you’re still having trouble pronouncing Eyjafjallajökull? This Icelandic musician has a jingle for you. (Thanks for the tip, Pam.)
Will Arizona’s Immigration Law Lead to a Travel Boycott?
by Jim Benning | 04.27.10 | 11:52 AM ET
It’s starting to. Some groups are already canceling meetings there. San Francisco supervisors are expected to vote today on a resolution that would go well beyond travel and cancel all contracts with companies based in Arizona.
And in a man-bites-dog kind of twist, Mexico has issued an alert for Arizona, warning that “any Mexican citizen could be bothered and questioned for no other reason at any moment.”
‘The Future of the French Language is Now in Africa’
by Eva Holland | 04.26.10 | 2:53 PM ET
The New York Times has a fascinating piece on the globalization of French as a language—and, as the language diverges from its home nation, what that means for French culture. Michael Kimmelman outlines the battle between France’s cultural traditionalists and the immigrants and foreign French speakers who have adopted the language, but not necessarily the culture that has historically come with it. He writes:
French is now spoken mostly by people who aren’t French. More than 50 percent of them are African. French speakers are more likely to be Haitians and Canadians, Algerians and Senegalese, immigrants from Africa and Southeast Asia and the Caribbean who have settled in France, bringing their native cultures with them.
Which raises the question: So what does French culture signify these days when there are some 200 million French speakers in the world but only 65 million are actually French? Culture in general—and not just French culture—has become increasingly unfixed, unstable, fragmentary and elective.
Having grown up in a bilingual school system, a ten-minute drive from the Ontario-Quebec border, I’m plenty familiar with the dilemma. I can remember, at about eleven, being told firmly by my French teacher that Frenglish was “an insult” to both languages it drew on; even then, I thought that seemed limiting.
Seeing cultural and linguistic fusion as offensive is a non-starter in this globalized world of ours. There’s some amazing food, literature and music coming out of this sort of cultural cross-fertilization, around the world. Rather than viewing themselves as “under siege,” France’s cultural authorities might be better off getting out there and seeing some of it.
Video: ‘Waking Up in the Same Place Every Morning is Boring’
by Michael Yessis | 04.26.10 | 2:23 PM ET
That’s the tagline for a strange and compelling product that has gadget lovers buzzing. Winscape consists of a pair of virtual windows that can display scenes from around the world. The scenes change perspective as the viewer moves about. The Golden Gate Bridge stars in the promo video:
It’s another step forward for virtual travel.
‘10 Best Books About Being Stranded’
by Michael Yessis | 04.26.10 | 12:50 PM ET
The Observer squeezes out a post-ash cloud list of 10 vivid accounts of being marooned in literature. Among the picks: “Lord of the Flies,” “Life of Pi” and “Concrete Island.”
Maybe in the future we’ll add something to the list that started with this.
A Linglei’s Life in China
by Eva Holland | 04.26.10 | 12:08 PM ET
The Millions has a compelling essay about a Chinese-American novelist’s life as a linglei —a “different species”—in Beijing and Shanghai. Deanna Fei writes:
I’d moved to Beijing for a year of postgraduate study with some notions of mastering my mother tongue and reclaiming my heritage. I hadn’t expected to feel at home, but I hadn’t anticipated feeling quite so alien. Like most Asian Americans, I’d always been asked the question, “Where are you from?” with the expected answer being China, or someplace equally foreign. Now, this question was asked even more relentlessly of me by Chinese people in China, but the answer never satisfied them. But you don’t look American, they might say—or, You don’t sound Chinese. They’d assure me that I wasn’t really American, even as their suspicious expressions made clear that I certainly wasn’t really Chinese.
‘When Life Gives You Volcanoes, Make Magazines’
by Eva Holland | 04.26.10 | 10:54 AM ET
Sure, the volcanic ash cloud may have done a number on the airline industry, but it looks like it could give publishing a wee boost—there’s a volcano strandee magazine in the works. (Via Kottke)
