Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Alexis de Tocqueville: Bad Traveler?
by Eva Holland | 04.19.10 | 11:06 AM ET
A new book on Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous American travels is out. Slate’s Francois Furstenburg parses the new material and takes a second look at the trip that inspired Democracy in America. He writes:
“[W]e learn that Tocqueville would not have made a very good traveling companion. “Repose was contrary to his nature,” [his companion Gustave de] Beaumont later recalled. “The slightest loss of time was unpleasant to him. ... [H]e was always leaving before he arrived.”
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Yahoo! BuzzWhat We Loved This Week: ‘The Architecture of Happiness,’ Peter Hessler and Les Artistes Steakhouse
by World Hum | 04.17.10 | 1:12 AM ET
Eva Holland
Last Saturday I ate dinner at Les Artistes Steakhouse in Las Vegas, and the meal easily made my top five of all time. Lobster bisque, seared giant scallops served with a mascarpone risotto, and a lovely lemon sorbet for dessert. Yum.
‘The Great Joy of Travel is to Let Different Cultures Seep Into Your Identity’
by Eva Holland | 04.16.10 | 10:46 AM ET
Seth Stevenson has a piece in Newsweek on blending in while traveling—how to do it, and why you should. We interviewed Stevenson about his new book, “Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World,” last week.
The Magic of an Ancient Guidebook
by Eva Holland | 04.16.10 | 9:45 AM ET
NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu is the latest to discover the delights of traveling—whether virtually or in reality—with a decades- or centuries-old guide. His inspiration? Sabine Baring-Gould’s “Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe,” published in 1911. From the story:
The cave habitats of Europe opened to his erudition and lust are mostly lost now, many devastations later, but they made me hungry and gave me an idea. Why not retro travel?
‘Treme’: TV’s Best-Ever Take on New Orleans?
by Eva Holland | 04.15.10 | 3:09 PM ET
Slate’s Josh Levin, a NOLA native, thinks so. Our own take on the city, courtesy of contributor Adam Karlin, is here.
From the Ostalgia Files: Vita Cola
by Eva Holland | 04.15.10 | 12:42 PM ET
We’ve been covering the ostalgia phenomenon for awhile now, and it’s still going strong. Atlantic food blogger Lauren Shockey has the latest entry in the field, a thoughtful post about her search for GDR-era food brands and products in present-day Berlin. It’s a good read.
Ash From Iceland Volcano Forces Cancellation of Thousands of Flights
by Jim Benning | 04.15.10 | 11:51 AM ET
REUTERS Oh Iceland. Now look at what you’ve done.
Amazingly, the closing of air space across parts of northwestern Europe due to widespread ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland is, according to the New York Times, “among the most sweeping ever ordered in peacetime.”
Political Pundits, Lay Off the Kabuki References
by Eva Holland | 04.14.10 | 4:21 PM ET
Slate writer Jon Lackman has a message for America’s Washington-watchers and op-ed writers: Stop using “kabuki” as a stand-in for “political posturing.” Lackman thinks the stylized Japanese theater tradition deserves better. He writes:
[T]here’s nothing “kabuki” about the real Kabuki. Kabuki, I’ll have you know, is one of UNESCO’s Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity! And it’s nothing like politics. It does indeed use stylized gestures, expressions, and intonations, but it’s far from empty and monotonous… Unlike a Dick Durbin stemwinder, the quintessential Kabuki moment (known as a kata) is colorful and ruthlessly concise, packing meaning into a single gesture. It is synecdoche, synopsis, and metaphor rolled together—as when, in one Kabuki play, a gardener expecting a visit from the emperor cuts down all his chrysanthemums except one, the perfect one. And in contrast with our own shortsighted politics, Kabuki concerns not the present so much as a “dreamlike time shrouded in mist but ever present in the subconscious,” to quote critic Shuichi Kato.
The history he digs up on the term’s arrival in American political discourse is fascinating.
World Hum Named Webby Award Honoree for Best Writing
by World Hum | 04.13.10 | 4:21 PM ET
We’re so pleased to be among the honorees for this year’s Webby Awards, in the Best Copy/Writing category. A big thanks and congratulations to all of our contributors!
Another ‘Journeys’ Issue from The New Yorker
by Eva Holland | 04.13.10 | 2:45 PM ET
The New Yorker’s latest Journeys issue is out, and it includes a great read from World Hum contributor Peter Hessler about moving back stateside after more than a decade in China. The full online version is behind a subscription wall, but here’s a taste:
[A]fter years of standing out as a foreigner in urban China, I liked the idea of rural solitude and anonymity. A small town in the Rocky Mountains where nobody knew us—that was our own Chinese version of the American Dream. We bought a used Toyota, put a cooler in the back, and followed two-lane highways around Colorado. It was late March and the snow was still deep in the mountains; some of the high passes were closed. At night, we stayed in cheap hotels, and during the day we talked to real-estate agents, who rarely had much to show us.
We published a story about Hessler’s Beijing driving exam a few weeks back.
The International Banana Museum: Meet its Saviors
by Eva Holland | 04.13.10 | 11:59 AM ET
Here’s an odd one: Gawker has an exclusive interview with Virginia and Fred Garbutt, the mother-son duo who recently purchased the entire contents of the International Banana Museum on eBay after collector-curator Ken Bannister was forced to sell. The new incarnation of the museum will reopen in North Shore, California, in January 2011.
Protests and Parties in Bangkok
by Eva Holland | 04.12.10 | 1:56 PM ET
The State Department has issued a warning for travelers to Thailand following this weekend’s violent clashes between protesters and police in Bangkok, which resulted in 21 deaths. From the latest alert:
U.S. citizens are reminded that even demonstrations intended to be peaceful can turn confrontational and escalate into violence. U.S. citizens are urged to avoid the areas that may be targeted for demonstrations and to exercise caution in their movements around Bangkok.
Despite the warning, though, World Hum contributor Newley Purnell reports that it’s business as usual for tourists on Bangkok’s Khao San Road, where water fights have replaced the earlier unrest.
The water fights are “badass,” says Sayed Jiwa, a 20 year old from Calgary, Canada, when asked about the festivities. He added that the protests were no joking matter, however… It was scary, says Jiwa, but “the vibe is all good” now.
Tourism in the Tenderloin
by Michael Yessis | 04.12.10 | 11:16 AM ET
Is San Francisco’s “ragged, druggy and determinedly dingy domain of the city’s most down and out” ready for tourists? The New York Times explores the question and talks to those behind a push to bring travelers to the ‘loin.
What We Loved This Week: Cherry Blossoms, Branston Pickle and the Best Dateline Ever
by World Hum | 04.09.10 | 8:12 PM ET
Jim Benning Eva Holland
I loved finding a jar of Branston Pickle on a shelf at the grocery store here in Whitehorse. I haven’t had the stuff since I left the U.K. more than three years ago, and tasting it again (after buying it and bringing it home, of course) brought me right back to some great pub lunches in northern England.
Video: A Rah on his Gap Yah
by Eva Holland | 04.09.10 | 9:21 AM ET
We’ve all met one on the road: The posh, be-scarved, bantering British student—sometimes known as a rah—who alternately chunders and philosophizes his or her way across Southeast Asia. Here, in case you haven’t been in a Laotian guesthouse lately, is a note-perfect caricature to tide you over until your next encounter:
