Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Taco Travel is Big News
by Michael Yessis | 07.22.06 | 3:17 PM ET
There’s chaos in the Middle East, heat still grips much of the U.S. and Europe, and Tiger Woods leads the British Open. And at 4:30 p.m ET today the most e-mailed story at the New York Times is ... Chasing the Perfect Taco Up the California Coast. Never underestimate the power of the taco.
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Yahoo! BuzzBerlin’s DDR Museum: ‘There Must Be a Microphone Around Here Someplace’
by Michael Yessis | 07.21.06 | 7:50 AM ET
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.’”
Anthony Bourdain Evacuated from Beirut
by Jim Benning | 07.20.06 | 5:11 PM ET
Whew. Reuters caught up with the host of the Travel Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on a U.S. Navy ship, where he was reclining on an army cot among hundreds of other evacuees. As we noted earlier this week, the globe-trotting chef was in Beirut with a crew to shoot an episode of his show when the violence began. Bourdain left a very different city than the one he found when he arrived just days ago. “It was paradise, sort of the western dream of the way we’d all like the Middle East to be—enlightened, progressive, multi-cultural, and multi-religious,” he told Reuters. No longer. “I was in love for two days,” he said, “and had my heart broken on the third.” He added: “I feel this awful sense of regret that we were never able to show Beirut as it was. To see everyone’s hopes die and watch the country dismantled piece by piece was very painful. I’m very angry and very frustrated.”
The Crown Princess, The Norovirus and Titanic
by Michael Yessis | 07.20.06 | 11:12 AM ET
It’s been a tough week for cruisers. Almost two days after the crowded Crown Princess rolled 15-degrees to its left while sailing off the coast of Florida, the injury total has reached more than 200. All who were thrown out of swimming pools and onto railings were expected to recover, according to the Miami Herald. We’re also seeing the day-after rush of on-board video and reaction from passengers. Miami’s CBS affiliate has some good home video of the post-tilt aftermath. Kudos to the local anchor who kept a straight face when he ended the segment with the revelation that the scheduled movie aboard the Crown Princess the night of the accident was Titanic.
US Airways to Sell Ad Space on Barf Bags
by Michael Yessis | 07.19.06 | 8:30 AM ET
So this is how airlines are going to try to dig themselves out of financial trouble: by slapping ads on air sickness bags. “Little things like that work,” Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting group in Evergreen, Colo., told the AP’s Chris Kahn. “People would love to pay to have their names on the side of a barf bag. Barf bags have a lot of shelf life—people aren’t barfing as much in planes as they used to.” Still, what kind of business would want its product advertised on the side of a barf bag? Oh, yeah. Makers of anti-motion sickness medication. Kudos to Kahn for getting some great quotes on the ground at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport, a US Airways hub. My favorite: “I would honestly pay no attention to an ad if I got sick,” said Nathan Vierra, 19. “But hey, if skateboarders can sell ad space on their T-shirts, I guess why can’t an airline sell ads on barf bags?” Brilliant logic, Nathan.
Zidane and the Head Butt Debated Around the World
by Terry Ward | 07.19.06 | 8:00 AM ET
Along with a billion-plus World Cup watchers, I was tuned in to the last minutes of the final between France and Italy when Zinedine Zidane nailed Italian player Marco Materazzi with that now infamous head butt. More than shocked, I felt instantly sad. And then, strangely, embarrassed, because I could just imagine the emotions on the streets of France, in that Berlin stadium, and around the world at that moment. I doubt many people truly enjoyed watching a star like Zidane go out on that note. The next night, when I watched the nightly network news (France’s loss was largely blamed on Zidane for being ousted with a red card), it irked me how the American anchorman had denounced Zidane as having gone “from legend to lout.” Where was the middle ground, I wondered? Or at least some hint that Zidane’s action could lie somewhere between salvation and sin? The anchor’s quick condemnation brought to mind a certain French friend of mine who always insisted that Americans (particularly, perhaps, yours truly) are too quick to see things in black and white.
China’s Environmental Woes
by Jim Benning | 07.18.06 | 5:27 PM ET
Several years ago I visited China, and I enjoyed just about every minute of it. This photo I shot at a McDonald’s in Xian—Chinese food is great, but a guy needs a break now and again—captures a hint of the juxtaposition between old and new that is becoming such a common sight in the country. But the gorgeous, centuries-old building out the McDonald’s window here looks so gray because in Xian I encountered thick, gray-brown, throat-burning, eye-stinging air, the worst I’d ever seen. It was so bad I bought a cloth cover to wear over my nose and mouth, as many locals do, hoping to filter out some of the pollution. It’s ugly. The World Bank reports that China is home to 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. This week, the public radio show The World is airing a four-part series on China’s environmental problems, entitled “Paying for Prosperity.” The first report, broadcast yesterday, focused on air quality, among other issues. Listening to it, I almost felt like coughing as I recalled Xian and the kind of air that so many people in China have to breathe daily.
“Are Cities the New Countries?”
by Michael Yessis | 07.18.06 | 7:27 AM ET
As cities turn into megacities—often defined as metropolitan areas with more than 10 million citizens—many academics are asking if, given their size and power, they are becoming more important than the countries that contain them. “Greater Shanghai has a population that has passed 20 million. The sprawl of Mexico City is estimated to house another 20 million. And Mumbai too,” the BBC News Magazine’s Finlo Rohrer writes. “These cities are bigger than many industrialised nations. And they are growing at a dizzying rate, sucking in workers from rural areas.”
Stefan Gates: “Cooking in the Danger Zone”
by Frank Bures | 07.18.06 | 6:46 AM ET
Food writer Stefan Gates has a stomach stronger than most of us. For his new BBC series Cooking in the Danger Zone, “a series of culinary travelogues filmed in crisis zones around the world,” Gates eats everything from yak penis to scorpion kebabs to silk worm larvae to deer penis juice (not very nice, he says). So far, the show has gotten raves across England. Clips can be found on Gates’ blog and the BBC has some photos. The show starts tonight in the U.K. at 8:30 p.m.
Israel and Lebanon: The Traveler’s Perspective
by Michael Yessis | 07.17.06 | 12:27 PM ET
We often say that we travel and read travel writing to discover more about the world. So this week, we turn our attention to Israel and Lebanon, where a violent conflict shows no sign of letting up. To get a different perspective, we thought we’d link to some of the best travel stories we’ve seen from Israel and Lebanon in recent years. Slate, for instance, had a great Talking Tour of Beirut Well-Traveled feature last year, a five-part series by Lee Smith. Slate also published a story by Negar Akhavi a few years ago about “Hezbollahland,” a place “where Islamic fundamentalism meets Dollywood.” Here at World Hum, we posted Lynn Cohen’s reflective story, Blooming in Jerusalem, and Jenni Kolsky’s excellent photo essay taken on a beach outside of Tel Aviv. She writes: “Here it felt safe, in the moments when life is about the pursuit of pleasure, in the moments when you can forget that you are in the midst of war.”
Gere on the China-Tibet Train
by Michael Yessis | 07.15.06 | 10:11 AM ET
Richard Gere, the actor and chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet, has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times about the new train from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet and its consequences. “[It] is a staggering engineering achievement and a testimony to the developing greatness of China,” Gere writes. “But it is also the most serious threat by the Chinese yet to the survival of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity. In the words of a well-known Tibetan religious teacher who died after many years in a Chinese prison, the railway heralds ‘a time of emergency and darkness’ for Tibet.”
Happy Bastille Day!
by Michael Yessis | 07.14.06 | 3:33 PM ET
I’ll be commemorating the beginning of the French Revolution tonight at a French restaurant here in D.C. with a three-course prix fixe meal that’s an excellent price for so many reasons. That price? $17.89.
Vanuatu Tops “Happy Planet Index”
by Michael Yessis | 07.14.06 | 11:42 AM ET
And the nations with the world’s largest economies finished down the 178-nation list. Way down. Germany ranked 81st, Japan 95th and the United States 150th. The New Economics Foundation, which bills itself as a “think-and-do tank,” says its inaugural Happy Planet Index “moves beyond crude ratings of nations according to national income, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP).” The new index, they say, produces “a more accurate picture of the progress of nations based on the amount of the Earth’s resources they use, and the length and happiness of people’s lives.” A BBC News story quotes Richard Layard, director of the Well-Being Programme at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance, as saying that the index “was an interesting way to tackle the issue of modern life’s environmental impact.” Layard continues: “Over the last 50 years, living standards in the West have improved enormously but we have become no happier.” So which countries besides the island nation of Vanuatu are happiest? Colombia and Costa Rica round out the top three. Burundi, Swaziland and Zimbabwe finished at the bottom.
Angelina Jolie to Star in Film About Daniel Pearl
by Jim Benning | 07.13.06 | 2:05 PM ET
Adventures in Airworld
by Michael Yessis | 07.13.06 | 8:15 AM ET
I consider myself a longtime citizen of “Airworld,” the space beyond the security barriers and X-ray machines in airports worldwide, a place that Walter Kirn, in his novel Up in the Air, calls “a nation within a nation with its own language, architecture, mood and even its own currency.” (That currency, of course, is frequent flier miles.) My father worked for TWA, so I grew up spending a lot of time in and around airports. Some of my strongest early travel memories, in fact, take place in Airworld. A six-hour layover at O’Hare, roaming the crowded terminals fruitlessly searching for a Pac-Man machine. The seemingly endless moving sidewalks at Heathrow. Spending the night huddled with a gaggle of fellow stranded travelers in Eero Saarinen’s swooping TWA Terminal at JFK, feeding quarters into a coin-op television and watching “Quadropehnia.”
