Travel Blog: News and Briefs
CouchSurfing in Good Magazine: ‘This Isn’t Just About a Place to Crash.’
by Michael Yessis | 12.19.06 | 7:50 AM ET
The story of CouchSurfing, the fast-growing site that connects travelers with fellow travelers and their couches, begins with founder Casey Fenton. Peter Alsop tracked down Fenton and several CouchSurfing devotees, aka the Collective, in Montreal and profiled them in an intriguing story for Good Magazine. Fenton, it turns out, has a motive beyond bringing travelers together. “His mission,” Alsop writes, “is to transform people’s lives.”
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzMore Gifts for the Traveler
by Jim Benning | 12.18.06 | 3:19 PM ET
We’ve already noted a number of books that could make fine gifts for the traveler in your life. (For more book ideas, see World Hum contributor Jerry V. Haines’s suggestions in Sunday’s Washington Post, or, for classic narrative titles, our list of the top 30 travel books.) But what if—gasp—the traveler you have in mind doesn’t want more books? Worry not. We have ideas. For starters, consider a T-shirt featuring one of the New Yorker’s many travel-related cartoons, such as the class-conscious one pictured here. Perusing the cartoons is good fun, even if you’re not in the market for a shirt. How can you not love this one in which a flight attendant announces to passengers, “Ladies and gentlemen, is there a bankruptcy attorney on board?” If you place a T-shirt rush order by tomorrow, you can still ensure pre-Christmas delivery.
Which is Longer: The Nile or the Amazon?
by Michael Yessis | 12.18.06 | 7:38 AM ET
The San Francisco Chronicle published its annual geography quiz Sunday, featuring 50 questions and an entire section devoted to “the glorious nation of Kazakhstan.” Do you know if it’s the largest landlocked country in the world?
Talking Malaria in Washington
by Jim Benning | 12.14.06 | 3:46 PM ET
Seriously. Reports the AP: “Declaring that malaria can be defeated, President Bush on Thursday added eight countries to a U.S. initiative aimed at combatting the disease in Africa and slashing its mortality rate by half in targeted nations.” Ghana, pictured, is among the eight nations. Malaria kills roughly a million Africans each year, many of them under five.
Study: Almost One in 10 British Citizens Is Living Overseas
by Jim Benning | 12.14.06 | 2:12 PM ET
Britons love the expat life. A whopping 5.5 million of them are living abroad, according to a new study, and many of them are young workers without families. The BBC has a compelling package of stories about the phenomenon. Among the highlights from the main story:
Recalling Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’
by Jim Benning | 12.13.06 | 4:02 PM ET
Is Times Square Turning Tourists’ Photos into Viral Ads?
by Michael Yessis | 12.13.06 | 7:48 AM ET
Most of us shoot snapshots or videos when we travel, particularly when we visit a photogenic place like New York City’s Times Square. Many of us even like to share them with our friends or on YouTube or Flickr—some of them, like the one above from ellievanhoutte’s Flickr stream, even make it onto travel Web sites. And when we do this with our Times Square images, we are becoming something we may not have envisioned: spreaders of advertising messages. That’s right. More and more, New York City tourists are being counted on by advertisers to be their viral messengers.
Airport Security Stiff-Arms Troy Smith’s Heisman Trophy
by Michael Yessis | 12.12.06 | 9:31 PM ET
It’s a big trophy, the Heisman. And apparently dangerous. Airport security wouldn’t allow Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith to carry his 25-pound hunk of bronze on the plane back to Columbus Tuesday, so he had to ship it home.
Tourism Suffers in Bethlehem, But Hamas Might Help
by Jim Benning | 12.12.06 | 2:23 PM ET
The Biblical town of Bethlehem should be a pretty big tourist draw for Christians right about now, but in recent years, Israeli-Palestinian fighting has sunk tourism. Gone are the tens of thousands of pilgrims who arrived each month before the Palestinian uprising in 2000. And now, with just a couple of weeks to go before Christmas, the town is barely decorated and you can still find “Islamic Jihad” graffiti around. But according to the AP, the Hamas government has vowed to pitch in $50,000 to spruce up the town for visitors. As Diaa Hadid writes, “Islamic militants may be in charge, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be Christmas this year.”
Chandler Burr on the ‘Scents of Place’
by Michael Yessis | 12.12.06 | 8:57 AM ET
We’re believers in the power of the smell to color a journey, whether it comes from a whiff of full-bodied, slightly sweet jet fuel; the legendary stench of durian; or sample-size lotions from some far-off hotel. The Emperor of Scent author Chandler Burr believes, too, and he’s written a fine essay about it in the December issue of Conde Nast Traveler. “The process of travel is imbued with, drowned in, smell,” he writes. “The smell of my first passport, which was that of book (new paper, binding glue) and fresh plastic (the thick photo lamination). The smell of jet fuel and the synthetic carpet of the airport, the lonely nose of concrete-and-Formica of the train station, the scent of seawater and engine oil and metal of the ship. In between check-in and jet lag, there is smell. It tells us where we are. We may shuttle from airport to airport and stay in luxury hotels from Shanghai to Seattle, but local smells still reach us, marking these places as indelibly as light.”
Welcome to the Age of the ‘Aerotropolis’
by Michael Yessis | 12.11.06 | 8:24 AM ET
Call it Airworld 2.0. The airport of the future is here—think Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport—and it’s all about the “aerotropolis.” Word Spy traces the first use of the word aerotropolis—“a city in which the layout, infrastructure, and economy are centered around a major airport”—to 1994, but according to the New York Times Magazine’s Year in Ideas issue, the concept truly arrived in 2006. For a thorough look at the worldwide rise of the aerotropolis, check out Greg Lindsay’s terrific story in Fast Company earlier this year. “The aerotropolis represents the logic of globalization made flesh in the form of cities,” he writes.
Wanted: New Micronations
by Michael Yessis | 12.11.06 | 8:10 AM ET
Simon Sellars, co-author of Lonely Planet’s Micronations, has launched a contest inviting people to invent a small nation of their own. Why, I asked Sellars, does the world need another micronation? “Because the big boys have had their turn—and have failed miserably,” he says. Enter at Sellars’s site Sleepy Brain. Winner gets a free copy of the book and, perhaps, enough motivation to actually start his or her own micronation.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cuba, Cabo and Chinese Restaurants
by Michael Yessis | 12.08.06 | 9:06 AM ET
And some travel icons shall take over the Zeitgeist. This week travelers are looking to Rick Steves, Pico Iyer and, once again, to Bill Bryson for their travel fix. Let’s go, but let’s not take Comair Flight 5463.
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel With Rick Steves
* And don’t forget: It’s time again for Rick Steves’ European Christmas.
Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
Pico Iyer: On Travel and Travel Writing
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
The East Is West: The Best Chinese Restaurants in Southern California
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
New Hope for Legal Travel to Cuba?
Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Airline Luggage Complaints Remain High
* This year could be the worst for lost, delayed, damaged or stolen baggage since 1991.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
How to Remove Tourists from Your Photos
Fifty Works of Art Worth Traveling the World to See
by Michael Yessis | 12.07.06 | 8:29 AM ET
Guardian art and architecture blogger Jonathan Jones asked his readers what 50 works of art are worth traveling a world to see? Or, to put it another way, “What works of art would you want to show a visitor from the Crab Nebula to prove humanity should be spared the interstellar death ray?” He’s posted the list 50 in no particular order. It includes Stonehenge, Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, Picasso’s “Guernica” and the Terracotta Army of the First Qin Emperor in China.
‘Oh, Tabernacle!’
by Michael Yessis | 12.06.06 | 7:58 AM ET
You probably shouldn’t say that next time you’re in French-speaking Quebec. “It is too profane,” writes Washington Post correspondent Doug Struck. “So are other angry oaths that sound innocuous in English: chalice, host, baptism. In French-speaking Quebec, swearing sounds like an inventory being taken at a church.”
