Travel Blog
Simon Calder: Cut Airline Staff a Break, Already
by Eva Holland | 11.05.08 | 6:56 AM ET
The Independent’s travel columnist offers his take on the recent firings of 13 Virgin Atlantic staff who created a Facebook group to complain about their passengers, and the possible disciplining of several British Airways staff that did the same. “The term ‘long-suffering’ could have been invented to describe the people who work in aviation,” he writes. “If they choose to disparage some of us when out of uniform, who can blame them?”
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Yahoo! BuzzAnd the Winner Is ... Obama
by Jim Benning | 11.04.08 | 4:59 PM ET
At least if you ask the rest of the world who should win. My favorite comment came from a Ugandan quoted in the Times of London story: “We support Obama not as a person but as a new phenomenon.”
Plans for U2 Tower in Dublin ‘Shelved’
by Michael Yessis | 11.04.08 | 12:33 PM ET
All four members of U2 are invested in the Norman Foster-designed building, a planned 36-story tower on the banks of the River Liffey. If it ever gets built, it will be the tallest building in Ireland. Developers wanted to break ground this year, but now they’re waiting 12 months to see if the economic climate in Ireland improves. Bono and the Edge, however, still seem to be moving forward with their plans for the Clarence Hotel.
TSA Okays Bin-Bottom Ads Nationwide
by Michael Yessis | 11.04.08 | 12:14 PM ET
The ads that bewildered me and Walter Kirn at Los Angeles International Airport will now be seen at security checkpoints at terminals across the U.S.
Steve Fossett’s Bones Found
by Michael Yessis | 11.04.08 | 12:07 PM ET
Officials in California announced yesterday that the two bones found in the Sierra Nevada last week match the DNA of the missing adventurer, bringing the tragic story to a close.
Can Mountain Bikers and Hikers Share Trails on Federal Lands?
by Joanna Kakissis | 11.04.08 | 12:01 PM ET
The National Park Service is considering a regulation change that will allow park managers to open some trails to mountain bikers, and it’s stirring up advocates on both sides of the issue. At least one environmental group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, says such a change will invite hiker-biker friction and disturb the land. The International Mountain Bicycling Association, on the other hand, supports the change.
Berliners Say ‘Auf Weidersehen’ to Their Love for America
by Valerie Conners | 11.03.08 | 3:21 PM ET
After living for 16 years in Berlin—a city that once named its avenues after U.S. generals, schools after U.S. leaders and squares after U.S. cities—Reuters’ Germany correspondent Erik Kirschbaum now finds the pervasive admiration is largely gone. “It was hard to imagine a more pro-American city when I first moved here in 1993,” he writes in an essay for the news agency. “Yet the wind has changed and the love affair is over.”
What’s With All These Travel Horror Movies, Anyway?
by Eva Holland | 11.03.08 | 11:33 AM ET
When Eli Ellison and I first started working on our list of 13 Great Travel Horror Movies, I thought we’d stumbled onto a tiny film niche, a sub-sub-genre. Then we started brainstorming, Googling and asking friends and family for suggestions. To my surprise, our list of candidates—much like a B-movie monster—just kept getting bigger and scarier.
Buruma on Naipaul: ‘Alert, Never Sentimental’
by Jim Benning | 11.03.08 | 11:02 AM ET
Ian Buruma reviews The World Is What it Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul in the New York Review of Books. “Naipaul’s literary discovery of the world is marked by the way he uses his eyes and ears,” Buruma writes. “Impatient with abstractions, he listens to people, not just their views, but the tone of their voices, the telling evasions, the precise choice of words. His eyes, meanwhile, register everything, the clothes, the gestures. ... These observations are filtered through a mind that is alert, never sentimental, and deeply suspicious of romantic cant.”
Seven More Things Airlines Could Cut to Save Fuel
by Eva Holland | 11.03.08 | 10:40 AM ET
Sure, some carriers have already cut in-flight movie systems, and even life vests, to save on fuel—but, as Christopher Elliott argues in this funny and provocative column, there’s plenty more fat to trim. In-flight magazines get the axe (“I know you’ll miss all those stories about Las Vegas”), along with federal air marshals, duty-free carts and even flight attendants. “Why not install a vending machine at the back of the plane [instead]?” Elliott asks. Ouch.
World Hum’s Most Read: Oct. 25-31
by World Hum | 10.31.08 | 4:27 PM ET
Our five most popular how to stories for the week:
1) How to Have a Hockey Night in Canada
2) How to Use a Squat Toilet
3) How to Wear a Sari in India (pictured)
4) How to Love Herring in Sweden
5) How to Eat Weisswurst in Munich
What We Loved This Week: Haruki Murakami, Tom Bissell and ‘Made From Ike’
by World Hum | 10.31.08 | 3:53 PM ET
World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.
Eva Holland
Kenyon Presbyterian Church. It’s a tiny stone building (pictured) in Glengarry, a county outside Ottawa that was settled in the early 1800s almost entirely by Scottish immigrants. Kenyon was built by a small community from the Isle of Skye that remained extremely close-knit even after they left. The church was still using Scots Gaelic in its services until 1972, and, when I visited this week, I saw that the gravestones in the cemetery continued to be filled with pure Highland surnames even to the present. The insularity and (for lack of a less loaded term) purity of the church community, in the midst of so much fusion and diversity, was fascinating.
Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport Closes
by Valerie Conners | 10.31.08 | 11:12 AM ET
Once a critical landing point during the Berlin Airlift, historic Tempelhof Airport officially closed its doors yesterday with a farewell event marked by speeches from local VIPs, and even some protests. Auf wiedersehen.
Steve Martin’s St. Barts Villa Open for Rent
by Michael Yessis | 10.31.08 | 10:58 AM ET
It’s only $28,000 a week. For that, he should really throw in some professional show business:
Seoul’s Fish Market: One of the ‘Greatest Food Spectacles on Earth’
by Joanna Kakissis | 10.31.08 | 10:32 AM ET
So says Pulitzer-Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold, who recently visited Noryangjin Marine Products Market and reveled in the roughly 700 stalls hawking fresh seafood. Think “croaker and corvina, bubbling clams and great octopus whose arms extend farther than Shaquille O’Neal’s,” Gold writes in Gourmet, or “bottom-of-the-sea stuff whose uses are difficult to contemplate.” Like the pink sea squirts who resemble “throbbing uncircumcised phalluses”? Hmmm. I wonder what kind of Korean breakfast you can make out of that.
