Travel Blog
Man Downs Liter of Vodka to Avoid Giving it up at Airport Security Checkpoint
by Michael Yessis | 12.13.07 | 11:03 AM ET
A 64-year-old man was given two choices by security at the Nuremberg, Germany airport: Dump his liter of vodka or pay to have it checked as luggage. He went with a third option: Chug it like a Sig Ep pledge. “The passenger was unable to stand or function and a doctor was called to the scene,” according to Spiegel Online. The not-too-surprising diagnosis: alcohol poisoning. The unnamed passenger was admitted to a Nuremberg hospital and is expected to be home in time for Christmas. I think I know what gift he’d like to find under his tree this year.
Related on World Hum:
* Airport Security to Lourdes Pilgrim: Your Holy Water is a Security Threat
* Russia: ‘Cold, Dark, Drowning in Vodka, and Ruled by the KGB’
Photo by inda.ca via Flickr, (Creative Commons).
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Yahoo! BuzzR.I.P. Ike Turner
by Eva Holland | 12.13.07 | 10:37 AM ET
Whatever you may think of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Ike Turner, who died yesterday at age 76, his contributions to music—and specifically to road music—were enormous. Ike and Tina’s cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Proud Mary, which Ike arranged along with drummer Soko Richardson, has got to be one of the greatest road songs (okay, river songs) of all time.
Related on World Hum:
* Rock Stars in Hotels: ‘Whatever Happened to the Good Old Days?’
* Manu Chao: Catching up With the ‘Traveling Man’
Photo: AP
Machu Picchu: ‘A Must-See for the Jet Set’?
by Jim Benning | 12.12.07 | 2:22 PM ET
Close followers of Celebrity Travel Watch will recall Cameron Diaz’s visit to Machu Picchu earlier this year, when her backpacker-commie-chic look—the shoulder bag pictured here says “Serve the People” in Chinese—was seen by some in Peru as too commie and not enough chic. (Turns out Maoist propaganda doesn’t always go over so well in a country that’s been terrorized by Maoist insurgents.) Well, now the Los Angeles Times is declaring Machu Picchu a “must-see for the jet set”—and not just celebs with Mao-inspired totes from China. Bill Gates made the trek this year, and in the last week or so Woody Harrelson and Owen Wilson landed in Cuzco with plans to visit Machu Picchu, although they apparently scrapped the trip to the Incan ruins after “a run-in with several local journalists.” Officials have taken steps to limit Inca Trail traffic. What’s next? Limits on celebrity visitors?
Related on World Hum:
* Celebrity Travel Watch
* Peru: It’s no Nepal
Photo: AP.
Flying ‘Business Elite’ With David Sedaris
by Michael Yessis | 12.12.07 | 2:16 PM ET
And with the traveler sitting next to him, a 40-something Polish man who, as Sedaris learns soon after takeoff on a transatlantic flight, is flying to his mother’s funeral. In a recounting of the flight for the New Yorker, Sedaris and his row mate barely speak a word, but somehow with Sedaris’s empathy, a few funny riffs about flying business class and some mining of his own family’s foibles, he delivers one of the more powerful pieces of his I’ve read in a while.
Related on World Hum:
* Inside David Sedaris’s Paris: An Audio Tour
* Why Did David Sedaris Just Spend Three Months in Tokyo?
About That Canadian Flag on my Backpack
by Eva Holland | 12.12.07 | 5:03 AM ET
I have a confession to make: There is a Canadian flag on my backpack. It’s not one of those postage stamp or business card-sized ones, either. As you can see in the photo, it’s closer to a large index card, or even a compact paperback. I super-glued it into place on my new pack when I was 20 years old, for no greater reason than that everyone else was doing it, and until recently I’ve never thought twice about it. Now, though, the times—and travel trends—are a-changing.
America, China Agree to Allow More Chinese Travelers Into U.S.
by Michael Yessis | 12.12.07 | 4:41 AM ET
Officials from the two countries signed a pact yesterday that will welcome up to 250,000 more Chinese travelers into the U.S. by 2011 and open the country to group tours. Previously, Chinese travelers were only permitted into the U.S. for business, government or educational reasons, writes USA Today’s Barbara De Lollis. The pact, which takes effect in spring 2008, also allows U.S. destinations to market themselves in China for the first time.
Talking Space Travel
by Michael Yessis | 12.11.07 | 3:28 PM ET
Richard Garriott, a game designer and the world’s next space tourist, and Eric Anderson, CEO of the company that’s helping to send him there, Space Adventures, spoke about the future of space travel today on the Kojo Nnamdi Show. The 30-minute segment is in the WAMU archives.
Related on World Hum:
* Meet Eric Anderson, Space Tourism Middleman
Photo of Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon courtesy of NASA.
‘If a Barefoot Man Can’t Walk Into Stuckey’s, Why Can he Sit Next to me All the Way to Sydney?’
by Michael Yessis | 12.11.07 | 12:17 PM ET
Great question, Steve Rushin. He poses it in a hilarious column in Time, in which he offers his own “modest proposals to return air travel to its original upright position.” Among them: “Prison time to the passenger who stands in the aisle fastidiously folding his blazer.”
Las Vegas Mob Museum in the Works
by Michael Yessis | 12.11.07 | 11:47 AM ET
It’s such a good idea I can’t believe the museum doesn’t already exist. But it looks like its creators are doing it up right, which makes sense since two of the drivers of the project are Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, a former mob attorney, and Ellen Knowlton, a former FBI agent in charge of Las Vegas. The FBI supports the museum because “you can’t tell the stories of Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, his banker, [Meyer] Lansky, casino boss Frank ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal and others without telling the story of the lawmen who pursued them.”
Death of a Guidebook
by Jim Benning | 12.11.07 | 11:27 AM ET
Over 28 years and eight editions, Moon’s South Pacific Handbook has helped guide travelers to the region’s many scattered islands, from Easter Island to Tahiti. But in a blog post entitled South Pacific Handbook RIP, the guidebook’s author, David Stanley, laments that Avalon will not be publishing a ninth edition.
‘Junior Fear Abroad’ in Italy: The Reaction
by Michael Yessis | 12.11.07 | 11:12 AM ET
The story of American exchange student Sophie Egan’s experience in Italy in the wake of a murder—Julia wrote about it yesterday—has stimulated some heated reaction in letters to the New York Times.
It’s Official: China Bans Lonely Planet Guidebook
by Julia Ross | 12.11.07 | 9:13 AM ET
Having recently lived in Taiwan, I’ve been watching with dismay as tensions across the Taiwan Strait have heated up over issues as varied as the Olympic torch route and Taiwan’s plan to hold a referendum on United Nations membership early next year. Now comes word that Lonely Planet has been ensnared in the China-Taiwan standoff. A story in The Age carries the first public confirmation from the Chinese government of rumors that have been swirling for years: that China has banned LP’s China guidebook over a map marking Taiwan and China in different colors, making them appear as separate countries.
Ice Skating Las Vegas
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 5:30 PM ET
Friend of World Hum and Los Angeles Times travel blogger Jen Leo laces up her skates at the floating ice-skating rink at Lake Las Vegas. What, Jen, the man-made waterfalls and look-alike lakes and faux volcanoes on the Vegas strip weren’t enough for you, so you had to find some machine-made ice?
Talking Antarctica Live and Online
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 4:48 PM ET
Susan Fox Rogers, editor of the new Travelers’ Tales collection “Antarctica: Life on the Ice” and the subject of a recent World Hum interview, will offer a “live teleseminar” Thursday, I’m told. Viewers can register here.
This American Life Goes to the Island of Nauru
by Jim Benning | 12.10.07 | 1:45 PM ET
Public radio’s This American Life rebroadcast its 2003 Middle of Nowhere episode over the weekend. It features a 30-minute piece on Nauru, the world’s smallest and perhaps most obscure island nation, and “its involvement in the bankrupting of the Russian economy, global terrorism, North Korean defectors, the end of the world, and the late 1980s theatrical flop of a London musical based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci called ‘Leonardo, A Portrait of Love.’” The CIA makes a terrific cameo, too. For my money, it’s public radio at its best.
