I’ve lived in Greece since 2004 and have watched foreign contempt for George W. Bush reach epic proportions. As an American (albeit one of Greek descent), I’ve repeatedly faced angry cross-examinations about Bush’s foreign policy and the war in Iraq. But since the 2008 presidential race started making international headlines a couple of months ago, including here in Greece, I’ve noticed those angry interrogations are increasingly being replaced with enthusiastic pronouncements about how much the Greeks I encounter love Barack Obama. It’s a startling shift. Could it be a sign that more American travelers will be greeted with warmer welcomes around the globe in 2008? I sure hope so. 

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Full title: “Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East”

Author: Jared Cohen, U.S. State Department policy planner and 25-year-old second-time author

Released: Oct. 25, 2007

Travel genre: Travel memoir, cultural commentary

Territory covered: Internet cafes and house parties from Beirut to Tehran

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The inclusion of an iconic Canadian landmark in a new U.S. government video designed to promote travel to the States has stirred up controversy, as it should. It’s an embarrassment, to be sure, but the most interesting—and important—thing about the video is the simple fact that it exists. U.S. standing has sunk so low in the world, and so many travelers are staying away from the country, that the government had to borrow some Disney magic, partnering with the company to create a video promoting America as a welcoming place. The seven-minute, 20-second video is already showing at Washington Dulles International Airport and Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, and will soon be seen in the international arrivals areas at other domestic airports and at U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide.

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When I visited Beirut last November, most of my friends and family thought I was reckless, even crazy. Because of decades of war and assassinations, Lebanon is thought to be one of those places visited only by war journalists, soldiers and aid workers. That’s wrong, of course. Beirut still retains its “Paris of the Middle East” mystique and manages to attract tourists, even as the country remains on edge.

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I’ve been irked lately by the increasing attention Afghanistan is getting as a reemerging tourist destination. Yes, some visitors are returning to Kabul. But in the south of the country, the war is still being fought, and recent travelers’ reports of cheery residents beginning to pick up the pieces are much harder to find. So I was pleased to find a dissenting perspective in David Common’s recent dispatch from Kandahar, where NATO troops are still involved in heavy fighting and the Taliban sometimes seems to be gaining ground.

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A year after war between Israel and Hezbollah rocked Lebanon, and with “sectarian tensions and political standoff” still simmering, Reuters reports that the country’s beach resorts are back and packed with revelers. “Until three weeks ago, it seemed that people couldn’t forget the scars of last year’s war. But now Damour is back again,” said Fady Saba, general manager of Oceana resort, referring to the coastal strip near Beirut. The resorts are using fashion shows and concerts, among other things, to attract travelers from Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East, particularly Arabs from Persian Gulf states. 

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Twenty-five years after Argentina and the United Kingdom fought for their control, the Falkland Islands, or Las Malvinas as they’re known to Argentinians, are the latest destination to get a boost from war tourism. More than 900 people died in the 73-day war. According to the AP, most visitors are drawn to the sites of the fiercest fighting: Mount Longdon and Mount Tumbledown. Earlier this year, we noted El Salvador’s entry into the war tourism business.

Related on World Hum:
* War Tourism Comes to El Salvador
* Peace Deal Helps Lure Travelers Back to Nepal

Photo by alex-s, via Flickr (Creative Commons).

In the Diary of Anne Frank, young Anne rhapsodized about looking out of the house where she was in hiding and seeing “the blue sky and the chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine.” It’s a tribute to the power of her writing that newspapers around the world are carrying news that the 150-year-old tree has been attacked by a fungus and will be felled. AnneFrank.org has posted a short video of the view of the tree from the house. Last year, actress Emma Thompson helped launch AnneFrankTree.com, billed as an “interactive monument.” The Anne Frank Museum plans to plant a sapling from the original in its place.

Photo by Ned Raggett, via flickr (Creative Commons).

Adventure travel companies that had discontinued trips to Nepal in recent years are planning to resume their operations soon, according to a New York Times report. Conflict between the Nepalese government and Maoist rebels had caused outfitters to stop running trips, but a peace deal signed in November changed their outlook. 

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Nearly every country has to have a little war tourism, right? The U.S. has Gettysburg. Cambodia has the Killing Fields. Now El Salvador wants in on the action. According to the AP, the country is making the most of its 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992 and left 75,000 dead. “For a fee, former guerrillas will take visitors on tours of former battlefields or mountain hideouts, while museums display war memorabilia,” a story reports. Among the top destinations is Perquin, a mountain town where FMLN guerillas once established their headquarters. Visitors can stroll the “Museum of the Revolution,” which features uniforms and what remains of Soviet weapons. El Salvador is apparently the first Central American country to build a tourism business around its civil war history. What’s the hold up, Nicaragua? 

Further evidence that some of the most compelling newspaper travel stories don’t appear in the travel section: Paul Watson’s front page account in the Los Angeles Times last week of his seven-day drive along Afghanistan’s Ring Road. “On the way,” he writes, “we managed to avoid a Taliban ambush, a potential kidnapper or highway robber, a suicide bomber and a gunman who fired close enough to take off one of our heads.”

War may not be so good for children and other living things, but it sure clears out the tourists. So writes Kevin Rushby in The Guardian. Rushby is the author of the fantastic travel book, Eating the Flowers of Paradise, about the khat road though Ethiopia and Yemen, which I read when I was reporting on the drug’s use in the U.S. “The unfortunate truth about fear, tension or fighting,” he wrote in last week’s Guardian, “is that there are benefits to be had in neighbouring areas. That may be as simple as having few fellow visitors at great sites like Iran’s old Persian capital of Persepolis, or Jordan’s rose-red Petra -both badly affected by current troubles.”

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