Nooooooo! I was hoping this day would never come. Alas, I lose. And so does everyone else who’s going to end up “sitting next to a chatterbox at 30,000 feet” en route from London to Rome. The silver lining: The United States will maintain its ban on cell phone use on planes, and has no plans to change its mind.

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You want bad travel news? We got your bad travel news. The dollar’s tumbling value in Japan is today’s big headline. (Japan-bound budget travelers might want to cancel that hostel reservation and book a night here.) But the dollar has been sinking around the globe, from euro-land to India, for some time now. Get this, from the AP: “At the Taj Mahal, dollars were always legal tender, alongside rupees, for entry into the palace. But because of the falling value of the dollar, the government implemented a rupees-only policy a month ago.”

Related on World Hum:
* Three Travel Tips: Ways to Save Money in Europe

Photo by Delvis via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

The dollar ended trading at $1.51 to the euro today, sending me into official crazy-lady mode. Are the other American expats living in Europe on modest dollar salaries also crying with me, or have they resigned themselves to a 2008 of $8 cappuccinos, $20 blocks of feta and sharply curtailed travel plans in the rest of the hyper-expensive continent?

Related on World Hum:
* NYC Shops to Visitors: Give us Your Huddled Euros Yearning to be Free
* An Expat in Athens: Hitting the Polls in Greece

Photo by jopemoro via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tomorrow the European Commission will propose fingerprinting all travelers to Europe, according to the Washington Post. The Post also reports that the EU wants to take facial scans of some travelers. 

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Nine additional European countries, most of them former Communist Warsaw Pact states in the east, joined the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone today. What does that mean? This sentence from the Globe and Mail put it into perspective for me: “This morning, for the first time in history, you can drive from the Russian border in Estonia to the Atlantic beaches of Portugal, across 24 countries, without encountering a single border crossing or having to show your passport at any point.” That’s amazing. The fine print: Not everyone is happy.

Photo of German autobahn by kwerfeldein via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

We may have a new travel trend here. At the very least, we’ve got ourselves a new World Hum travel blog category: Hot Americans on Television Botching Geography Questions. First came Miss Teen South Carolina. This time around it’s American Idol’s Kellie Pickler, who appeared as a contestant on the U.S. television game show, “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” The answer, as you will see, seems clear. 

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The Boston Globe’s Tom Haines and Essdras Suarez have delivered another stellar package about life and travel at the edge of Europe. The edge, in this case, is Belarus, at the “land-locked...geographic center of Europe,” Haines writes. 

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Likeable travel host Michael Palin launched a new series on BBC over the weekend, and UK tour operators are bracing for the fallout. It seems Palin’s “New Europe” series—in which he explores the length of Eastern Europe, from Estonia to Albania—could trigger something tour companies have dubbed the “Palin Effect”: a spike in bookings to any country the Monty Python alumnus highlights. “Previous Michael Palin series including Himalaya and Sahara resulted in a surge of interest in countries such as Bangladesh that were previously not really on the tourist map,” one tour operator told the Telegraph. “We were surprised by the effect it had.” Let’s hope Palin’s fans leave a lighter footprint than the stag party weekenders lately buffeting cities like Riga and Prague.

Related on World Hum:
* British Secondary Schools Add Michael Palin’s ‘Himalaya’ to Required Reading List
* Prague Latest Magnet for Misbehaving Brits

Related on TravelChannel.com:
* Destinations: Prague

Bad news for Americans traveling in Europe: The dollar hit a record low against the euro today. It now takes about $1.39 to buy—gasp—one euro. As the AP points out, a 300-euro hotel room in Paris would have cost Americans about $351 in November 2005. Today, that same room would cost about $417. Said one analyst: “Anyone who goes to London or Paris right now is going to feel like they’re being gouged and regret booking the trip.”

Related on World Hum:
* Three Travel Tips: Ways to Save Money in Europe
* Given the Weak Dollar Overseas, Any Advice on Long-Term Travel?
* The Dollar-Euro Exchange Rate Blues

Photo by jopemoro via Flickr (Creative Commons). 

Full title: “Far Afield: A Sportswriting Odyssey”

Author: S.L. Price, author of Pitching Around Fidel: A Journey into The Heart of Cuban Sports and a writer for Sports Illustrated.

Released: Sept. 1, 2007

Travel genre: Sports travel/France memoir. “Think ‘A Year in Provence’ in sweats,” says a press release. 

Territory covered: Europe, Asia. 

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When it comes to vacation time, nobody in Europe—or anywhere, perhaps—has it better than the Swedes. A recent EU study found that Swedish workers are “entitled to an average of 33 paid vacations days in 2006—close to 7 weeks, not counting public holidays,” according to the International Herald Tribune’s Ivar Ekman. Now, with the rise of a global economy, that may be changing. “"The Swedish vacation is being adapted to the international situation,” said Orvar Lofgren, a professor of anthropology at Lund University and author of the book “On Holiday: A History of Vacationing.” He adds: “The classic five-week vacation is not as holy as it used to be.”

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Full title: “In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century”

Author: Geert Mak, a Dutch journalist, historian and the author of “Jorwerd: The Death of the Village in Late Twentieth-Century Europe” and “Doomed to Vulnerability”

Released: Aug. 7, 2007 (English translation)

Travel genre: Modern history/column collection

Territory covered: Europe

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