What We Loved This Week: Applause on Planes, Flag Waving and New Orleans

Travel Blog • World Hum • 07.25.08 | 3:13 PM ET

World Hum contributors share a favorite travel-related experience from the past seven days.

Joanna Kakissis
When I was a kid, I used to love how everyone clapped when planes on trans-Atlantic flights touched down. My family was always traveling to Athens, so we were usually surrounded by a 747 full of grateful and dramatic Greek expatriates who both longed for and feared that long flight to the homeland. The applause upon reaching Athens was a thanks to the pilots and the higher powers for keeping us safe, but it also became a prelude to everything I loved about my childhood summers in Greece: my Uncle Thanassis waiting anxiously for my father at the gate; the cousins who would fill the homes of every house we visited; the powerful and elusive sense of home that filled those summers.

People have long since stopped clapping on trans-Atlantic touchdowns, but when I flew from Amsterdam to Minneapolis on Tuesday, I still hoped to hear it instead of the clinking seat belts of hundreds of impatient (and ungrateful?) passengers. I was sinking into disappointment when I heard the applause, coming from the young Indian woman sitting next to me. She was tiny, lovely, bespectacled, a university student in Minnesota, and she was clapping so enthusiastically that I started to clap, too. Never mind that it was only the two of us. I had not done that for 20 years.

Eva Holland
One of my missions for my time in New Orleans this summer was to make the most of the city’s live music scene, and last night I made a good start: I went bar-hopping on Frenchmen Street, where you can hear world-class jazz and other local music in half a dozen venues every night of the week. All for the price of a beer and a few dollars in the band’s bucket—now I remember why I love this town! Here’s a pic I shot:

David Farley
A reported 200,000 Europeans (and, most likely, a sprinkling of American expats) came out to cheer on Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate, yesterday in Berlin, doing something that we haven’t seen in, say, about eight years: wave an American flag that was refreshingly free of gasoline and fire. In related news: American travelers and travel writers everywhere let out a sigh of relief that the United States’ standing in the world might get a much-needed upgrade after the November election.

Jim Benning
I loved New York City’s love for travel writing. I was there this week and went out Wednesday night to see the first installment of the Restless Legs travel reading series, organized by our own David Farley. The Lolita bar’s basement was packed with people—at least 50 or 60—sitting on the floor, gathered along the stairwell, hoisting beers and listening intently as travel writers Tony Perrottet and Cullen Thomas read and talked travel. Both writers were a hit. But most heartwarming of all was the love everyone showed for travel and travel writing that night. There really was a sense of a budding travel-lit community there. We’re working on setting a date for a World Hum-themed reading as part of the series later this year.

Valerie Conners
It’s pretty amazing news when an alleged perpetrator of Europe’s worst genocidal crimes since Hitler is finally captured by police. In my mind, it became jaw-droppingly spectacular once it was revealed that former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (arrested while en route to a spa holiday outside Belgrade) had spent the last 10 years in “hiding” under the rather public guise of Dabic The Spiritual Explorer, a New Age guru specializing in “healthy quantum energy.” He was even known to sing and play the Serbian gusle (a one-stringed instrument) at his local Belgrade watering hole. I’ve long hoped to travel to the former Yugoslavia, and it’s intriguing to watch more mainstream travel media feature this region. As Serbia continues its bid to join the European Union—and in turn likely gain increased tourism interest as well as all the other usual economic perks—I’m fascinated to see whether this arrest will push the EU membership wheels into motion, and how these events might affect long-term interest in travel to Serbia and its environs.

Michael Yessis
The drive to and from Chicago. Despite the $4 gallons of gas and the rain and the tolls and the lines just to buy crappy food at travel plazas, I still love watching the country whiz by on a good ol’ American road trip.

Elyse Franko
I loved “Batman: The Dark Knight.” As the London Free Press reports, many fans of the Caped Crusader were surprised to learn that Gotham City has jumped a few states on the map; “The Dark Knight” was filmed in Chicago and not New York City, on which Gotham City was supposedly originally based. No matter where they are, Christian Bale still plays a great Batman, but Heath Ledger steals the show (and gave me nightmares!) with his terrifyingly sadistic Joker.

Julia Ross
Since it opened to mixed reviews in April, I’ve been reluctant to visit Washington, D.C.‘s Newseum, unsure the $20 price of admission would be worth the trip. I finally splurged this week and was pleasantly surprised. Exhibits on the Berlin Wall (including eight sections of the graffiti-covered wall itself), global media coverage of 9/11, and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs were highlights, and more moving than I expected. Interestingly, the entrance fee in a city where the free-of-charge Smithsonian presides over the museum scene doesn’t seem to be a deterrent. The place was packed.

Photo of 747 interior by Charlie Brewer via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

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