After Sunday brunch yesterday I went for a wander around the antique stores and retro shops of Auckland’s bohemian Ponsonby neighbourhood. Amidst the array of interesting tat were a few globes from earlier times. Like the antique maps I collect (when I can afford to…), the faded tin mementos show a world very different from 2007. The USSR stretches in subtle pink from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and Africa’s troubled nation Zimbabwe is still dubbed Rhodesia. A country called Yugoslavia stretches from Ljubljana to Skopje and even Vietnam is divided at the 17th parallel.
Now we happily skim the planet via Google Earth, but there’s still something thrilling about spinning a globe and stopping it randomly with your finger.
The picture is of a globe nightlight I once had in a rustic pension in the Czech ski centre of Pec Pod Snezkou.