Word for the Travel Wise (04/16/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

With today being a holiday many of you probably spent your afternoon and evening around the dinner table laughing and sharing stories with close family members and friends. Perhaps you were in church all day long with your community celebrating the resurrection of Christ or hunting for colorful Easter eggs planted by an imaginary Easter Bunny with the children. (You know – the kind of heartfelt moments Kodak and Hallmark pride themselves in knowing how to capture best.) If Easter happens to be a holiday you don’t particularly celebrate then maybe you spent your afternoon lying lazily in a grassy park with a good book. I’ll even go as far as guessing that it was a Lonely Planet guide to Greece for your upcoming summer travels. Either way today’s word should come in handy for anyone with an appetite for learning, maghiritsa (a tripe and herbs soup) or potential travelers to Greece.

Today’s word is a Greek word from Greece:

Pascha – Easter

According to the Ministry of Tourism in their little summary on how the Easter is celebrated, the word “Pascha” stems from the Jewish “Pasah” which means “Passover.” The corresponding Greek word for “Pascha” is “Lambri” (Brightness) because the day of the resurrection of Christ is a day full of joy and exhilaration. To sum it up, Easter is a pretty big deal in Greece.

Online sources for learning Greek for free include BBC Languages and AGNI. The courses at BBC Languages are incredible. Probably one of the best you’ll find online and audio can even be found for today’s word by clicking here. Amerispan offers Greek immersion and language courses in Athens. Pretty pricey, but hey it’s Greece!

Past Greek words: toh karavee

Google Zeitgeist

by Erik Olsen on

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on the Google
Zeitgeist, so I figured I’d see what the world is thinking about and searching for. The list is usually pretty
predictable, but sometimes there are interesting surprises. Last week, which I’ve pasted below, looks to be on the
predictable side with the Bush leak and Katie Couric’s move to the CBS anchor chair of the topmost importance to folks.

1.       masters
2.      katie couric
3. 
    gospel of judas
4.      palm sunday
5.     
narnia
6.      kim mathers
7.      kenny rogers
8. 
    bush leak  
9.      red hot chili peppers
10. 
    passover
11.      kenzie dalton
12.      gene
pitney
13.      eva longoria
14.      meredith vieira
15. 
    spirit airlines

But even more interesting, I think is the international Zeitgeist page, which lets you see the top
terms in different countries. Here is where you get a true feel for the global Zeitgeist. Here, we learn that
Brazilians are interested in Carnaval, the Canadians and the Norwegians love Britney Spears, the Fins love, um, ystävänpäivä, and lots of
countries seem to be into both Paris Hilton and Harry Potter. Seriously, though, isn’t this fascinating?

Travel Writers' Best Places

by Erik Olsen on

So
maybe you’er not a travel writer…or maybe you are…or maybe you just want to be. Either way, you certainly would
trust the opinions of other travel writers, right? Well, here is a list of from members of the Society of American Travel Writers (SATW) who were asked to come up with
a list of their favorite travel spots around the globe. It’s a diverse list, fairly comprehensive, and while I’m not
sure I’d put the Grand Canyon at the top, well, it belongs there somewhere. 

1. Grand Canyon, Arizona

2. Great Pyramids of Egypt
3. New York City
4. Paris, France
5. Great Wall of China
6.
Venice, Italy
7. London, England
8. Taj Mahal, Agra, India
9. Machu Picchu, Peru
10. A
visit to the land(s) of your family’s ancestors
11. Washington, D.C.
12. Canadian Rocky Mountains
13. Jerusalem
14. Galapagos Islands
15. Hawaiian Islands

Word for the Travel Wise (04/15/06)

by Adrienne Wilson on

Of all the many sites
America is known for in big, big cities and even smaller ones thanks to websites like Roadside America, the one chunk of American history I’d really like to get
my hands and feet wet in personally, is that of the Native Americans. Some of my very own ancestors are from the
Choctaw tribe which I’d love to know more about, but paying a visit to any Indian reservation in the country would be a
highly rewarding learning experience. Take the Blackfoot/Blackfeet Indian Reservation located
east of Glacier National Park in
Montana for example. The main community is in Browning, MT and is home to an annual festival called Native American
Indian days held on pow wow grounds. The event sounds like something anybody with an interest in Native American
heritage, culture and history should try to check out while poking around Montana. In the meantime let us begin our
journey with a vocab word.

Today’s word is Blackfoot word used in the United States:

aohkíí – water

The Blackfoot language or Siksika, is an Algonquian lang spoken by
some 8,000 people in southern Alberta, Canada and northern Montana. Despite its low numbers of persons speaking the
Native American lingo the Blackfoot language is apparently seeing a linguist shift with the "Old Blackfoot"
spoken by the older generations and the "New Blackfoot" being spoken by the younger ones.  To learn more
about the four distinct nations of the Blackfoot tribe, which includes that in northern Montana also known as the
Blackfeet click here.

To learn more Blackfoot
words you can look at the short lost found at Native-Languages.org. They also include several links to
places online where further learning may happen. I clicked on a few which required passwords or didn’t quite work, but I
suggest you go through them all. Perhaps your server or luck will be better than my own.

Ferarri Store

by Erik Olsen on

There are few brands as closely associated with
speed and style as Ferarri. The brand is a national symbol in Italy, a source of
pride and patriotism. And here in the states the Ferarri is lusted after by playboys and corporate raiders. And who can
forget Tom Selleck, zooming around Hawaii in his blood-red
Ferarri 308?

Well if you’re traveling to Italy, you might be interested to know that there is a Ferarri
store just waiting for you patronage. The five floor emporium is tucked away
just around the corner from the famous Duomo in Milan, and of course there’s a branch in Rome as well as outlets
in the Malpensa and Fiumicino airports.

The stores are a high-tech men’s dreamland where you can run your
hand over the burnished chrome of a bumper and play around with scads of interactive gadgetry. It is truly a shrine to
speed that has everything for the Ferrari aficionado. And of course if its swag you want, they’ve got lots of that,
too, from cashmere jumpers to t-shirts and luggage, all branded with the cavallo nero…the horse. And for kids you’ll
want to check out all the toy cars. A full-scale model down in the basement allows you to live out your Ferarri
fantasies with the help of state-of-the-art plasma-screen. This is a man’s Disneyland.