If you were in New York’s Union Square yesterday, you may have walked past 100 or so people engaging in a chain of French kissing. Organized by French group Institut Bonheur (Institute of Happiness), the kissing party was set up to break the world record for the longest chain kiss. You gotta love the Frenchmen that is so into what this group is doing that he says, “this French kiss has to be the new symbol of what we call happiness and freedom.” Crazy Frenchies.
Friday night I spent the evening at a two-ring circus with my son. Because our house is similar to a three-ring circus, I had some time to pay attention to the details of this one. The Aladdin Shrine Circus comes to Columbus once a year with fanfare, fairly inexpensive seats, as entertainment goes, and as a way for the Shriners make money. The entertainment was mostly people acts by folks who are MUCH more flexible and daring than I am. Other than people, there was a dog act and two elephants.
Because our seats were in the front row at the very end where the entertainers come in and out, I had a chance to observe. It was like being in front of and behind the scenes at the same time. The motorcycle on a tightrope guy with a woman sitting on the bar dangling underneath were revving it up to our left before the announcer got going. She was at eye-level while he was overhead until their cue to head up to the top of the arena. I was intrigued by the double and triple duties. The men holding the dogs for the dog show ended up in the juggling act later on, for example. While a woman in one ring was twirling by rope attached to the top of her head somehow, a guy in a sequined outfit was setting up the next act in front of us.
When the announcer began to rattle off the names of the circus acts and the countries from which they hailed, my curiosity grew. The first country mention was Argentina. Then came Mongolia. At the end of the circus, all performers came out with the announcer rattling off their nationalities. The Czech Republic, Poland, Mexico and the United States were added to the list.There were others that I don’t remember. I taught at American and International schools as one way to do what I love, make some money and see the world.
There are a whole group of people who boast out of the ordinary talents who travel the world in a different way. All you need to do is be able to do things like shoot an apple off a woman’s head with an arrow. The trick is you have to be blindfolded with your back turned listening to her directions. She’s speaking Mongolian. Other than that–piece of cake.
Got a favorite travel website? Here’s your chance to give us it the praise it so richly deserves.
The 2008 Travvies– the “Oscars” of the travel website biz– recently announced they are accepting nominations for a variety of categories, including Best Group-Written Travel Blog, Best Photography, Best Destination Blog, and the grand prize, Best Travel Blog.
The awards are once again being handed out by Upgrade: Travel Better, which, I must say, is the fairest site in all the land.
Head on over there and nominate away, up to three sites per category.
On Monday we reported on plans for a temporary, upgraded observation deck that was to be built as part of the Eiffel Tower’s 120th birthday celebration. Unfortunately, it turns out that those plans were not definitive.
As reported by the New York Times, David Serero, principal of Serero Architects, stated later in the week that the firm’s proposal was no more than a spontaneous design that it had submitted to the Eiffel Tower management group. Apparently the designs were neither in response to a design competition nor a project contracted by the tower’s management; the architectural firm had merely put pictures of the proposed project on its website and the media jumped all over it, assuming it was a fixed deal.
Looks like the Eiffel Tower will be left alone… for now.
It is still a fairly common cliche in Prague: a backpacker with a beat up copy of Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trying to discover the Prague Kundera once described.
That Prague–desperate amidst the Russian invasion–does not exist anymore. The locals don’t want it to exist. I always sense a little disappointment when tourists find out that Prague is not at all the exotic, gloomy city that Kundera wrote about. It has–like it or not–become free and commerce-driven. No Russian soldiers, no interrogation, just free market capitalism. The literary scene is not great, despite foreign media and guidebooks’ keeping on “selling it” as the city of uber-intellectuals, such as Kundera, Kafka and Havel. Understandably, it is a much more appealing brand than “just another up and coming Eastern European city.”
With that in mind, I found it amusing to read today’s article in the travel section of The New York Times entitled “Milan Kundera’s Prague: Trumping the Unbearable Darkness of History.” Oh no, here we go again, longing for the way Prague felt under communism. Kundera has actually had a very troubled relationship to the post-communist country. He has lived in France for the last few decades and hasn’t even wanted his books to be published in Czech. The idea that his is the Prague being sold to tourists wouldn’t be particularly appealing to him, I don’t think.
As the author of the article pointed out, The Unbearable Lightness of Being is no love letter to Prague. That is an accurate observation. It is a great book, don’t get me wrong. One of my all time favorites. However, to think that it will make you understand the Prague you are seeing today is silly.
There is a lot more to Prague than its communist past. Try looking back longer than 20, 40 years. Prague has a great Gothic and Baroque past that–in the grand scheme of things–is a lot more relevant that its 40 years under communism (20 years ago).