Photo of the Day (8/15/07)

by Jamie Rhein on

Watching a craftsperson create whatever it is he or she sells is one of my traveling pleasures. Perhaps, this comes from having an artist as a brother and a childhood of going to the art department at Eastern Kentucky University where my father taught and threw pots on a potter’s wheel.

I love the way LadyExpat captured a shot that tells a brief story about this umbrella maker in Taiwan. The heading mentions a factory. The tools, the method, the careful attention the maker gives to her craft are all here. I can see the fish swimming about on the top as the woman turns the umbrella checking to see if she is done before she takes out an unpainted one to begin another.

***To have your photo considered for the Gadling Photo of the Day, go over to the Gadling Flickr site and post it.***

24 Hour Road Trip: Philadelphia Inside Out

by Jamie Rhein on

Once, I got the bright idea that we should take a walking tour of Cleveland, Ohio. I had read that Cleveland is one of the top cities for walking in the U.S. “Let’s see why!” I was enthusiastic when we put our then 1 1/2 year-old in the jogging stoller and told our then 10 year-old to tie up her sneakers for our stroll from Tower City to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and back to Tower City. Six and a half hours later, we dragged ourselves back to the car. The day wasn’t exactly a failure, but it wasn’t the grand experience I had imagined.

This tour of Philadelphia called “24 Hour Road Trip: Philadelphia Inside Out” looks like it offers the solution that our walking tour of Cleveland missed–a focus and a sense of humor. This Saturday, August 18, three tour guides extraordinaire who have experience with city walkabouts will be leading people on a 24 hour excursion of the City of Brotherly Love. Kurt Braunohler, a comedian with loads of TV face time, Scott Gabriel Knowles, a professor at Drexel University who knows bunches about urban life, and Calvin Johnson, also a well-versed urbanite, have teamed up before. Here’s the link to their bios. They look like three guys who would be fun to hang out with.

Instead of just telling you about Philadelphia, their aim is to semi-guide people through their own experiences of the city. Along the way, the group will chronicle what is discovered as they move from place to place interacting with Philadelphia and those who they come across. The group’s discoveries will be shared with others via the Internet. If this gang goes to Cleveland, I’m in. I’d like to have a chat with them about psychogeography, one of the words they use to describe the essence of their 24 hour trip. [Thanks to Marilyn Terrell, our National Geographic Traveler tipster for the heads up about this tour.]

Bohemian Berlin Nearly Dead?

by Neil Woodburn on

Bohemian Berlin is nearly dead.

Or so claims a recent LA Times article bemoaning the demise of the underground art scene at the hands of commercialism.

Yes folks, it’s an age old theme but it’s happening once again, this time in the German capital.

During the Cold War, West Berlin was a haven for artists who received subsidies from the government for the hardship of living in the walled city. The art scene really took off, however, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the resulting mass of condemned and vacant buildings in East Berlin which squatters quickly took over and transformed into, you guessed it, a Bohemian enclave.

After nearly 20 years of artistic freedom, however, studios are going upscale, Starbucks is moving into old communist neighborhoods, and rent is becoming increasingly more unaffordable for artists. Berlin is slowly transforming into a well-heeled, affluent city that has less and less room for artists and an expanding amount of space for bankers, lawyers, and government slogs.

Is Berlin losing its character?

I hope not. No other city in all of Germany is as wild, vibrant, and so very un-German-like as Berlin. And I, for one, hope it stays that way.

Pageant of the Masters: Replicating Paintings with Live Performers

by Neil Woodburn on

Imagine becoming part of a living painting.

That’s the idea behind Pageant of the Masters, a two-month long series of performances in Laguna Beach, California in which famous paintings are replicated by human performers meticulously covered in layers of paint that match the original creation.

The result is 90 minutes of three dimensional, life-size reproductions of masterful paintings. The performers stand absolutely motionless on stage and blend in with the backgrounds of the paintings. The living portraits are accompanied by a full orchestra performing an original score as well as a narrator who tells the story of the paintings featured.

It’s all really quite amazing. And best thing is that you can coax your kids into enjoying some fine art and culture by telling them that will be visiting the real life set of Laguna Beach.

But hurry up if you want to go. The Festival ends on August 31.

Across Northern Europe: Lonely Love in Iceland

by Brook Silva-Braga on

I checked my e-mail yesterday and got that feeling you get when you have a giant crush on someone and they show up in your IN box. Your eyes go to their name and everything else becomes spam and you click on the message like unwrapping a package. You are in a kind of love.

I’m in a kind of love with Marie. She’s the Brit who posted a message on the hostel message board saying she wanted to go to the Westmann Islands with someone. I was very happy to see that message because I wanted that too. So I e-mailed and waited, like a kid passing a note to the cute girl in class. Iceland’s biggest festival crams 10,000 youngsters into a campsite each August and I didn’t want to be there alone

When you’re traveling alone the desire to meet someone is like a hunger. Explaining it to someone who has never traveled alone would be like explaining hunger to someone who has never had an empty belly. Like real hunger, it can make you a little loopy in the head and make everything around you sharper and more real. Then when you no longer feel it, you can’t even really understand what you felt or why you wanted to eat so terribly badly.

When I got home from my long trip I gobbled up people like a castaway survivor. I think there’s a Jack London story where the protagonist makes it through a terribly hungry ordeal and then can’t stop eating once he’s rescued. I was like that for a while too, until finally I realized I couldn’t eat anymore and realized some other things that don’t extend so neatly in this far-extended metaphor.

The thing I like most about traveling is how you have to work just to get through the day. You don’t know where to shop or how to get to town or which bus leaves when. You don’t speak the right language or know the customs or have a favorite restaurant you visit too often. You are engaged in a way you just can’t be at home.

I can’t say I like that feeling of stomach-empty loneliness but I like that I feel something and I love the rush you always get when the cute girl in class passes a note back.

So it was last night and Marie wrote back. We met up on the porch outside the hostel with a little light left in the 11pm sky. It was cold. I sat at the same table where earlier in the night the British couple celebrating their 20th anniversary asked me to snap a picture as they sipped champagne. They were in a different kind of love.

But I’ll settle for Marie and I’s kind right now. We’re going to take the 5.40pm bus to the 2am ferry. We’re going to share some booze and food. We’re in love, Marie and I. We’re never going to speak after Monday, we’re never going to kiss. But I checked my e-mail today and no one made me feel like she did.

Previously on Across Northern Europe: Shining a Light On Iceland

Brook Silva-Braga is traveling northern Europe for the month of August and reuniting with some of the people he met on the yearlong trip which was the basis of his travel documentary, A Map for Saturday. You can follow his adventure in the series, Across Northern Europe.