Travelistic’s The Map Show

by Erik Olsen on

A little ways back we did a podcast with Nicholas Butterworth, the CEO of a new travel video company called Travelistic. I’ve been checking in every so often with the site and am so far quite impressed with the quantity and quality of material they’ve got online.

It’s a bit of a no-brainer to say that people will increasingly turn to video as they make travel plans, but it bears keeping in mind. I can easily imagine putting together a trip to, say, the British Virgin Islands and then finding real use in this new show from Travelistic called The Map.

The composition (sound/editing) is a bit amateurish, but that’s the point, I suppose. It gives the show a more personal quality, like you’re getting the real scuttlebutt, as opposed to a more stale corporate feel, a la some of the stuff on the Travel Channel. Overall, it’s pretty cool and a sign of things to come.

Three Little Towns

by Erik Olsen on

One of the joys of going anywhere outside your borders is leaving behind the big city and experiencing places off the beaten track. This is the case whether you are strolling through villages in Armenia, as I was fortunate enough to do recently, or if you’re heading out of a big city like Prague. In this entertaining piece in the International Herald Tribune, writer Ruth Ellen Gruber check out three little-known towns in the Czech Republic: Telc, Kutna Hora, and Mikulov, and finds the sights and sounds of these obscure places the kind of superb little surprises that make traveling worthwhile.

Everyone Hates the French

by Erik Olsen on

The poor French just can’t get a break. Riots in the streets of Paris and now, it seems,
almost all of their
neighbors dislike them. And I’m not talking about “neighbors” in the political/ideological sense. I mean we all
know what the Bushies and the Brits think of the French (surrender monkeys or something like that?). No, I’m talking
about even the Dutch and the Swedes. While all of Europe may not agree on whether Turkey should be part of the Union or
on the worthiness of subsidies, everyone pretty much seems to agree the French are rude, arrogant and smelly (OK, I
added that last part…and I’m only kidding…it’s their cheese that’s smelly).

Personally, I think all this anti-French (not to mention anti-America) stuff is nonsense. Defining an entire country
and culture with a few mean (or nice) adjectives is really a worthless and ultimately self-defeating effort. Why
self-defeating? Because when you generalize too much about anything, you are apt to lose touch with the nuances that
give that something character and definition. And in this day and age, especially, when the world is so riddled with
nuance, we’re better off keeping as open a mind and eye as possible.

NPR and Book on Burma

by Erik Olsen on

I remember reading George Orwell’s Burmese Days when I was living in Bangkok and how much the book made me want to book a trip to Rangoon to see the country for myself. Burma, or Myanmar as it is officially called, is a complete mess. The ruling junta there is known for its brutality, backwardness and sociopathic secrecy. And they make lousy pancakes.

Like North Korea, Burma is an anachronism, an oddity, a pariah among nations, granted a less dangerous one, and it remains one of the most closed societies on earth. Now out in paperback, the book uses Orwell’s story there as a backdrop for exploring the country as a whole. Called Finding George Orwell in Burma, the book is now out in paperback. Written by Emma Larkin (a pseudonym), it examines this bizarre, yet alluring place. NPR has got a nice feature on the book that is worth checking out. Oh, and if you are interested in reading Burmese Days, you can also download and read the whole book for FREE from this site.

Photo of the Day (12/31/2006)

by Erik Olsen on

How could I resist a shot of fireworks going off for the last photo of the day for 2006? Let us bid farewell to a fine year with this photo from rvnix that appears to show fireworks exploding near the Millennium thingamajig in London. Happy New Year y’all. See you in 2007!