Travel through Europe by country:
Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San-Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Sweden, United Kingdom, Vatican City
Travel through Europe by popular city:
Amsterdam, Athens, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, Budapest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Ibiza, Lisbon, Ljubljana, London, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna, Zagreb
Travel through Europe by popular things to do:
Acropolis, Anne Frank House, Eiffel Tower, London Eye, The Louvre
Travel through Europe with our writers:
Across Northern Europe, Balkan Odyssey
I positively love this image by Flickr user t3mujin — the composition couldn’t be more perfect. Shot in Portugual, the pop of colour is breathtaking, and I love the juxtaposition of the old (the building, the cobblestone street) with the modern (the fire-engine red scooter). Really great shot.
If you’ve got some great travel shots you’d love to share, be sure to upload them to the Gadling pool on Flickr. We might just pick one as our Photo of the Day.
Here at Gadling we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each — maybe you’ll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you’ll think that they’re good songs. Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the comments below and we’ll post it at the end of the series.
If you’re going to England, you really ought to make a stop in Liverpool. There’s a Tate Museum (with a terrific Auerbach I particularly like), Albert Dock, from whence The Titanic departed, and a music scene you’ll never forget.
The Beatles aren’t the only band to come out of Liverpool. Here’s a list of twelve Liverpool bands from the BBC, which even they confess is “by no means an exhaustive list.” Every one has played the famous Cavern Club, which is a great place to visit, even just for a pint in the afternoon.
If you’re into new music, you’re also in luck. Not only does Liverpool continue to encourage new artists through its music-rich history and welcoming clubs, but there’s also a school there called the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which was started by Sir Paul McCartney in 1996. LIPA is farming out fresh talent to all over Europe and beyond. You can catch the students at their very own Paul McCartney Auditorium or at the local bars and clubs like The Magnet and Bar Hannah.
Beatles tourism in Liverpool is pretty commercialized, but don’t miss The Magical Mystery Tour, which is conducted by childhood friends of The Beatles themselves. They’ll have all kinds of tidbits for you, for example: Did you know that “Norweigan Wood” was originally titled “Knowing She Would,” and they changed it for the censors?
Have a listen above; it’s sure to give you a smile.
Click here for previous Sounds of Travel.
Among the myriad stories of the global financial crisis that appear almost daily, this one from the New York Times today caught my eye.
The economic downturn is impacting that most sacrosanct of French traditions, the bar-cafe.
The article notes Balzac’s famous dictum — “The bar of a cafe is the parliament of the people” — in detailing how the French cafe is in real trouble these days. Simply put, people are going out less and when they do, they’re spending less.
The days of the long, leisurely French lunch — a couple of courses accompanied by a bottle of wine — have been replaced with the take-out sandwich, eaten on the run.
If they do come to the cafe, a owner named Maria Malichier tells the Times, “it’s a carafe of tap water, main course and off you go.”
“Now people don’t eat,” says another cafe owner, Gérard Renaud. “They come in for a coffee or a little aperitif and that is it. We are used to being busy, but now we feel lazy, and it is depressing.”
What’s behind this? Obviously a bit has to do with the financial crisis. But at the beginning of this year a smoking ban extended to include bar-cafes, which is hurting business. So is a renewed crackdown on drunk driving, with cops apparently staking out cafes to catch tipsy drivers.
Anyone that spends any time in France, Paris or elsewhere, quickly comes to see that the cafe culture, dying or not, is something one can only admire about the country — how people seem to carve out time in their day for it, which of course is time carved out for food and drink and conviviality. There’s a reason why Hemingway’s A Movable Feast is so evocative of a certain time and place.
Now we have this arresting fact from the Times piece: Two bar-cafes close every day in France. In 1960, there were 200,000 of them countrywide; today it’s fewer than 41,500.
Here at Gadling we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each — maybe you’ll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you’ll think that they’re good songs. Got a favorite of your own? Leave it in the comments below and we’ll post it at the end of the series.
Manu Chao is a vagabond by nature. He was born in Paris to a Spanish mother and father, but he’s really from all over. Chao’s music wanders and meanders like his personal life, drifting languages from Spanish to English to French, and picking up influences and passport stamps from South America to Spain and to France and then back again. His improvised concert tours are equally freewheeling, featuring actors, circus performers and tour stops only accessible by boat (?!).
I stumbled across Chao’s free-form music while I was in college. There was something that sounded very culturally rich about it – it felt authentic and regional, yet somehow equally global and devoid of place. As I began to travel and see more of the world, I found Chao to be a poignant soundtrack for my travels, particularly in the Spanish speaking world where I happened to be visiting.
Whether wafting over the balconies of ancient windows in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, jingling from makeshift speakers in an apartment in Buenos Aires, or bouncing out of a car radio in Mexico City, Manu Chao’s music somehow made a particular sonic sense to me. Perhaps my favorite example is his song, Me Gustas Tu:
If there’s one place Me Gustas Tu always evokes for me, it’s Barcelona. Each time I come back to this city on the Mediterranean, I’m drawn to the ancient walls and narrow alleys of the Gothic Quarter, a neighborhood that virtually explodes with life. As I walk the area, I always feel more alive, envigorated by rich, sensory experience. Down each street, the laughter of old men stumbles out of simmering tapas bars, water burbles quietly from forgotten fountains and my eyes gaze up at tiny metal balconies, shrouded in green curtains of plant life.
It’s hard to explain why, but I always feel happy when I’m there. I suspect it’s the sensory assault of the place and feeling of joy and wonder I find in the simplest experiences. Perhaps Chao is on to something then – Me Gustas Tu is a song that’s less about telling you where a vagabond like Chao has been, and more about where he is. That place is in his mind, filled with happy memories and vivid sensory experiences. For me the place is Barcelona, a memory I can conjure from time to time and forget my troubles. Suddenly I’m there, listening to Manu Chao on my balcony. And suddenly, life seems pretty awesome, doesn’t it?
Click here for previous Sounds of Travel
President-elect Barack Obama is truly multicultural. His heritage list has added up during this year’s electoral race: Kenyan, Indonesian, Hawaiian, and Kansas’ian? Now it turns out that, like any good American mutt, Obama is Irish, too.
According to a search undertaken by Ancestry.co.uk, Obama’s maternal roots can be traced to the village of Monegal in Ireland’s County Offaly. Apparently the future President’s great-grandfather was a shoemaker from the village who eventually emigrated to New York.
A musical group from the village, Hardy Drew and the Nancy Boys, has even written a song for the occasion.
The chorus of the song says: O’Leary, O’Reilly, O’Hare and O’Hara / There’s no one as Irish as Barack O’Bama…
and the lyrics go on to suggest that Obama is as Irish bacon and cabbage and call for the President-elect to get his jig on doing Riverdance.
During the recent election hubbub, the villagers of Monegal have claimed Obama as their own and invited him to come and visit the village, with hopes that the President-elect’s search for his Irish roots will also boost tourism to the quiet town.