Theater: Dress Up (or Not)

by Iva Skoch on

I have had this conversation with numerous travelers (typically backpackers) in Europe: they want to go to the theater, opera, classical music concert but have no dressy clothes. The theater usually says that it encourages people to dress up but it is not enforced. Yet, all the locals dress up. Should they still go in jeans?

Most of them do. They justify it by saying that the real experience of Aida at the Opera in Vienna should not be dilluted by people wearing jeans (and taking pictures inside the Opera house – like the Stanford U students in the picture) and on the contrary, it shouldn’t be enhanced by wearing a gown.

So why do locals usually dress up? Are they just shallow and think that cultural experience will come with nice clothes?

Over the years, I have adopted the “when in Rome, do as Romans do” point of view when it comes to theater-going. Dress the way the locals dress, even though it might be inconvenient and mean buying an outfit. It doesn’t have to be a gown, but at least a skirt and a shirt (long pants and long-sleeve, collared shirt for men). If you can’t afford it, it might be a good idea to go to see a small, independent show instead. Consider that those locals may have saved up a lot of money to see a show in a majestic theater building and expect it would be special. By wearing jeans and “not caring”, you may just be ruining it for them. You might be able to enjoy the show regardless of the clothes you wear, but they might not.

In most European theaters, you will notice that the people dressed up are the locals and the people in jeans are the tourists. Many shows featuring a high concentration of jeans are thus called “tourist shows.” And that is certainly not a compliment.

Then again, who knows, “dressing up for culture” might be a thing of the past…

Red Corner: Touring Korea’s DMZ

by Neil Woodburn on

The Cold War is mostly over with the exception of a few renegade stalwarts.

Witnessing this bygone era, however, can still be experienced at the border between North and South Korea where two massive armies have faced off against each other since the Korean War ended nearly half a century ago.

The Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ for short, is a 2,000 meter wide expanse of heavily fortified land bristling with barbed wire fences, antitank traps, guard towers, and a whole host of nasty military equipment.

And the good news is that parts of it can be toured by the public.

Rolf Potts, writing for Salon.com, journeyed there a few years ago and has posted a fascinating and still very relevant article about his adventures–adventures which couldn’t legally begin until he signed a release form containing the following warning: “The visit to the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom will entail entry into a hostile area and the possibility of death as a direct result of enemy action.”

After signing his life away, Potts enjoyed a slide show, a brief tour, the opportunity to step two feet into the North, a visit to The Bridge of No Return, and of course, a stop at the DMZ gift shop.

Potts’ humorous account is also peppered with little gems of embarrassing U.S. history and some wonderful insight as to what it’s like to live in South Korea.

I highly recommend taking a few minutes to peruse this fine piece of journalism.

Jackson Tram to be Replaced

by Erik Olsen on

Say it isn’t so! Here is a story that will likely pluck the nostalgia heartstrings of many a Western ski fan, myself included. You know the wonderful old ski tram that has been hauling skiers up the mountainside at Jackson Hole all these years? Looks like they’re taking the thing down. It’s 40 years old, is rather inefficient and slow. But it’s still such a well-known feature of the Jackson landscape, it just seems a shame to let it go. But maybe it’s for the better .Things do change, after all. I mean, I worked at Squaw valley years ago, and I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to see them get rid of the tram there. It would be sad, but not the end of the world. But here’s the good news. They are replacing the tram with a larger, more efficient one. The current Jackson Hole tram carries 52 people at a time, but the NEW one will carry over 100 people. It will cost $25 million and is scheduled to open in December 2008. Until then, the resort has installed a chairlift to the summit. So bid farewell to the old, and welcome in the new. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Vanity Fair on the National Parks

by Erik Olsen on

It has taken me FOREVER to get to this post. I read the article a while back and have been meaning to write about it ever since. First a personal blurb: my first real job in the big, bad, plastic world (after working as a ski photographer in Tahoe and a junior rafting guide in Colorado) was with the Department of the Interior in Washington DC. Don’t ask me how I ended up there. It a rather long, convoluted tale filled with romantic notions of helping the world and crushed ideals about how one can do this inside a government agency. No matter. The point of al this is that within the Interior Department lies what is probably the best agency in the federal government: The National Park Service. The NPS takes care of all of our nations great parks, from Yosemite to the Smokies, as well as gobfulls of various monuments, recreation areas, etc. In general, they do a fine job. If you’ve ever spent time in a National Park, you know that the rangers are a dedicated bunch and the care given to interpretation and preservation is, in general, worthy of high praise. But there are problems, and the park service has typically had some difficulties with funding and upkeep, especially <slight reveal of political slant> during Republican administrations </slight reveal of political slant>.

One of the big debates this time around is whether to allow certain motorized vehicles like ATVs and snowmobiles into the parks. traditionally, most parks have been off-limits to these folks. For good reason, IMHO. They are noisy, pollution causing and, if I may throw in yet another potentially incendiary over-generalization, demographically unpleasing. I’ll not expand on that remark, but suffice it to say the parks are probably better off without motorized vehicles roaming around them.

According to this nicely done article from Vanity Fair a while back, it seems lots of people agree with me. Sadly, among them is NOT the head of the Park Service, Paul Hoffman. The article pays out the issues involved and some of the passionate characters who are fighting behind he scenes to keep the parks motor-free. Check it out and weigh in, should you feel compelled.

Namibian Dunes

by Erik Olsen on

Something in me wants to make a dumb joke about “The Spice”, perhaps to drop a name like Muad’Dib and see how many people get it. My suspicions are that we don’t have a HUGE number of Dune fans out there, but I’ll have to confess I was a passionate, rabid devotee of the Frank Herbert series. All of which leads me to this article from Namibia, which has nothing to do with worms or oil or Muadib, but rather with sand, large, lovely mountains of sand.

The writer Joan Scobey takes us to the Namib Desert, a long, thin strip, some 120 miles wide, along Namibia’s 800-mile Atlantic coast between South Africa and Angola. There, she dines on oysters, rock lobsters and fresh asparagus and gazes up at the Southern Cross in a rather wonderful sounding journey published in the Washington times. I confess to a somewhat painful twinge of jealousy as I read this, as a friend of mine, travel writer Andrew Tarica once told me that Namibia is one of the best places he’s ever been. One interesting bit I gleaned from the piece here is that this region is populated by Germans, who arrived to Africa rather late to the region during the great colonization boom (the whole unification thing preoccupied them for a while in the late 1800’s). So, all’s I got to say is, check it.