Prague in the Early 90s

by Erik Olsen on

Several good friends of mine moved to Prague in the 90s to find a bohemian life-style they could find no place else.
It was the time right after the Velvet Revolution, when an entire country was emerging from the dark ages of communism,
and a wonderful new feeling of freedom and opportunity was palpable.

To me going to Prague at that time in a way seemed cliché, as if  people were hoping to find another version of
Paris in the 20s. It seemed too many people were going, that it was the “thing to do”. But looking back on it, I think
to myself, so what? And the fact is, Prague was (and remains) a wonderful place (in fact, one of these friends of mine,
who married a Czech woman, actually headed back recently…and has no regrets). Sometimes I get bummed that I didn’t give
Prague a try at that time, and my friends’ stories confirm that it would have been a great experience.

These thoughts about Prague came back to me as I was reading
Pamela Gerhardt’s Imagining Bohemia on the
Traveler’s Tales site. It’s a wonderful little story about her experience
visiting the city in 1993, at the height of the “second Prague invasion” (the expat invasion, not the communist one).
It’s a fine little bit of reminiscence, especially for those of us who remember those days with real fondness…and a wee
bit of regret.

Connected Traveler: Cancun and Burma

by Erik Olsen on

Before podcasting became all the rage, Russell Johnson at the
Connected Traveler was doing audio stories for download from
around the world. He calls his site “the world’s first 24 hour per day world travel and culture radio station”. You can
argue that the stories are kinda “newsy”, maybe a bit too polished and buttoned up, but they are informative and
certainly well-produced. The “nat sound” in the pieces is particularly good. It’s actually amazing how many stories you
can find at the site.

This story on Cancun sounds a bit like a corporate
commercial, but after listening to it for a while, it actually grew on me, and I ended up listening several others. In
this one, he takes on Burma, which
we blogged about a bit yesterday. Russ actually advocates
that travelers NOT visit Burma, saying that the “democratization” efforts there are not far enough along and that
supporting the ruling junta through tourism is a bad idea. Dunno about that. Seems that it’s a good thing for people to
be exposed to what’s happening in Burma, and for Burmese to encounter people outside their borders, but he makes a good
point.

I like what Russ is doing here, and will tune in again to see what he’s doing and where he goes.

Garma Festival in Australia

by Erik Olsen on

The Garma Festival is widely considered one of Australia’s most
impressive indigenous festivals, and celebrates the culture of the aboriginal people of north east Arnhem Land, people
called the Yolngu. Some say that Yolngu practice one of the oldest living cultures on earth, stretching back over
40,000 years. This year’s Garma Festival takes place starting tomorrow, August 5 until August 9, in an area with
specatular views of the Gulf of Carpentaria, and attracts tourists and indigenous peoples throughout the Northern
Territory.

The Irrawaddy: a Myanmar Web Site

by Erik Olsen on

When we talk these days about corrupt, oppressive regimes one country seems to get short shrift in the American
media: Myanmar. I’ve never been there myself,
but I got close to the border way back when I was living in Thailand, and I confess I regret not making the extra
effort to go inside. Myanmar, or Burma, as it is probably better known to most of us (especially
Orwell fans), is an extremely odd, and sad, place. Run by a
military junta for the last decades, Burma is one of those regimes that should have gone on the Axis of Evil list…even
if that list was an incredibly stupid idea.

Probably the most famous Burmese in the world today is a slight, attractive, and ferociously independent woman named
AUNG SAN SUU KYI, who is currently under house arrest in Burma for her opposition to the ruling junta. She also happens
to be a Nobel laureate.

All this talk about Burma is to bring your attention to a Web site that I found while noodling around
Carl Parkes‘ (aka Friskodude) Web site. Parkes brings to our attention a
website called The Irrawaddy, which is produced in Chiang Mai by Burmese
refugees and Western journalists, and who, despite the dreariness of life inside the country, have made their little
publication a rather entertaining (and sometimes depressing) read. Spend some time there, and learn a bit about what
Parkes calls “most unusual and fascinating nations in the world”.

Hiroshima Photo Essay

by Erik Olsen on

Years ago I read a book by Richard Rhodes called The
Making of the Atomic
Bomb, which remains one of my favorite books of all time. It took a deep historical, and sometimes pop-scientific
look at the people who came up with the most frightening man-made device of all time. It still perplexes me how all of
these great minds, probably some of the greatest brains in the history of mankind, came together to create a device so
deadly that for the first time the total annihilation of mankind was a real possibility.

The first bomb that was intentionally dropped on people detonated over the city of Hiroshima almost 60 years ago.
August 6 is the anniversary. Now, you can debate until you’re blue in the face whether this was a good thing, whether
thousands of American lives were saved by avoiding an invasion of Japan. But you can’t deny the awful devastation
caused by these bombs. It was, literally, the shot heard round the world.

Surely there will be several online packages about the Hiroshima bomb, and I’ll try and post about some of them as I
find them. But here is one that I thought was particularly good because it is so visual.
Time Magazine is running a photo essay about the
August 6 detonation that contains some jarring images. Whle they could have gone ever more gruesome (I’ve seen some
nasty ones), there are still some intense images that show the structural destruction wrought by the bomb, as well as
one particularly gruesome photo of a man burned by the blast.  With all the stories about places like North Korea
acquiring nuclear weapons, it is always good to remember what these bombs actually do to human populations.