Remember the movie The Terminal? Robert Wladyslaw Parzelski lived it.

by McLean Robbins on

File this one under “news of the weird.” Robert Wladyslaw Parzelski was sent back to London 18 days after arriving in São Paulo on a one-way ticket … and never leaving the airport.

The story is still unfolding, but Slate reports that Parzelski, a Polish man, traveled on a British Airways flight from London on June 17 on a one-way ticket purchased by a friend in Poland. He was to return with “two telephone sets.” How, when, or why has yet to be determined.

Parleski, who spoke no Portuguese and arrived without any cash, was supposedly meeting a friend in São Paulo, but the friend never arrived, and Parzelski, like Tom Hanks in The Terminal, simply lived in the airport, subsisting on water, yogurt and cigarettes given to him by airport custodians.

When asked what he was doing, he simply replied “I’m Poland.”

This story caught the attention of the Folha de São Paulo paper, where reporters began an attempt to figure out Parzelski’s story.

Newspaper reporters (not authorities) finally found a doctor in São Paulo who spoke the language and was able to speak to Parleski — sort of — and determine that he was, in fact, “lost” inside the airport. The doctor revealed to the media that Parzelski was a father of five from Krakaw, Poland, who moved to London to work as a builder. After he was laid off, he traveled to Brazil at the behest of a Polish friend in London with the mission to return with two telephone sets. Why the telephones? Nobody is sure.

“Before embarking … [we] spotted Parzelski enjoying a dark ale at a bar inside the departure lounge,” the Folha de São Paulo wrote Wednesday.

Parzelski’s story has ended, though. He left São Paulo on a Swiss Airways flight on Tuesday, bound for Zurich and then London.

[Flickr via MarkHillary of Sao Paulo airport]

Video of the Day – Musical Birds on Wires

by Stephen Greenwood on

This video has been making the rounds on the internet for about two years, but every time I watch, it brings a smile to my face.

In 2009, São Paulo based musician Jarbas Agnelli came across a photo in a newspaper of birds perched on electric wires. His musical curiosity took over, and he decided to find out if the birds created some sort of melody based on their positions on the wires. Sure enough, a surprisingly well constructed melody emerged, and Agnelli posted the final result in this video.

Agnelli later gave a talk at TEDx São Paulo to discuss the piece and has been interviewed with the original photographer, Paulo Pinto, in the same newspaper that the photo first appeared.


Perhaps you’ve caught a natural tune in one of your travel photos or video? Share it with us in the Gadling Flickr Group and it could be our next Photo / Video of the Day!

The Ugly Truth: Gadling’s revolutionary new video series to launch in May

by Alex Robertson Textor on

With the goal of improving its cross-platform social media presence, Gadling proudly announces the Ugly Truth, a new video series hell-bent on capturing the viler dimensions of the travel blogger lifestyle.

The Ugly Truth series will revolutionize the sanitized travel show media with depictions of a host of things designed to provoke intense, visceral reactions from viewers.

There’s some great hardcore gross-out material, of course, and there are also plenty of examples of a newly-diagnosed condition referred to by doctors as TBRC (Travel Blogger Rage Syndrome).

“We’re excited to bring the more disgusting side of travel to the attention of Gadling’s audience,” says Gadling Editor-in-chief Grant Martin. “And really, who cares about boring travel news or how-to posts dealing with travel logistics, flight upgrade strategies, or museum discounts when you’ve got video footage of Meg Nesterov consumed by TBRC, beating a defenseless Turkish cat? Or a video of Jeremy Kressmann having eating one too many Big Macs in Thailand, losing his lunch in a tuk-tuk?”

Which Gadling writer chewed so much khat in East Africa last summer that he puked for days? We’ll tell you–better yet, we’ll show you.

Which Gadling writer had a torrid affair with the head of a major European national tourist board? We’ll show you that as well, with crystal-clear HD footage that leaves nothing–not even some unfortunate back acne–to the imagination.

There is also a mine of simply baffling, unclassifiable material on tap, like the dreamy sequence documenting the Gadling contributor so in love with the room’s décor at São Paulo’s Fasano that she arose from a nap to lick the edge of her desk.

Martin, again: “We’d really like to become the first place people turn to for disgusting travel videos, and we’re really pushing our stable of writers to take the lead by getting themselves into some truly gross situations. I can’t wait to see the enormous traffic these gems are going to get!”

And as for rumors that Martin’s recent TBRC episode involving an inefficient airport employee at Kastrup will appear in a The Ugly Truth episode to be released on June 17? “No comment.”

Check out the first installment of The Ugly Truth in early May.

Happy April Fools’ Day!

[Image: Flickr | Mike Burns]

Zombies with passports: The Walking Dead goes worldwide

by Meg Nesterov on


In order to promote the new show The Walking Dead on AMC, swarms of zombies invaded 26 cities worldwide (including my city of Istanbul, pictured above and filmed here) earlier this week, lurching around major tourist landmarks and generally freaking out passerby. The undead began their sightseeing in Taipei and Hong Kong, then hit European capitols including London, Rome, and Athens. More arose in Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, and Johannesburg, before going after American brains coast to coast from New York to the show’s premiere in Los Angeles. Check out more photos and video on the show’s blog and Facebook page.

Zombies would make ideal travelers: they can walk through airport security slowly and with no complaints, pack lightly, and don’t need to be fed or entertained on planes. If you can evade the attempts to gnaw on your flesh, they’d make better seatmates than a screaming baby or an armrest hoarder on a long flight. When there’s no more room in coach, we will all walk the earth.

See any zombies on your commutes or travels this week? Leave a comment below if you escaped unbitten. Want more Halloween dead-eyed fun? Our favorite British bear does his take on the zombie genre with Dawn of the Ted.

[Photo Courtesy of Fox International Channels]

CitySounds.fm: the sound of the world

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Travelers often think of destinations in terms of what they see: the Eiffel Tower lit up at night, the gaudy neon of the Las Vegas Strip or the fiery pink of a sunset in Tahiti. Yet it’s our other senses – the smells, tastes and particularly for music fans, the sounds that can truly stick in our subconscious, evoking vivid memories of our journey. Those in search of some “sonic wanderlust” need look no further than CitySounds.fm. The new site promises an ever-changing catalog of the world’s constantly moving global beat.

On any given day, people in cities all over the world are listening and making all kinds of music. CitySounds pulls in this music from some of the world’s most populous capitals like Tokyo, New York, Sao Paulo and London, categorizing the tracks based on where they were uploaded. The result is a constantly evolving (and surprising) snapshot of what’s hot in what places. In Berlin, for instance, it might be some techno. Meanwhile in Buenos Aires, they’re bouncing around to ska (?!). Down in Atlanta though, they’re all about the newest hip hop remix.

While there are plenty of services that help you find new music, CitySounds is probably among the first to categorize based on location. And if you think about it, geography is the perfect way to organize for a generation of highly mobile, travel-hungry, music fans. Check out the site the next time you’re eager to hear the latest and greatest sounds from around the globe.

[Via PSFK]