A nascent Slow Travel movement?

As one who has just had a trip to the Riviera cancelled because of uncooperative volcanos, who shall remain nameless, the following article caught my eye:

Governments, businesses and most travelers, irritated by disrupted itineraries and worried about lost productivity, are delighted to see planes back in the sky. But I, for one, wish this blessedly jet-free interlude could have continued a little longer. In the eccentric, ground-level adventures of some stranded passengers — 700-mile taxi rides through Scandinavia, for instance, perhaps a horse-drawn stagecoach over the Alps if things got really desperate — I’m reminded of the romance we trade away each time we shuffle aboard an airplane. [nytimes.com]

If only I'd booked the QE2 in the first place...

A roadside restaurant anywhere in the world

On the coastal road on the west side of the Peloponnesus in Greece, we stopped for the night in an unpromising village 15 kilometers outside the big, ugly port town looking for a hotel. We found quite a nice, modern guest house just above the municipal beach, with a view of the Ionian Sea and olive trees.

For dinner, the proprietor suggested either of the two tavernas on the main road through the village just 2 blocks away. Both had tables in the open air facing the road with the kitchens at the back. The one we chose was lit by an abundance of florescent lights, making it a pool of white in the black night that was otherwise broken mostly by headlights. As we sat down and ordered a very simple, very Greek dinner of souvlaki in pita it occurred to me that I had eaten at this same place by the dusty side of the road in Panama and in Brazil. Each time I’ve wondered, why would anyone want to eat along the side of the road with exhaust fumes and grit? Why wasn’t the restaurant designed with the outdoor seating to the side, or to the back, protected from the road by the building?

Is it that outdoor seating at the back would isolate the patrons from the people passing by? Is this type of set-up more conducive to drop-ins and impromptu gatherings, thereby benefiting the proprietors? If you can see as you pass by that a group of your friends have gathered for a meal or a drink, you’re likely to join them. If on the other hand they are hidden in the back, you may not realize they are there and therefore will not become another paying customer. Perhaps this outweighs any disadvantage that the patrons might want to be secluded from the hustle-bustle and grit. Besides, if that were the case, they might have just stayed home.

So, does such a roadside restaurant only exist in small communities where one is more likely to pass by and recognize other patrons? Or does it exist on thoroughfares where the outdoor roadside presence is advertising, letting passers-by know that a restaurant exists?

I do know that the ones I’ve eaten at tend to have simple, good fare. Perhaps nothing to write home about, but nothing that’s made me ill either.

There is also a different sense of private space in restaurants in much of Europe and Latin America than in the US or Britain. In the US few restaurants would allow people to wander into the restaurant or even any outdoor seating selling flowers, serenades or sunglasses, but sitting for lunch on a Greek Island the passing hawkers approached the diners both inside and outside. Is the restaurant more of a communal space in Europe and Latin America than it is in the US? And by communal space, I mean that it is accessible to all parts of the community, not just the customers.

All the news that's fit to print - from Cyprus

The tale of the expat and the copycat
By Marianna Pissa

AIRPORT staff in Paphos were left red faced last week after a copycat was unmasked by a British passenger.

The British resident of Cyprus was waiting for his luggage and his cat on his return from the UK, a local newspaper reported. After waiting for a long time, he finally received his suitcases, but there was no sign of his cat. Eventually, airport employees approached the man with smiles on their faces carrying his special pet carrier, with a very lively cat inside.

But as soon as the man saw the cat, he said it was not his. The airport staff insisted that the cat was in the cage and consequently had to be his, even pointing to the animal’s ID collar.

They continued to insist until the British expat said: "This is not my cat gentlemen, because the one that I brought from London was dead."

Dumbfounded, the airport employees could not believe what they heard.

The man had gone to London on holiday and took his (live) cat with him. There, however, the cat fell ill and died, and the man wanted to bring it back to Cyprus to bury it in his garden.

As it later emerged, when the cage with the dead cat reached the Paphos airport, an employee saw the dead cat and immediately alerted his colleagues, wondering what they should do in case they were blamed for the incident.

They decided to take a stray cat from outside the airport that resembled the dead cat in colour and face. After a feline chase in the grounds of the airport and after some intense washing and grooming, they put the collar of the dead cat on the copy cat, put it in the cage and sent the cage out for the owner to receive it.

It is not known whether the Briton decided to adopt the stray.

Vacation!!

And so, I'm off for 10 days to Croatia and Slovenia. I already know that Slovenia is beautiful having visited it in 1994 (backpacking after college,) and I understand that Croatia is magnificent. You can be thinking of me gazing at the blue Adriatic.

I'll let you know....

Hyderabad & a Story With/Without a Moral

In the New York Times travel section this week was a short article on the rise in both tourist and business travel to Hyderabad, India. It reminded me of my first night in India, on a business trip in the summer of 2004, when I almost started a sectarian riot.

I was travelling with a colleague, Amar, a Hyderabad native, and Hyderabad was our first port of call. We had traveled 24 hours from Chicago to Frankfurt to Bombay to Hyderabad. It was exhausting. So, after sleeping most of the day, Amar called me and asked me to go out on the town with him. I was picked up in a Range Rover driven by Amar's real estate developer brother-in-law, his movie-star friend (married), his girlfriend and Amar.

As we walked into the newest dance club in town, by-passing the line, the actor was stopped for autographs and we tried to keep to the shadows to avoid the paparazzi, since his girlfriend was with us. After a long night drinking pricey drinks and dancing, we left the club and my hosts decided I needed a late night tour of the sights of Hyderabad. So, off we drove, drinking Chivas Regal out of the bottle, roof open, weaving around the old women stooped over sweeping the streets. At one point, we made a phone call to a Congress MP who was the friend of the brother-in-law. He and I drunkenly chatted about something or other.

They took me to Charminar, the 400-year old gate in the middle of the poor, mostly Muslim part of town where people were lined up sleeping on the sidewalk. Keep in mind my crowd of rich, drunk Hindus in a Range Rover with an immodestly-clad blonde in the back seat.

There's a small mosque at the Charminar, so Amar and I climbed out to go see it. I was wearing a short skirt, so I wasn't allowed in, but the mosque custodian smiled at me and gave me a small green flag with a white star and crescent. I was happy and climbed back in the car to show off my souvenir. All the guys in the car flipped out and thought is was a Pakistani flag, which it was not. So they climbed back out of the car, woke up a cop and started yelling about being real Indians, etc. People on the sidewalks started waking up. I started yelling "I'm Christian, I'm Christian" and herding my crowd back into the car. By the time we left half the square was awake and starting to move towards the car. And that was how I almost started a riot on my first night in India.

Is there a moral to this story? Is it:

1. Don't drink and drive.
2. Don't go to mosques in short skirts.
3. Understand the history including animosities of the places you're visiting.
4. Don't go out with your girlfriend when there are paparazzi around.
5. Drinking Chivas Regal makes you immune to political violence.
   

Vote, or suggest your own.