Intelligent Travel

The Undiscovered Country of the Nearby

The wild places Robert Macfarlane journeys to in his new book aren't in deepest Africa or far Asia—they're in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In The Wild Places, featured in our Trip Lit book column this month, Macfarlane brings to life some of the last remaining storied wildnesses in Britain and Ireland, but also finds the wild just outside the busy city of Cambridge, where he lives and teaches at Cambridge University. He took the time to answer some emailed questions.

What was your first experience of the wild?

Storybook wolves, fairytale forests. We tend to meet the wild in print or on film before we meet it in person; or perhaps it's just we remember these encounters more clearly as adults. Wolves and wildwoods are everywhere in children's literature; dark, unknowable spaces filled with fierce, untameable creatures. But more literally, I spent my childhood holidays in the Highlands of Scotland—I remember the thrill of finding shed roe deer and even red-deer horns in the heather; and birthday picnics on mountaintops.

In the book, you journey to some of the most remote places in Britain—Ben Hope, the Coruisk valley—but one of the gifts of your book, as Don George writes in our review of it, is that you "illuminate the wild wonder of our everyday world." So what bit of wild have you encountered this week?

The book really is the story of beginning to explore—in John Hanson Mitchell's wonderful phrase—"the undiscovered country of the nearby." A recent bit of wild? I was told last Saturday about a new practice called allotment-forestry, which is where you plant ten-rod-plot allotments with hazels, with a view to coppicing them for wood. So in the middle of cities you get these miniature forests, only 20 yards by 30 yards, say. The woman who told me about this said her allotment-forest was now mature, and was loved and used by the children who lived nearby. She'd hung a sign saying "wildwood" on one of the edge-trees. I loved that story.

Any tips on how we can better experience the wild, without overwhelming it?

Refocus. Gary Nabhan tells a wonderful story about taking his young children to the rim of the Grand Canyon, to show them the view, only to find they're much more interested in grubbing about in the leaf litter and insects on the floor of the promontory. Children are micronauts, explorers of the tiny, disinterested in the grandstand visions of the wild that we're all conditioned to celebrate.

Rosé Wine Sitting Pretty in Pink

I figure I might as well continue with the vino kick I've been on, and bring you some Earth-shattering statistics I heard through the grapevine. Rosé wine sales in France have overtaken white wine sales for the first time ever.

In a shocking turn of events, the wine that top producers from Bordeaux and Burgundy once refused to even produce has rocketed to the top of Old World wine hierarchy. Just a decade ago, only one in ten bottles of wine sold in France was a rosé. Today, it's one in five.

This news has got to make a few of my friends and acquaintances in France's Anjou region, where I lived for a semester in college, tickled pink. Along with the Côtes de Provence,  Anjou—part of the majestic Loire Valley—is a veritable rosé powerhouse. The breezy pink drink accounts for around half of the the region's wine production. And I'm not ashamed to admit that rosés accounted for nearly half of my wine consumption while there, although it might have had something to do with the fact that delectable bottles of Rosé d'Anjou were a mere 90 centimes.

After the jump: Plight of the "pizza rosé" 

This Old Thing? Flea Markets in Geneva

Friend of IT Kathryn Dill is spending her summer working in Geneva. As a recent college grad with a limited budget, she shares her favorite way to save in one of the most expensive spots in Europe (and that's saying a lot).

Is your fondue pot just crying out for a new burner? Do you need a Barbie doll sans la tête—guillotined decades ago during the course of childish play? How about copper kitchen utensils or elegant, hand-embroidered table linens? Discount surplus household goods? A clock whose pendulum may have once swung in an 18th-century salon? 

Whatever your desires, from the refined to the eccentric, from the voyeuristic to the neurotic, from the practical to the downright bizarre, the market at Plainpalais in Geneva has everything your heart could desire, at a price your wallet can accommodate.

Strollers, shoppers, and the ambiguously intrigued can amble along the rows of stalls every Wednesday and Saturday, digging through dog-eared stacks of Tintin comics and Victorian pornography. Amidst the high sheen of impeccably maintained fine wood antique furniture and the tacky appeal of paperback novels and bent toaster tongs, the most highly-trained antique enthusiasts and the average flea-market-goers alike can find something to strike their fancy. 

But the market shouldn’t be dismissed as just another place to dig up an eccentric gem destined to one day find its way into your own yard sale heap. In a city consistently ranked one of the most expensive in the world, where a significant part of the population is comprised of an ever-changing, transient group of internationals attached to the United Nations and myriad NGOs that call Geneva “HQ,” the market at Plainpalais is also a viable source of economically priced essentials.

Berlin Turns Bomb Shelters into Beauty

Some World War II remnants remind visitors of the dread that swept the world in the middle of the 20th century. But one art collector is turning an abandoned Third Reich building in Mitte into something useful—and beautiful.

In 2003, Polish-born art collector Christian Boros bought a 1942 bunker built by Hitler to protect Berliners from air raids during the war. Hitler had planned to cover the building in marble after the war's end, but instead it remained an odd edifice (after the Berlin Wall fell, it was home to a "techno/S+M club," according to Globespotters). In June, the building opened as a contemporary art museum, showcasing some 500 works by over 50 artists, including Wolfgang Tilmans, Tobias Rehberger, John Bock, Damien Hirst, and Olafur Eliasson).

Impressively, Boros's architects were able to keep some of the bunker's integrity. Says Kimberly Bradley, of Globespotters,

While the artworks are certainly thought-provoking—Boros claims he “collects art he doesn’t understand”—I couldn’t help also thinking about the bunker itself and its many incarnations. Some interior walls are painted white; others are left raw or show layers of chipped, sometimes fluorescent, paint. Windows cut out along a back stairwell expose old bar reinforcements. Berlin architectural firm Realarchitektur cleverly carved out 80 spaces from the original 120, at times having to cut through ten-foot thick concrete; some ceilings were removed to create spaces that soar nearly 43 feet upwards.

The museum is available to see by appointment only, and Saturday tours are almost completely booked through November. The gallery offers English tours on Sundays for 10 euros. Tours must be booked through the website. 

Photo: Anselm Reyle; Links: "Live Enigma," 2008; Rechts: "Ohne Titel," 2008; © NOSHE

Subscribe to this blog's feed

Much O-Blige-d in Stockholm

Photographer and travel writer Lola Akinmade sends IT an exclusive dispatch from the Stockholm Jazz Festival, currently celebrating its 25-year anniversary and one of the oldest music festivals in Scandinavia.

Soulful, rhythmic music wafting from Abraham Burton’s saxophone permeates the warm summer evening air, casting a spell over patrons who observe in a trance-like state. The open-air, yet surprisingly intimate, waterfront setting is Skeppsholmen (one of 24,000 islands in Stockholm’s impressive archipelago), awarding a panoramic backdrop of Stockholm’s picturesque harbor.

Tower of Power—an “urban soul” band from Oakland, California—takes the stage, instantly energizing the modest crowd with their old school mix of funky and jazzy grooves. But the real draw tonight was Mary J. Blige—one of many international artists headlining the Stockholm Jazz Festival’s silver anniversary, including Patti Smith and Van Morrison. Therese and Ann Britt, native Swedes from Stockholm, couldn’t hide their excitement. “I can’t wait to see her!” Therese emphasizes. “I missed the last two festivals, but I couldn’t miss it this year!”

The Stockholm Jazz Festival attracts a diverse clientele. Yonas—a software developer, native Eritrean, and now a naturalized Swedish citizen—attended his sixth show this year. “I had to bring him along!” he references his friend, Yemane. “I’ve been here the last six years and always have a great time. And yes! I can’t wait to see Mary!”

Mary J. Blige struts out to an ecstatic crowd chanting, “Mary! Mary!” In true form, she delivers an amazing performance that left us craving more.

The festival is internationally renowned, drawing top-notch contemporary and jazz artists to the shores of Ladugardslandsviken, on the island of Skeppsholmen. Sting, Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Ella Fitzgerald, as well as Scandinavian artists like Peter Asplund and Bobo Stenson, have all graced the stages of the festival over the course of its history. The festival showcases the finest in Scandinavian jazz, a merger of traditional folk music and melodies with popular jazz rhythmic styles. Alongside celebrations of its 25th anniversary, the Stockholm Jazzathon aims to set the world record for longest jam session with a five-day, 24-hour jazz concert that features more than 100 musicians.

The festival will end July 19. Over the course of four days, more than 40 performers and jazz musicians will take center stage, performing for an audience of about 25,000 people.

Photo: Mary J. Blige at Stockholm Jazz Festival, by Lola Akinmade

Subscribe to this blog's feed

Tour Guide: Walking Rome

This month's issue of Traveler offers up some of the most authentic offerings found in Rome. And writer and Traveler reader Emilie C. Harting sends over her own favorite pick for exploring the city.

Walk this way in Rome. Do you know how to avoid the 2-3 hour lines for such treasures as Vatican City with its Museum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s, or the Colosseum with its adjacent Palatine Hill and Roman Forum? Or find quiet little alleyways that empty into such favorite, but ever so crowded sites as the Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and Piazza Navona? Answer: Rome’s Presto Tours expose the secrets to this remarkable city, which was begun over 2,000 years ago and keeps rebuilding itself with the same stones. 

I took four of Presto’s three-hour Rome tours recently and found the guides knowledgeable, personable, and entertaining. At Vatican City and on the Roman Forum and Colosseum walk, I saw literally ten times more than I had on a previous trip. On a tour of Trastevere, one of the most cosmopolitan of Rome’s neighborhoods, our guide recommended cafés on narrow streets leading out from a square with buildings dating back to A.D. 400. On the Rome City Tour we walked through the major squares at night—the lights shone on the facades of buildings and the sculptures in the fountains.

At the end I traced our steps on a city map. We’d had a geography lesson on central Rome: ever so useful for returning to spots we’d passed on the way. Most important, I explored the city while enjoying the camaraderie of others in a small group.

Photo: Bob Krist for National Geographic Traveler's Authentic Rome cover story.

Subscribe to this blog's feed

Albania and the Environment: Mindset over Matter

Freelance writer Laura Powell recently traveled to Albania and couldn't help noticing the amount of litter that lined the roadways. Upon further investigation, she found that the trash was indicative of a troubled history and of a challenging future facing the nation.

One thing that strikes you as you drive through the Albanian countryside (other than the horrendous state of the roads) is the litter that dots the landscape. Piles of trash highlighted by blue plastic bags show up everywhere. Ask foreign aid workers why this is so, and they might tell you it's a combination of a lack of waste management facilities and a lack of education regarding recycling. But ask Albanians and they will tell you they are plenty educated when it comes to recycling. In fact, they were forced to recycle well before the practice was in vogue. According to Auron Tare, head of the Albanian National Trust and a noted historian, during the Enver Hoxha dictatorship (1940s-1985), people were required to turn in glass bottles and paper, and there were school programs designed to teach children about the importance of recycling. Furthermore, given the dearth of consumer goods during Hoxha's reign, there wasn't all that much in the way of nonrecyclables to throw out. As a result, there was little need for landfills and other waste management facilities.

After speaking with many Albanians, my assessment is that the current trend of tossing trash without regard to recycling is not merely careless disregard for the environment. For these people, who had to endure forced recycling during the Communist era, the import of plastics and other disposable consumer goods represented both freedom and wealth. The idea of being forced to recycle and reuse, must seem somewhat anathema to these newfound ideals. Additionally, the rapid growth in the 1990s of consumer goods, and thus waste, caught the country off-guard. 

So did the boom in development. During the Hoxha years, no one was allowed to own property. Additionally, according to Tare, "Because of military reasons, many areas in Albania were heavily protected. For example, there was a major tree planting program by the Communist government along the beaches. This was done with the purpose of stopping sea landings by foreign enemies."  As a result, for many years, Albania's coastlines shared unspoiled space with forest land.

Cave Art in Crisis

The world-famous bulls, horses, and reindeer in France's Lascaux cave have survived in pristine condition for 17,000 years, but they may be history soon.

Priceless cave art in different parts of the world is suffering from the inadvertent actions of tourists who come to see it, and officials are struggling to find solutions. In southern France, the Lascaux paintings display some of the best examples of Paleolithic art in the world, showing a working knowledge of artistic perspective that was not seen again in Europe until the Renaissance. But since the introduction of tourists into the cave in the 1940s, the paintings have suffered damage from elevated carbon dioxide levels, white fungus, and light, all of which have been brought in unwittingly by visitors, said a recent article in the Washington Post.

And in China, Buddhist monk art dating to the fourth century at Mogaoku has become damaged from fluctuations in humidity, according to the New York Times. "Plans for drastic remedial action are underway," said Holland Cotter, the article's author. The caves' director is initiating the building of a visitors center where tourists will see a digital tour of the caves before going to visit a more limited part of the site in person. But "it is possible that without major change, all the caves will eventually have to be closed to the public," said Cotter. The Lascaux cave has been closed since 1963.

The restriction of such sites raises a hairy conundrum: Since these places have such immense cultural value, most agree that the public has a right to access them (Both Lascaux and Mogaoku are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites). But when access comes at a cost of damage to the site, where should the line be drawn between public access and preservation? Says the New York Times:

This insistence on authenticity is also the impulse driving contemporary conservation. At whatever cost, the integrity of the original must be preserved. Yet conservators know that often the only way to protect the "real thing" is by restricting access to it, by forcing an audience to accept a condition of not being there, by substituting virtual auras for actual ones. And so the contradictions pile up...

What do you think? Should officials let the public visit these sites, or make the preservation of the paintings their first priority?

Photo courtesy of efrancesco via Flickr

Riga Overrun by Latvian Folk Singers

Every five years, Riga hosts a traditional song and dance festival that draws over 30,000 people—mostly Latvians, and many from expat homes all over the globe. This year is one of those years, and throughout this week (July 5-12) Riga’s streets will be alive with the sound of choral music. In the run up to the festival, choirs (some of them hundreds of voices strong) compete with each other to participate in the festival and be named the best.

This boggles my mind. That many people that excited over folk songs?

Clearly this is a point of national pride. Choral singing is a tradition that stretches back 135 years, a way to assert national identity through centuries of foreign rule, most recently Soviet.

I visited Riga a few years ago in early spring, when snow still muffled the streets and dusted the roofs of the medieval and baroque houses in the cobblestoned Old Town. The place felt like a cottony fairyland to me, and the obvious vibrancy of folk traditions—despite the presence of chilled-out sushi lounges and basement clubs playing Euro dance hits—just reinforced that view.

The Line on Wimbledon

A report from Paul Heltzel, senior producer at National Geographic Digital Media and tennis fan:

Despite its lofty image, Wimbledon is one major sporting event where you don’t have to be well connected–or well organized–to get in. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club holds about 6,000 places for the general public to purchase tickets at the turnstiles. If you have time to kill, and twenty pounds (less as the tournament progresses), you can see world-class tennis on 18 different courts.

Here's a snapshot of what it's like: In a large field, thousands of people wait in six rows a few blocks from the grass courts of the 2008 Wimbledon Championships. A cheerful tournament steward welcomes the last person in line to the Wimbledon queue, presenting a card to hold the latecomer's place. These long lines are the saving grace of the average tennis fan: a little patience, and you can obtain the hottest ticket in tennis.

As the morning passes, some recline on blankets, converse, and enjoy baguette sandwiches, Pimm's and lemonade, and champagne. You can take your own soft cooler, food, and drinks into the tournament (a pleasant surprise, as inside the gates, a half-bottle of champagne can set you back 26 pounds).

On the first day of the tournament, I joined the queue at 8 in the morning and was in by 11:30 a.m. for a full day of tennis. On day three, I was able to show up at 10 a.m. and stepped onto the campus-sized grounds a little less than two hours later. The catch? After the grounds reach capacity, the queue comes to a standstill. At that point, you can get in only as fans exit. Come just a bit too late–there's really no judging when capacity is reached–and you could be in the queue until late afternoon, when large numbers begin to exit the tournament.

Get the scoop on how to snag hard-to-get tickets after the jump...