Upcoming cultural events in Netherlands, a regular listing from Dutch News.
New electronic guides at the Louvre. From France 24.
The Guggenheim in Bilbao. From Deutsche Welle.
I’m a big fan of Rick Steves. Rick is a Europhile from the Pacific Northwest, seen often on PBS and he is a big fan of, among other European destinations, Italy’s Cinque Terre.
Last year, a few days before New England got socked with a freak snowstorm, the five towns of this Italian coastal area got hammered by catastrophic rains which devastated huge areas in two of the towns through mud and floods that they are still recovering from.
Read Rick’s latest travel newsletter on the rebuilding efforts (and notice the grey).
Think seriously about adding Vernazza or Monterosso to your next trip to Italy. I know I am!
Deutsche Welle has put together an interesting collection of German words that you might not find in most ordinary dictionaries. Here are a couple of them…
Eierlegende Wollmichsau – German speakers can probably figure it out even if they’ve never come across the phrase; a goofy concept, all the same.
Then there’s Reinfeiern, a practice that the whole world could probably benefit from at times. I’m considering adopting this practice going forward.
And… Geheimratsecken.
If this is becoming addictive, here’s a link to a whole slew of (real) crazy words from Deutsche Welle.
On a similar note, for readers of ”a certain age” – all this reminds me of a regular feature in the old Saturday Evening Post called Heinrich Schnibble’s Wordenbooke. It looked like English words and phrases had been translated to German, but it was goofy German, and hilarious. I remember one group of words relating to airplanes, which included something like ‘Schnortenzoomer’ and the bigger the jet, the longer the word got. For anyone who recalls this silliness, here’s a link (skip the video) to the ”German” translation of ”For Want of a Nail…”.
I found another reference on yahoo.answers.com… as part of a thread for someone looking for the related book/s that were published at the time… ”Everyone knows David Morrah’s dogcatcher, a barkenpantensniffersnatcher, but no one knows Morrah’s name. He’s just ‘the guy who used to write for the “Saturday Evening Post” (…). Morrah’s narrator was Heinrich Schnibble… I laughed so hard when I read this, I cried!
Have a great weekend!
This weekend’s Tube closures will mess up the bank holiday, no surprise.
Depending where you live, the worst bit may be the closure of the entire Victoria line.
Big chunks of the Circle, District, Hammersmith/City, Northern, Metropolitan and Piccadilly Lines will make alternate routes hard to find, especially in central London.
If I were in London this weekend, the biggest headache would be the outage on the Circle Line between Edgware Rd and Kings X/St Pancras.
I imagine the cabs will do well these next few days!
June thru Sept around the UK http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/cultural-gold-britains-100m-olympic-jamboree-7682542.html From London Independent
Music festival in Witney is on now thru May 19th. Festival schedule is here. From Oxford Mail.
London Time Out’s best bets for May.
See Shakespeare’s plays performed by troupes from around the world as well as the RSC.
This link connects to an immediate ticket deal from WhatsOnStage, in case you can make the Brazilian take on Richard III in early May.
Here’s the link to the RSC festival brochure with the complete schedule of dates and prices.
A bus-train travel promotion for discovering the Cotswolds without a car. From Oxford Mail.
A Rolling Stones museum opens in Germany. From France 24.
This guy made a pile of money from stocks and is opening a pub in Banbury.
A beer festival will be held at the pub on Monday, May 7, including Yorkshire’s Black Sheep Best Bitter. I wish I could be there!
From Dutch News. Upcoming events in Netherlands for festivals, exhibits, concerts and more.
From Deutsche Welle. May’s calendar of events in Germany.
Handmade and gorgeous, Bohemian crystal has been a favored choice for more than 100 years. Unlike other crystal, it uses no lead. From Prague Post.
A different sort of musical choir – singing butchers in Cologne. From Deutsche Welle.
My stories and photos from Bulgaria, Bratislava, Budapest and a long past trip to Australia and New Zealand have been in the works for a long time.
These trips predated my digital camera, so selecting and scanning photos is taking a while. I hope to get at least one posting finished and up each week. Keep an eye on this space!
Škoda’s Czech trams run in places beyond Czech Republic and are adding foreign locations. Even some U.S. has cities have bought their trams From Prague Post.
In case you haven’t heard and/or you’re likely to freak out… July virus warning, from the FBI via London Independent.
From London Independent.
A small town in England where booze seems to hold the secret to long life, at least for the men. And make sure to read the last bit – sounds like a little known ‘festival’ to put on your list to experience.
Maybe we just can’t stand the fact that American tennis players are mostly lousy playing on clay, but it’s a big chunk of the year and unless you’re rich enough to add the Tennis Channel to your cable package, there’s no clay court tennis to speak of on US TV.
Monte Carlo has come and gone.
Barcelona is finishing up.
Munich, Madrid, Rome and Nice are just some of the European cities hosting tournaments for the men (more enjoyable for me than the women) between now and Roland Garros in Paris at the end of May. (At least I can watch the French Open from home).
Rats! I feel soooo deprived!!
A new, occasional blog post. Stuff to do this weekend, this month or this summer. From London Time Out.
Chinese artifacts stolen from UK museums. From London Independent.
But then there’s another report of a piece of ‘art’ tossed by a security guard. From Dutch News. I suppose nobody got a photo beforehand, I couldn’t find one. Oh well.
And a new look at what a ”copy” is… From Deutche Welle.
London Tube closures this weekend are relatively limited on the District (both days), Bakerloo (Sunday) and Jubilee (Sunday) lines. London Overground have some disruptions on both days.
Until I can visit later this year, here are some pictures from Floriade, the Dutch horticultural fair held every ten years. Courtesy of The Guardian, found on DutchNews.
I get quite a bit of traffic on blog posts about food and alcohol. Especially alcohol. Must say something about my audience.
I’ve been a red wine drinker for quite a long time now. Years ago, I tried to learn about regions and grapes and vintages and all that jazz. These days, there are so many great vineyards and terrific wines that I get a headache trying to remember the names and I’m not talking about having a hangover. If there’s an in-store tasting that I like, I buy that. Otherwise, I stock up on Australian blends that come in a double bottle or a nice, crisp New Zealand Sauv blanc if I want something white, Spanish cava if I’m overdue for a glass or two of bubbles. If I can afford a single bottle splurge, I read the wine notes tacked onto the shelf in the shop.
A few weeks ago, we had a nasty heat wave here in New England. Nasty in the sense that the temps were above 75 F (24 C), the top of my comfort range. I had spent time at each end of the day getting a jump on yard chores that normally wouldn’t require attention for another month and as the sun began to work its way towards the horizon I had a thought that had not appeared in my brain for YEARS. ”This day needs to end with a beer”.
Odd thought, that. My favorite summer drink is my own sangria. Red wine, o.j., a splash of Grand Marnier and a good measure of either lemon or orange seltzer. It seemed too early for sangria, hot spell or no. This day needed something different. Something universally summery. A beer. A really cold beer. In a frosted mug.
Off I went to the package store (that’s New England-ese for what New Yorkers, among others, call a LIQUOR store and is known as an off-licence in the UK). Shortly thereafter, two six-packs sat on my kitchen floor. One was Sam Adams’ regular brew. The other was Staropramen from Czech Republic. Staropramen won the toss. Frosted mug, oddly enough, always at the ready in the freezer. Aaaahhh!
I’m going to have to keep testing the Staropramen. Molson/Coors has bought the company and I don’t trust them to keep the formula the same, understanding full well that the stuff I buy in the USA is nowhere near as good as what I had in Prague!
I make it a point to sample the local ABV as much as possible when I travel. Fullers London Pride or Directors or whatever English (sorry, Scotland, and apologies to Monty Python but Theakston’s is crap) or bitter is on draft when I’m in the UK, especially if it’s one I’m not familiar with.
Netherlands? Oranjeboom. I’ve also had Grolsch but skipped the Heineken. I plan to have that next time I’m in Amsterdam, now that the Heineken brewery is open for tours that include free samples!! That was not the case last time I was there.
Belgium? Kriek. (I didn’t get to the Half Moon brewery before closing time in Bruges). Next time I’m in Belgium, there’s a boatload of catching up to do. I did have some yummy dark Westmalle in London a couple of years ago but that wasn’t really cheating because I had it at Belgo, a Belgian restaurant.
Estonian beers? Tartu’s LeCoq and Vilu dark.
I might have wanted to sample some Murphy’s when I was in Limerick, but I felt obligated to stick with a pint. For those who don’t know, a pint is what you ask for when you want a Guinness. And yes, you can draw a smiley face in the foam and it will still be there when you’ve drained your glass.
In Prague, I sampled Pilsner Urquell (arguably the most widely available Czech import in the US), Staropramen, Budvar and Krusovice (which I have yet to find stateside).
So, the early spring heat wave brought me full circle with the Staropramen. A new way to conjure up travel memories.
Here is the link to the earth-shattering story that 007 is gonna be drinking Heineken in the new James Bond movie. Works for me! From the Daily Mail
One last alcoholic note… This is what I call a bike ride!! Brilliant idea, CAMRA, as long as the bike lanes are wide enough. It’s on my list if I ever start riding moving bikes, rather than that stationary thing at the gym.
Countries from around the world will be promoting their authors at the 18th International Book Fair and Literary Festival in mid-May.
From the London Independent… (bolding is travelmagpie’s)
Tourism chief: 2012 visitor boom unlikely
Any increase in the number of tourists visiting the UK during this Olympic year would be “against all the odds”, the chairman of VisitBritain has warned.
Speaking on the fringes of the World Travel & Tourism Council conference in Tokyo, Christopher Rodrigues warned that any country that holds a major global event sees a decline in visitors and tourism spending that same year. Mr Rodrigues’s words carry weight, as his agency is the public body tasked with marketing the UK across the globe.
“A flat year of year-on-year growth would be a good outcome,” he said. “A flat year would mean that we’ve done well against all the odds, all the history.”
Mr Rodrigues said that he believes there will be spare hotel rooms in the capital during the Games, despite the thousands of people who will descend on London to watch the two-week sporting jamboree. That increase will be offset by a decline in business travel, as major corporations will choose to hold their meetings and conferences in other parts of the world.
Mark Leftly
A new exhibit at Hampton Court Palace from the collections of Charles II, thru the end of September. From London Independent.
Not terribly expensive, a new small plane service from Oxford could be exciting. From the Oxford Mail.
A change to Schengen border controls designed to stem illegal immigration means you should keep your passport handy. From Deutsche Welle.
If you’re a fan, as I am, of AMC’s The Killing on US TV, you might be interested to know that a Scandinavian bridge gets a part in The Bridge, a British show from the Danish team who created the original (Danish) The Killing. A tenuous tie to travel, I know, but it doesn’t take much of a European connection to get me excited. From the London Independent.
In a slightly more useful story – car rental prices in Spain are going up and, British focus in the story notwithstanding, it may not be limited to rentals made from the UK. From the London Independent.
If you fly Ryanair from the UK to Spain, they’ve found a nasty new way to charge more. From the London Independent.
A new route for Megabus?! UK to Paris. From London Independent’s Simon Calder.
There are fewer than 100 days until the start of the London Olympics. Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect. From the London Independent.
A German word that’s almost as cute as schmutzfink! Courtesy of Deutsche Welle.
SuzanneTheTravelMagpie 