Midnight Train From Paris

Posted on July 1, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

Many years ago, when I took my first big European trip, I managed to stretch my travel budget by traveling at night by train. More often than not, I simply tried to sleep in a regular compartment, however when the trip was long, such as Vienna to Venice, I would splurge on a sleeper bunk in a four couchette comaprtment. There’s nothing like the thrill of going to sleep in Paris and waking up in Amsterdam. Sadly, during the 21st century most railway lines did away with sleeper carriages and night trains. But a new French start-up has announced plans for a network of overnight services out of Paris from 2024.

Midnight Trains is planning to offer a stylish and affordable  alternative to intercity European flights and a greener  way to travel with “hotels on rails”. The scheme aims to connect the Paris to 12 other European destinations, including Rome, Barcelona, and Berlin.

Within a few years, Midnight Trains hopes provide night trains to at least a dozen destinations between 500 and 900 miles from Paris, including cities in the UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Denmark.

 

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A Mind Needs Books

Posted on June 30, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

“A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge. That is why I read so much.” – George R.R. Martin

 

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Ode to Canada

Posted on June 29, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

Airline preflight safety videos are generally ignored by flyers, but sometimes clever production manages to get our attention. Air Canada just released their first updated video in almost 7 years and it’s surprisingly compelling.

The new safety video is called “Ode to Canada,” and offers flyers a journey across Canada while managing to sneak in the safety features of each aircraft in an unobstrusive way. The video covers the nation from coast to coast and is filmed in the following places:

  • Newfoundland & Labrador’s Gros Morne National Park
  • Manitoba’s Little Limestone Lake
  • Yukon’s winter
  • Ontario’s social hospitality
  • Northwest Territories’ Northern Lights
  • Nunavut’s vast expanse
  • Prince Edward Island’s Cavendish Beach
  • Alberta’s foothills
  • British Columbia’s North Shore mountains
  • Saskatchewan’s wheat fields
  • Quebec’s art and culture experiences
  • Nova Scotia’s Lunenburg
  • New Brunswick’s Hopewell Cape

You can watch the new video for yourself here:

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Underground

Posted on June 28, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

The Underground

There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed

Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall

Honeymooning, mooning around, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come like Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons

To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.

by Seamus Heaney

 

 

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Bookstore Tourism: London

Posted on June 27, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

I have had the great fortune to spend both quality and quantity time in London’s wonderful bookstores. In fact, I have browsed 15 of the 17 bookshops featured in the video below. Compiled by Abebooks.com, the short film features some of the best secondhand and antiquarian bookstores in the city. The video tour highlights bookshops in places like Charing Cross Road, Cecil Court, and Bloomsbury, as well as less well known neighborhoods.

NB: If you subscribe to TBTP via email, the video may not automatically appear. Please click on the short link URL at the bottom of your email.

 

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Writer’s Block

Posted on June 26, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Symptoms of Hibernating

Posted on June 25, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

Anais Nin : “You live…sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book…or you take a trip…and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure… Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this…without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Simone de Beauvoir : “Every morning, even before I open my eyes, I know I am in my bedroom and my bed. But…sometimes I wake up with a feeling of childish amazement: why am I myself? What astonishes me…is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep in this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about?”

Clarice Lispector : “When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful… When I haven’t looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human.”

 

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a ghastly, malformed monstrosity

Posted on June 24, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

 

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Our Kind of Hotel

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

Last year while I was under the delusion that I’d be taking a trip to Japan, I ran across a fantastic hotel in Nagoya called the Lamp Light Books Hotel. That amazing looking facility combined a bookstore, a 24-hour cafe, and a reasonably priced hotel. This week, I discovered that the company has expanded with a new hotel based on the same model in Sapporo. The company plans to continue expanding by adding similar hotels around Japan, with the next branch set to open this year in Fukuoda.

 

 

 

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Flamboyant Gothic Meets Street Art

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Brian D. Butler

I love it when historical and modern art forms come together, so of course this amazing project caught my attention. To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the Santa Iglesia Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de Santa María de Burgos in Spain the community commissioned the French street artists Louis Boidron and Edouard Egea —aka Monkey Bird —to create a massive mural for the Cathedral.

This is how the pair describe their project:

“Our intention was to offer an effect of complex depth and monumentalism, combining some of the most spectacular references of the temple, such as the main altarpiece, with its many details, the Golden Staircase, or the circular oculus in the center of Santa María façade.

As a symbol of good luck for the community, we have represented in the center the protector of the town, Guardian Angel. This image under the guise of a gray heron is shown as a symbol of light and rebirth, flanked by two other angels whose original models they are in the upper part of the temple. This Cathedral is also unique in Spain in terms of finishes created with sculptures of angels.”

 

 

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