Europeans seem to be taking the lead in the creation of new travel paradigms. In Germany, DB, the German Railway Operator, has taken advantage of new attitudes towards responsible travel by promoting their discounted train tickets. Still, 72% of Germans prefer to fly to foreign lands during their holidays. Partnering with advertising agency Ogilvy, DB was able to offer comparable tourist trips in Germany as inexpensively as €19 and offering an alternative to flying.
Because of cheap flights, globalization, and the demand for instagrammable moments, tourism is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Compared to air travel, taking the train is the more sustainable mode of transportation . Comparison ads were created with an algorithm that searched for images with similar locations around Germany. It also personalized the search by adding real-time data such as the closest airport and flight price.
Originally begun as a ticket-promotion campaign, DB has demonstrated that discovering Germany by train can be fun for Germans and better for the environment. As well as showcasing local travel, the rail company is also doing their part in offsetting large carbon emissions caused by air travel by incentivizing train travel.
In 1617. William Hakewill commissioned a traveling library to give as a gift to a friend. The Jacobean miniature mobile library consisted of fifty gold-tooled vellum-bound miniature books contained in a wooden case that resembled a large folio.
Inside there were three shelves for the books. The interior cover had an illuminated table of contents. The diverse subject matter covered history, poetry, theology and philosophy and included works by Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Seneca, Horace and Julius Caesar.
The mobile library was the perfect gift for readers on the go, and must of been a success for over the next five years Hakewill had three others made for friends.
The rare miniature travelling library is part of the Brotherton Collection of rare manuscripts, photographs and books housed at Leeds University.The three other known copies live at the British Library, the Huntington Library and the Toledo Museum of Art Ohio.
I just discovered that the artist and Beat poet John Giorno died in October. You can be forgiven if you are not familiar with him, but in the 60s and 70s he was a prominent figure in the New York City art, film, and poetry scene. Here’s the wonderful poem “Thanx 4 Nothing” that he wrote for his 70th birthday 12 years ago.
I want to give my thanks to everyone for everything,
and as a token of my appreciation,
I want to offer back to you all my good and bad habits
as magnificent priceless jewels,
wish-fulfilling gems satisfying everything you need and want,
thank you, thank you, thank you,
thanks.
May every drug I ever took
come back and get you high,
may every glass of vodka and wine I’ve drunk
come back and make you feel really good,
numbing your nerve ends
allowing the natural clarity of your mind to flow free,
may all the suicides be songs of aspiration,
thanks that bad news is always true,
may all the chocolate I ever eaten
come back rushing through your bloodstream
and make you feel happy,
thanks for allowing me to be a poet
a noble effort, doomed, but the only choice.
I want to thank you for your kindness and praise,
thanks for celebrating me,
thanks for the resounding applause,
I want to thank you for taking everything for yourself
and giving nothing back,
you were always only self-serving,
thanks for exploiting my big ego
and making me a star for your own benefit,
thanks that you never paid me,
thanks for all the sleaze,
thanks for being mean and rude
and smiling at my face,
I am happy that you robbed me,
I am happy that you lied
I am happy that you helped me,
thanks, grazie, merci beaucoup.
May you smoke a joint with William,
and spend intimate time with his mind,
more profound than any book he wrote,
I give enormous thanks to all my lovers,
beautiful men with brilliant minds,
great artists,
Bob, Jasper, Ugo,
may they come here now
and make love to you,
and may my many other lovers
of totally great sex,
countless lovers
of boundless fabulous sex
countless lovers of boundless fabulous sex
countless lovers of boundless
fabulous sex
in the golden age
of promiscuity
may they all come here now,
and make love to you,
if you want,
may each of them
hold each of you in their arms
balling
to your hearts
delight.
balling to your hearts
delight
balling to
your hearts delight
balling to your hearts delight.
May all the people who are dead
Allen, Brion, Lita, Jack,
and I do not miss any of you
I don’t miss any of them,
no nostalgia,
it was wonderful we loved each other
but I don’t want any of them back,
now, if any of you
are attracted to any of them,
may they come back from the dead,
and do whatever is your pleasure,
may they multiply,
and be the slaves
of whomever wants them,
fulfilling your every wish and desire,
(but you won’t want them as masters,
as they’re demons),
may Andy come here
fall in love with you
and make each of you a superstar,
everyone can have
Andy.
everyone can
have Andy.
everyone can have Andy,
everyone can have an Andy.
Huge hugs to the friends who betrayed me,
every friend became an enemy,
sooner or later,
I am delighted you are vacuum cleaners
sucking everything into your dirt bags,
you are none other than a reflection of my mind.
Thanks for the depression problem
and feeling like suicide
everyday of my life,
and now that I’m seventy,
I am happily almost there.
Twenty billion years ago,
in the primordial wisdom soup
beyond comprehension and indescribable,
something without substance moved slightly,
and became something imperceptible,
moved again and became something invisible,
moved again and produced a particle and particles,
moved again and became a quark,
again and became quarks,
moved again and again and became protons and neutrons,
and the twelve dimensions of space,
tiny fire balls of primordial energy
bits tossed back and forth
in a game of catch between particles,
transmitting electromagnetic light
and going fast, 40 million times a second,
where the pebble hits the water,
that is where the trouble began,
something without substance became something with substance,
why did it happen?
because something substance less
had a feeling of missing out on something,
not
getting it
was not getting it
not getting it,
not getting it,
imperceptibly not having something
when there was nothing to have,
clinging to a notion of reality;
from the primordially endless potential,
to modern day reality,
twenty billion years later,
has produced me,
gave birth to me and my stupid grasping mind,
made me and you and my grasping mind.
May Rinpoche and all the great Tibetan teachers who loved me,
come back and love you more,
hold you in their wisdom hearts,
bathe you in all-pervasive compassion,
give you pith instructions,
and may you with the diligence of Olympic athletes
do meditation practice,
and may you with direct confidence
realize the true nature of mind.
America, thanks for the neglect,
I did it without you,
let us celebrate poetic justice,
you and I never were,
never tried to do anything,
and never succeeded,
I want to thank you for introducing me to
the face of the naked mind,
thanx 4 nothing.
The popular American outdoor clothing company Patagonia commissioned the local design studio Cast Iron to create a city guide to its home town of Boulder, Colorado. The neat little travel guide covers the highlights of America’s “happiest city” from local coffee shops, restaurants, and hangouts to hiking trails and recreational opportunities. The real highlight of the pocket-sized guide is the innovative use of algae-based black ink and Kraft paper instead of the usual petroleum derived print products.
Charles Dickens and his iconic story A Christmas Carol have become synonymous with Christmas celebrations, however a special holiday exhibition at the Charles Dickens Museum in London demonstrates that his connection to the holiday season is not all candy canes and cheesy cards.
Beautiful Books: Dickens and the Business of Christmas presents an exceptional selection of Dickens rare books, including a unique “trial” edition of A Christmas Carol with illustrations by John Leech predating the December 19, 1843 first edition, one of which is also there. In addition, visitors will also find first editions of his other Christmas stories, including The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), Battle of Life (1846), and The Haunted Man (1848), all cloth bound with gilt edges, decorative endpapers, and vignette title pages. There are also examples of the first Christmas card created in 1843 by Henry Cole and illustrated by John Callot Horsley (see above), engravings by Dickens’ frequent collaborator Hablot Knight Browne, various Christmas Victoriana, and stunning jeweled books with bindings by Sangorski and Sutcliffe.
Last weekend, the UK-based artist(s) known as Banksy stenciled a moving holiday themed artwork on a wall in Birmingham, UK. The piece, and accompanying video, were designed to highlight the homelessness crisis in the city. Of course, the mural was almost immediately defaced. The city quickly covered it in plastic for protection, but it now has 24 hour guards. So it goes.
I know the big name dinosaurs—Tyrannosaurus, Allosaurus, Velociraptor, etc.—but that’s about the extent of my grasp of Dinosauria. However, my nephew Cameron is a budding paleontologist at the age of two (yes, 2) and he constantly schools me on the identification and naming of his favorite creatures. The precocious toddler has been obsessed with dinos since he was an infant. When we get together he shares his favorite books, toys, and videos . Cameron not only has an impressive ability to recognize species, but he can accurately pronounce names, such as Archaeoceratops, Diplodocus, Pachycephalosaurus. This past weekend, I was able show him some contemporary dinosaurs stalking the streets of Paris .
Artist Julien Nonnon has resurrected some of the extinct reptiles for his latest work, “Prehistoric Safari,” utilizing video-mapping technology to project images of the dinosaurs in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. The digital art form is an exciting mash-up of photography, video, and architecture. Nonnon created 17 3D-projections of species that lived during the Cretaceous period. Of course, Cameron identified and named them all.
The projections can be viewed January 5. and online at Nonnon’s Instagram page.
When we think about the great 19th century American writer Mark Twain, his lauded Mississippi River novels usually come to mind. However, it was the 1869 travel book The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim’s Progress which first brought him prominence. The New-York Historical Society has opened an exhibition dedicated to Twain’s first blockbuster book. Running through February 2, 2020, this is an intriguing look at the young author on the eve of celebrity. The exhibit features Twain documents and letters, photographs, artifacts, and books.
In 1867, Mark Twain was an up and coming journalist, humorist, and public speaker visiting New York City. When he read about the new concept of a pleasure cruise to Europe and the Mediterranean on a ship called the Quaker City, Twain convinced a San Francisco newspaper to pay for his passage in return for a weekly travel column on the voyage and this early foray into organized tourism.
The voyage of the Quaker City was well documented by an onboard professional photographer. Some of William E. James’ images are included in the exhibition, including the one below featuring Twain. The author is seated on the floor next to the man holding a hat.
Twain mined his experiences on the ship and during shore excursions for humorous pieces about vagaries of tourism. He dedicated some of his most cutting writing to the hugely disappointing time that he spent in Palestine. Still, Twain’s participation in the trip and his subsequent writing helped to launch American travel writing.
It’s a blue Monday in “Rainy Day, New York,” a 1940 painting by Leon Dolice—a Vienna-born artist who visited NYC in the 1920s, and it’s a rainy blue Monday today.
Bergen has to be one of my favorite small European cities. The beautifully situated and stunningly scenic city has long been promoted as “the gateway to the Fjords” with much success. But now the tourism professionals at Visit Bergen have enlisted the Norwegian advertising agency Anti to rebrand and update their image.
Norway’s most attractive, and one of its most heavily touristed, destinations has also begun to take steps to head-off the dreaded overtourism that has blighted other European towns. In a daring move, Bergen has set limits on the number of cruiseships that can dock and how long they can remain.
The rebranding campaign, which includes its own typeface, color scheme, travel guides, and tourist merchandise, is using “Life in full contrast” as the new slogan for Visit Bergen. In an effort to broaden attitudes towards the city, they plan to celebrate Bergen’s cultural, as well as natural diversity. There’s even an accompanying video (see below) created with local hip hop artists that uses imagery from a time before tourism was so prevalent.
Travel Between The Pages 