This summer, Irish painter Conor Harrington visited the doleful Norwegian port town of Vardø on the chilly Barents Sea and created some marvelous murals around the desolate town for the Komafest street art festival. Lucky for us, filmmaker Andrew Telling documented it all in this poignant video titled “Old Norse”.
The compelling soundtrack music was composed and performed by Lucinda Chua.
Launched last month, Wanderous is a diverting free travel navigation app that creates serendipitous urban routes that are optimized for adventurous journeys. Users just enter a destination into Wanderous and it will offer a convoluted route suggesting local sites, landmarks, entertaining detours, historic places, recreation opportunities and attractions.
The psychogeography-focused app selects visit-worthy locations in a city using a super-secret algorithm developed by Adam Wolf and the clever folks at Flairify. While the free app is only for U.S. destinations for now, they have big plans for international coverage.
You can download the app here.
While checking out the Kandinsky 1911-1913 show at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, I ran across a new exhibition by NYC-based Mexican artist Gabriel Orozoco titled “Asterisms”. The binary show features thousands of diverse objects Orozoco collected from the Isla Arena nature reserve in Baja Mexico and an equally heterogeneous mix of items found on the Pier 40 playing fields in Manahattan. The sizable swathe of human detrious is accompanied by a series of large photographs of discrete objects organized by color, size and substance.
According to the show curators the installation evokes “several of the artist’s recurring notions, including the traces of erosion and ever-present tension between nature and culture”.
By the way, if you were wondering, asterism is a typographical term for the infrequently used symbol consisting of three asterisks placed in a triangle. It can be used to indicate breaks in text or to separate book chapters.
images © Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Open for just over six months, the very cool B2 Boutique Hotel in Zurich, Switzerland is rapidly becoming an aspirational lodging destination for traveling bibliophiles. Situated in the former 19th century Hürlimann Brewery, this “Hotel with a bookmark” has managed to maintain its connection to the building’s industrial roots, but still offers the best of modern design and high tech amenities. It may be fun to stay in the old mashing room, however, the real draw for book lovers is the library-like lounge area. The amazing collection of more than 33,000 volumes was rescued from a secondhand bookshop that was going out of business. Guests are welcome to borrow and trade books from the multilingual collection.
This week, extensive areas of Venice have been underwater (even more than usual). Severe weather and unusually high tides submerged three quarters of La Serenissima under an extra meter of lagoon water. Here’s what Europe’s most romantic tourist destination has looked like lately.
In this era of Google Maps, Street View, GPS and satnav systems, most of us take the humble road map for granted. We don’t appreciate the complex and tedious work that was involved in the production of accurate road maps in the days before satellites, computers and high tech printers. But if you’re an inveterate cartophile, just put on your sun goggles and take a trip with these 1940s mapmakers.
In less than two weeks the United States will be celebrating our annual Thanksgiving holiday. With more than 42.5 million Americans hitting the road, Thanksgiving week is one of the busiest travel periods in the U.S. each year. This revealing infographic breaks it all down to a more digestible meal and offers some timely travel tips for the unwary.
Back before the astronomical value of the Swiss franc made long visits to Switzerland cost prohibitive, I was lucky enough to spend some quality time in glorious Helvetia. So, it will come as no surprise that I’m smitten by this stunning time-lapse video of Switzerland by night.
Helvetia’s Dream was created by Zurich-based photojournalist Alessandro Della Bella based on one to three hour exposures throughout Switzerland. You can see more and learn about the film’s development at the dedicated website.
Border Land is an odd appellation for a park in the the heart of a city, but Torino, Italy‘s Parco Ignazio Michelotti now bears that name. Situated along the banks of the River Po, just across from the University of Turin and a short walk from Stazione Porta Nuova, the site of the city’s defunct zoo is now a home for frequent cultural events and also the new Street Art Museum (SAM) .
The once popular Torino Zoo closed in 1987, but now is the backdrop for the outdoor Street Art Museum. Buildings and cages that housed rhinos, elephants, monkeys and 2,500 other animals for decades now serve as legal canvases for international street artists.
H/T to Alex Barnett for the post idea.
While traveling in Europe I try to use public transportation whenever possible, however sometimes a taxi is the best option for a time-sensitive trip. A new Finnish start-up booking service called Cabforce offers taxi services in 25 European cities. Users can book and pay for taxis on the company’s website or through free smartphone apps. The virtual process can help to eliminate the hassles of finding a cab and then negotiating with the driver. While easy and efficient, Cabforce is generally more expensive than simply hailing a taxi or finding one at a taxi stand.
The only European-wide taxi booking service of its kind, Cabforce may be your best option for airport transfers, in-city travel or longer suburban trips. The flat-rate pricing includes the tip, all tolls and miscellaneous fees, like those crazy baggage add-ons, weekend, night and holiday extras.
