Historic Jaffa-Tel Aviv

Posted on August 11, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Post and photograph by Annie MacDougall

 

Built in 1892 to serve as the terminus of the Jerusalem-Jaffa Railway,Tel Aviv-Jaffa’s old train station has been renovated into a stylish complex that houses shops, restaurants, arts shows & classes, two weekly markets and lots of other events. After five years of restoration and development work, HaTachana officially opened in 2010 to the public. The Tel Aviv Municipality beautifully preserved the original design of the buildings while creating open, pedestrian-only spaces for visitors to enjoy the atmosphere.

photo: Annie MacDougall

An old railcar sits on train tracks in front of the station’s original building, greeting visitors as they walk into HaTachana.  It’s a fun tribute to what used to be and shows how Tel Aviv embraces its past while moving forward and evolving as a modern city. The
complex also incorporates a refurbished factory, the old freight terminal and 17 other historic buildings.

Every week, HaTachana hosts “UNIQUE”, a designer/artist/craft fair on Thursday evenings from 7:00pm- midnight.  Fridays from 8:00am-2:00pm is “Orbanic”, an organic fruit & vegetable shuk that also showcases eco-friendly household & beauty products. 

Check HaTachan’s website (www.hatachana.co.il) for current information on additional markets and special events.  Most recently was the Beer Festival where 20 Israeli private breweries offered their unique beers to the public for tastings.
It’s easy to spend an entire afternoon or evening wandering through the complex’s 16 different buildings and public spaces.  Here is a listing of the currently open restaurants and shops. 

Cafe Tachana:  This charming cafe serves a varied menu including breakfast, sandwiches, pastas and quiches and is located in the original station building that was built in 1892.

 Shushka Shvili:  Serves tapas plates, breakfast all day, and 100 types of beer from around the world. Housed in an old templar’s home, diners can sit inside at the bar or outside at a pleasant rooftop table with a view of Jaffa.

 Italika B’Tachana:  Southern Italian fare specializing in fish and seafood with indoor & outdoor seating in the main courtyard.

Vaniglia: Grab a cone of freshly made ice cream and take a seat in the main courtyard for some fun people watching.

Cafe Greg: The reliable coffee-shop chain is a good place to grab a drink or quick snack and browse the neighboring Tzomet Sfarim (House of Books).

Specialty stores: Made in TLV, AHAVA, Gaya- Art of Thinking, Sofi

Fashion boutiques: American Vintage, Shoofra, Yosef, Charlie Paloma, Hella Ganor, Studio Noah, Bellinky Oolalaa, Naama Bezalel, Razili, Butterfly, Ido Recanati, Shika, Tamarindi, Ronen Chen, Elise, Harraca, Efrat Cassouto.

HaTachana is located at the south end of Neve Tzedek next to the IDF History Museum and across from the Mediteranean.  There is a parking lot for the crazy people that choose to drive a car around Tel Aviv, but it’s most easily accessible by the Dan bus lines 25, 10, 8 and 100.

For more information on Tel Aviv and Jaffa, visit the city tourism website.
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Building Art…Book by Book

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Post by Massimo Pollini.

Prague-based, Slovakian artist Matei Kren has created a number of enormous book sculptures at museums and galleries throughout Europe. In 2006, he installed the acclaimed work “ Book Cell Project ”  at the Centro de Arte Moderne in Lisbon and more recently the challenging “Scanner” installation conceived for the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna.

Throughout his career, Matej Krén, among the most important Slovakian contemporary artists, has focused mainly on the means of elaboration and transmission of knowledge, establishing suggestive links between their historical and ideological relativity and the experimentation with many forms of optical and perceptual illusion.

The narrow inside space, multiplied and complicated by mirrors, evoke a sensation of sublime terror, an alteration referring to a puzzling infinity itself created to destabilize conventional spatial habits. Mirrors become an instrument to create illusion and, at the same time, to unmask it. Since the public can easily see themselves reflected in a false infinite – thus discovering the illusion – the problem becomes the latency of perception.

 

Chosen because of their nature as seat of knowledge, as symbols of intrinsically human free thought, books are here “used” as raw materials for an artistic process existing and communicating on many distinct levels.

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Zero History is Here (almost)

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

In his new book trailer, novelist William Gibson reads a passage from his upcoming novel, Zero History. The book arrives on September 7th, finishing the cycle of novels that includes Pattern Recognition and Spook Country. Instead of reenactments, the trailer mixes imagery and text from the book.

I haven’t received my pre-release copy yet, but here’s the blurb provided by Putnam:

“Hollis Henry worked for the global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend once before. She never meant to repeat the experience. But she’s broke, and Bigend never feels it’s beneath him to use whatever power comes his way — in this case, the power of money to bring Hollis onto his team again. Not that she knows what the “team” is up to, not at first.

Milgrim is even more thoroughly owned by Bigend. He’s worth owning for his useful gift of seeming to disappear in almost any setting, and his Russian is perfectly idiomatic – so much so that he spoke Russian with his therapist, in the secret Swiss clinic where Bigend paid for him to be cured of the addiction that would have killed him.

Garreth has a passion for extreme sports. Most recently he jumped off the highest building in the world, opening his chute at the last moment, and he has a new thighbone made of rattan baked into bone, entirely experimental, to show for it.  Garreth isn’t owned by Bigend at all. Garreth has friends from whom he can call in the kinds of favors that a man like Bigend will find he needs, when things go unexpectedly sideways, in a world a man like Bigend is accustomed to controlling.

As when a Department of Defense contract for combat-wear turns out to be the gateway drug for arms dealers so shadowy that even Bigend, whose subtlety and power in the private sector would be hard to overstate, finds himself outmaneuvered and adrift in a seriously dangerous world.”

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Bedlam in London

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

This post is from Evan Smythe.

 

Shakespeare’s Globe presents the world premiere of
 
 

 

Bedlam

5 September – 1 October 2010
 
Shakespeare’s Globe presents the world premiere of Nell Leyshon’s new play Bedlam, between 5 September and 1 October 2010. This production marks the Globe’s first ever staging of a known female playwright, at either old or new incarnations of the theatre, and continues Dominic Dromgoole’s vision for new  writing at the Globe. Nell Leyshon won the Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award for Comfort Me With Apples hit earlier this year at Southwark Playhouse. Nell Leyshon presents a fictional portrayal of a London hospital for the insane, and has been working closely with the Bethlem Royal Hospital to get a glimpse of life both then and now. Bedlam is set in 18th-century London against an anarchic backdrop of binge drinkers, gin sellers and ballad singers. Under the supervision of the prejudiced Dr Carew and his imbecile son, Bedlam’s philosophy lies in containing rather than curing patients. But with the arrival of a lovely country girl, May, and the appointment of a more enlightened governor, Carew’s inhuman regime starts to crumble, along with his own sanity. Noisy and chaotic, Bedlam contains dance and song with scenes of lust, violence and absurd comedy.

 

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Join the Slow Travel Movement

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Thanks to Jools Stone from He Thought of Trains blog for this discovery:

The Slow Travel Website, the brainstorm of web designer Pauline Kenny and her husband, software developer Steve Cohen, is the information source for people interested in traveling at a slower pace and experiencing individual destinations more completely. The Slow Travel concept is based upon staying at one location for a period of at least one week and using that location as a base for day trips. In contrast to the frenzy of having multiple accommodations during a short vacation, Slow Travelers enjoy “living like locals” when visiting a foreign country or new area. They rent homes and apartments on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, buy groceries at local food shops, and learn local customs. They spend less time running to and from “must see” tourist attractions and more time soaking in the culture which is found in village markets and town squares.

Pauline explains, “I wanted to learn more about web design and needed a topic, so I selected my favorite subject – traveling and staying in vacation rentals – and created the website in April 2000.” Since then, Slow Travel has become a true phenomenon. An Internet community of over 8,000 members worldwide, with over 3,000,000 page views per month, the website fills a previously untapped and continuously growing niche within the world of international leisure travel.

The most popular topics at Slow Travel focus on Europe, with travel and vacation rental information on Italy and France comprising more than half of the website’s content. Other popular destinations covered extensively by the site include England, Switzerland and the United States.

The website is an immense and valuable source of in-depth travel information, from vacation rental, hotel and restaurant reviews to notes on what to expect in an Italian vacation home and on slow traveling with children. Trip reports detail events which make traveling slowly so interesting: people watching in an ancient Italian piazza, chance encounters with a local farmer, the perfect wine tasting in the French countryside.

The website’s heart and soul are its members. Members write the travel reports and the reviews, provide photographic documentaries of trips, submit essays, give detailed travel instructions, share recipes discovered along the way. Slow Talk, the Slow Travel message board, provides a daily exchange on a myriad of topics ranging from the best airline deals to porcini mushroom hunting. The message board is run by eight moderators from the United States and the United Kingdom, all Slow Travelers, representing walks of life as varied as the membership itself.

Slow Travelers are educated people with a wide variety of hobbies and interests, including travel, food, wine, fashion, culture, and history. They value their free time, and spend a large portion of their disposable income on hobbies and interests. Members include artists, writers, international business people, computer experts, doctors, hospitality and food service professionals, organic farmers, and travel consultants, all volunteering time and information to the site. Because Slow Travel is not affiliated with any travel or vacation rental agencies, the site can honestly report its findings. All reviews are published, and the members are free to provide honest, objective and insightful information.

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Win a Eurostar trip

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

With two of the world’s most iconic cities only 2h15 apart by high speed rail, Eurostar are in the unique position of being able to offer North Americans the chance to win an amazing vacation to Europe.

With the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben within virtual touching distance of one another, you can easily visit them both in a day and still have time for lunch by the Arc de Triomphe. So, what would you do if you had the chance to visit these two great cities? Would it be a river boat cruise along the Seine in Paris or maybe a jaunt along Oxford Street to shop.

Eurostar is giving you the chance to make that dream come true.

To win this dream one week vacation for 2 to London and Paris courtesy of Eurostar, including flights, hotel accommodation, a Eurostar round trip at 186mph and many more amazing activities whilst there, simply answer the following question:

Describe your dream trip to London and Paris

For details, visit the Eurostar website .

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The Suspense Is Over

Posted on August 6, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

 

The NPR audience nominated some 600 novels to the “Killer Thrillers” poll and cast more than 17,000 ballots. The final roster of winners is a diverse one to say the least, ranging in style and period from Dracula to The Da Vinci Code, Presumed Innocent to Pet Sematary. What these top 100 titles share, however, is that all of them are fast-moving tales of suspense and adventure.

And menace. Critic Maureen Corrigan, who served on the advisory panel of experts for this project, was surprised by how dark many of your choices are. “Even the [Agatha] Christie pick, And Then There Were None, is one of her creepier novels.”

Co-panelist, novelist and critic Patrick Anderson was more impressed with the overall quality of the choices: “The vast majority of these are very good books or classics … Thomas Harris, Dennis Lehane, Patricia Highsmith — this audience knows good writing.”

Of course, there will be arguments about whether some of these books truly count as “thrillers.” (You know who you are, Shogun.) The many 19th-century novels, in particular, may raise eyebrows. But David Morrell, novelist and co-editor of the recent anthology Thrillers: 100 Must Reads, defends such choices. “A lot of people see ‘thriller’ and think ‘spy book,’ ” Morrell says. But a book like The Last of the Mohicans is “unquestionably a thriller — filled with chases and derring-do.” Morrell also mentioned Dracula (“take away the supernatural elements and it’s a serial-killer novel”) and The Count of Monte Cristo. “As long as you have that breathlessness and sense of excitement,” Morrell says, “then they’re in.”

Who is the NPR audience’s favorite thriller writer? It’s the King, of course — Stephen King, who landed six titles in the top 100. Lee Child comes next, with four winning books. And, at three titles each, Michael Crichton, Dennis Lehane and Stieg Larsson tie for third.

Polls can help understand an audience — and even make predictions about it. Based on the some 100,000 votes cast in this survey, the following prediction seems a safe one: Armed with the list below, none of us will need to consult a psychic, supersleuth or Harvard “symbologist” to unearth pulse-quickening vacation reads during the rest of this summer and for many months to come.

  • 1. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
  • 2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
  • 3. Kiss the Girls, by James Patterson
  • 4. The Bourne Identity, by Robert Ludlum
  • 5. In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote
  • 6. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown
  • 7. The Shining, by Stephen King
  • 8. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
  • 9. The Hunt tor Red October, by Tom Clancy
  • 10. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • 11. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
  • 12. The Stand, by Stephen King
  • 13. The Bone Collector, by Jeffery Deaver
  • 14. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
  • 15. Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown
  • 16. A Time to Kill, by John Grisham
  • 17. The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton
  • 18. Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane
  • 19. The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
  • 20. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
  • 21. Eye of the Needle, by Ken Follett
  • 22. It, by Stephen King
  • 23. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
  • 24. The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson
  • 25. Jaws, by Peter Benchley
  • 26. The Alienist, by Caleb Carr
  • 27. Red Dragon, by Thomas Harris
  • 28. Presumed Innocent, by Scott Turow
  • 29. The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett
  • 30. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson
  • 31. No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
  • 32. Gone Baby Gone, by Dennis Lehane
  • 33. Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith
  • 34. Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin
  • 35. Subterranean, by James Rollins
  • 36. Clear and Present Danger, by Tom Clancy
  • 37. Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King
  • 38. Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane
  • 39. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carre
  • 40. The Poet, by Michael Connelly
  • 41. The Boys from Brazil, by Ira Levin
  • 42. Cape Fear, by John MacDonald
  • 43. The Bride Collector, by Ted Dekker
  • 44. Pet Sematary, by Stephen King
  • 45. Dead Zone, by Stephen King
  • 46. The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon
  • 47. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John Le Carre
  • 48. The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith
  • 49. Tell No One, by Harlan Coben
  • 50. Consent to Kill, by Vince Flynn
  • 51. The 39 Steps, by John Buchan
  • 52. Blowback, by Brad Thor
  • 53. The Children of Men, by P.D. James
  • 54. 61 Hours, by Lee Child
  • 55. Marathon Man, by William Goldman
  • 56. The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
  • 57. 206 Bones, by Kathy Reichs
  • 58. Psycho, by Robert Bloch
  • 59. The Killing Floor, by Lee Child
  • 60. Rules of Prey, by John Sandford
  • 61. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
  • 62. In the Woods, by Tana French
  • 63. Shogun, by James Clavell
  • 64. The Relic, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  • 65. Intensity, by Dean Koontz
  • 66. Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming
  • 67. Metzger’s Dog, by Thomas Perry
  • 68. Timeline, by Michael Crichton
  • 69. Contact, by Carl Sagan
  • 70. What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman
  • 71. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  • 72. The Cabinet of Curiosities, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  • 73. Charm School, by Nelson DeMille
  • 74. Feed, by Mira Grant
  • 75. Gone Tomorrow, by Lee Child
  • 76. Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay
  • 77. The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
  • 78. The First Deadly Sin, by Lawrence Sanders
  • 79. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
  • 80. The Brotherhood of the Rose, by David Morrell
  • 81. Primal Fear, by William Diehl
  • 82. The Templar Legacy, by Steve Berry
  • 82. The Hard Way, by Lee Child [tie]
  • 84. The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
  • 85. Six Days of the Condor, by James Grady
  • 86. Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler
  • 87. Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith
  • 88. The Eight, by Katherine Neville
  • 89. The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown
  • 90. Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming
  • 91. Bangkok 8, by John Burdett
  • 92. The Kill Artist, by Daniel Silva
  • 93. Hardball, by Sara Paretsky
  • 94. The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte
  • 95. The Deep Blue Good-by, by John MacDonald
  • 96. The Monkey’s Raincoat, by Robert Crais
  • 96. Berlin Game, by Len Deighton [tie]
  • 98. A Simple Plan, by Scott Smith
  • 99. Child 44, by Tom Rob Smith
  • 100. Heartsick, by Chelsea Cain
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Travel Lit Bestseller List

Posted on August 5, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

 

The Indie Travel Literature Bestseller List

For the eight-week period ending July 27, 2010, and based on sales at independent bookstores nationwide.

1. A Walk in the Woods
Bill Bryson, Broadway, $15.99, 9780767902526

2. Every Day in Tuscany
Frances Mayes, Broadway, $25, 9780767929820

3. The Geography of Bliss
Eric Weiner, Twelve, $13.99, 9780446698894

4. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India
William Dalrymple, Knopf, $26.95, 9780307272829

5. Bicycle Diaries
David Byrne, Viking, $25.95, 9780670021147

6. Female Nomad and Friends: Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World
Rita Golden Gelman, Jean Allen (Illus.), Three Rivers, $15, 9780307588012

7. 1,000 Places to See Before You Die
Patricia Schultz, Workman, $19.95, 9780761161028

8. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Robert M. Pirsig, HarperTorch, $7.99, 9780060589462

9. The Places in Between
Rory Stewart, Harvest, $14.95, 9780156031561

10. The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World
Amanda Pressner, et al., Harper, $24.99, 9780061689062

11. La Bella Lingua
Dianne Hales, Broadway, $15, 9780767927703

12. 1,000 Places to See in the USA and Canada Before You Die
Patricia Schultz, Workman, $19.95, 9780761136910

13. In a Sunburned Country
Bill Bryson, Broadway, $15.99, 9780767903868

14. French Toast: An American in Paris Celebrates the Maddening Mysteries of the French
Harriet Welty Rochefort, Thomas Dunne Books, $13.99, 9780312642785

15. 101 Places Not to See Before You Die
Catherine Price, Harper, $13.99, 9780061787768

16. Turn Left at the Trojan Horse: A Would-Be Hero’s American Odyssey
Brad Herzog, Citadel, $14.95, 9780806532028

17. Travels With Charley: In Search of America
John Steinbeck, Penguin, $10, 9780140053203

18. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
Bill Bryson, Harper Perennial, $14.99, 9780060920081

19. Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat
Chris Stewart, Broadway, $12.99, 9780307592378

20. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven
Susan Jane Gilman, Grand Central, $13.99, 9780446696937

21. The Best Women’s Travel Writing: True Stories From Around the World
Stephanie Elizondo Griest (Ed.), Travelers’ Tales, $17.95, 9781932361742

22. Notes From a Small Island
Bill Bryson, Harper Perennial, $14.99, 9780380727506

23. Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War
Tony Horwitz, Vintage, $16, 9780679758334

24. Tales of a Female Nomad
Rita Golden Gelman, Three Rivers, $14, 9780609809549

25. A Course Called Ireland: A Long Walk in Search of a Country, a Pint, and the Next Tee
Tom Coyne, Gotham, $16, 9781592405282

 

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Do You Wordle ?

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Thanks to Jonathan Feinberg:

 

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

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It’s Time For The Great British Beer Festival

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Brian D. Butler

Britain’s biggest beer festival

The Great British Beer Festival kicks off today and stretches across a good part of the week till August 7th at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre.

Hosted by the Campaign for Real Ale, the event will give those who enjoy a pint plenty of opportunity to sample various varieties of beers.

Visitors will be spoilt for choice at the festival which boasts of 500 brands of beer, ranging from local names to international ones. Alongside the beers, ales, ciders and perries will also be on offer for those who don’t quite take to the bitter or the lagers. This year will see the first appearance of many microbrews and craft breweries from the US.

Also on the cards will be beer tasting tutorials aimed at giving novices as well as pros an insight into the wonderful world of beer brewing. The prices for beers are based around the average price of a beer in London and also depend on how much CAMRA has to pay the brewery to purchase the beers. Usually, the stronger the beer, the more expensive it is. It’s also possible to sample 1/3 pints of most beers for under £1.

Pubs will be playing host to number of live entertainment acts and allow revelers to dip into a snack or two while offering plenty of opportunities for a friendly round of games.

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