Category: Travels

Lufthansa, HELP!

Poor Yana [Chernyak] is stuck in Nice, France without her luggage, which was "misplaced" somewhere in transit, apparently in Munich.  No one in Lufthansa, Europe will take calls or help her.  Lufthansa, USA passes the buck to the European offices.

The phone number given for Lufthansa, Nice — 0 826 103 334 — does not work from outside the country of France. 

Lufthansa, HELP, HELP, HELP!  Es gibt die deutsche Wertarbeit, nicht wahr?  Ist die Wirtschaftswunder schon so schnell vorbei?  Lufthansa, can you please help?  Does anyone from Lufthansa read this blog?

Zu Hilfe!  Arme Yana…

Here is his very useful account, including a good photo.  Excerpt:

Cowen made an interesting point about young people. He said America
empowers youth as influencers — college students sit around and listen
to music, start fads, build web sites, etc. They may not be "working"
per se, but they are contributing enormously to American popular
culture. Indeed, most of our popular culture is created by young
people, and this is the culture that is exported abroad. If a country
cares about the influence of its culture abroad, they should ask how
much power is given to youth. He noted that Latin America and Asia have
huge youth populations, making it prime for a lot of cultural influence
in this next generation.

Another question I discussed was why Switzerland has such an excellent culture of museums, opera, theatre, and architecture, but has done so poorly in exporting popular music and cinema.  The use of cities and cantons to fund the arts may be a central factor.  Intense Tiebout competition leads to quality local services but fewer national public goods (to the extent such cultural exports are public goods).

Ben is an MR reader who emailed me and tracked me down, here is his blog.

That was at the Hotel Real, the dish is called "Wiener Backhahn."  When we asked how to get to the restaurant, one Lichtensteiner (what do you call them in the English language?) said  "It is close.  Lichtenstein is very small.  (Pause)  But it is very beautiful."  Zurich has a high percentage of foreigners; it feels like 20 percent or more.  The Western side of the city is now "cool," and almost bohemian; eat at LaSalle.  The Swiss seem to have legalized prostitution.  The French-speaking Swiss generally favor joining the EU; the German speakers — 63% of the country — do not.  The German speakers also are more likely to speak good English than good French.  Crossing the border, German bookstores do not feature Freakonomics prominently; their economics sections are full of doom and gloom about Germany; are Levitt and Dubner too entertaining for them?  Some guy named Frank Schatzing has an 800-page German science fiction bestseller called Der Schwarm, just translated into English, is it any good?  Swiss food prices have gone through the roof.  I’ve experienced the $30 pizza, the $40 schnitzel, and the $42 breakfast, all good but none extraordinary.  Rural Switzerland now has plenty of Thai restaurants.  Switzerland was the first country where I first saw first-rate scenery, mountains, or for that matter cows.  Does this mean I still overrate the value of the Swiss landscape?  Paris was the first city where Natasha was able to go shopping and see the West; does she overrate it?  Do I overrate German bread and orange juice?  What was the first good blog you read?

Here is the list, courtesy of WorldHum, via Bookslut.  I agree with most of it, recognizing that no single author (e.g., Thubron, Raban, Theroux) can receive more than one pick.  But where is Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams?  David Campbell’s The Crystal Desert?  For my first choice I would select either Naipaul’s Turn in the South or Robert Byron’s Road to Oxiana.  Surely they forgot Marco Polo’s Travels, which remains riveting.  Herodotus?  Can we count Democracy in America?  Gulliver’s Travels?  Dante’s Inferno?  Your further suggestions are welcome.

I am toying with a new concept, namely The Work Vacation.  Pick some exotic locale and bring your laptop.  Write your book and blog as usual.  Go out every now and then to see some sights.  In essence seeing sights replaces the time at home you would spend doing chores and taking care of family.

I find the idea of The Work Vacation appealing.  I am convinced many people don’t find their vacations that much fun in the first place.  ("What are vacations for anyway?," I can imagine Robin Hanson’s voice echoing in my head.)  People are losing the feeling of flow, and of accomplishment, from their workplace.  Often they argue more with their spouses when together all day.  They feel stress at coping with regular decisions and unfamiliar languages (of these, only the loss of work and flow describes me, I might add, but that is significant).

Perhaps many people take vacations for social reasons, to accommodate their spouses, to signal what kind of person they are, for memories, or to check countries off a list.  A Work Vacation would accommodate (some of) these motives to considerable degree.

I love Indian cities, but if only for reasons of air pollution, I don’t want to spend most of the day outdoors running around.  And many interesting and worthwhile parts of India don’t have many tourist sites but are still worth a bit of time.

Natasha finds the concept of The Work Vacation deeply distressing.  First, it suggests I can leave home without abandoning work.  Second, it implies it is permissible to work on vacation.

Surely the Coase Theorem can solve these problems.

Upon my return home, Natasha’s first question was to ask why I was talking in a funny way.  "You sound hoarse.  Were you screaming at the Indians?"  Alas, it is just a few days of breathing in the air pollution in Hyderabad.

The monsoon is far less scary when they turn on their windshield wipers or for that matter when they have them.  For abandoned rusted tankers in the water, Goa is #1.  For non-abandoned rusted tankers, Goa also does well.  Many are carrying iron ore to China.  The Portuguese colonial churches are eerily like colonial Brazil, yet no one lives in old Goa any more.  My guide claims the state of Goa is 45 percent Christian.  My hotel practices Restaurant Apartheid and won’t let me sit with the Indian customers.  They try to talk me out of eating the Goan foods ("don’t you want the chicken breast Sir?  Very nice pastries…", etc.).  The white pumpkin curry is amazing.  Goa is far less densely populated than I had expected; the major city has only about 80,000 people.  One meal experience can involve being served by eight different people, none of whom ever stand more than ten feet away from you and each of whom you must say goodbye to.  Need I compare this to Bordeaux?  Cashews are the gift of choice.  When it stops pouring, which does happen occasionally, women flock to the beach in beautifully colored saris.  My taxi driver looked quite a bit like me; I believe he has Portuguese blood as I do.  I have read that the state of Goa has the highest per capita income in India; this appears to come from the entire distribution and not just from the peaks.  Malcolm Gladwell books are seen everywhere, as is Freakonomics, which has Angelina Jolie on the cover.  There is less here than I had thought but I’ve ended up liking it more.  Next is Hyderabad, and back to work.

"Of all possible debauches, travel is
unsurpassed by any I know. It’s the one invented after all the others
have ceased to excite."

Gustave Flaubert, letter to Ernest Chevalier (April 9, 1851)

Here is the permalink, from Terry Teachout’s blog.  Did I mention that I fly to Goa tomorrow, monsoons permitting?  I’ll have two days of pure vacation there, so your tips are welcome…comments of course are open…

Bordeaux is one of the loveliest and most architecturally consistent 18th century towns in Europe.  There is otherwise little to see here.  The restaurants you find are amazingly good, but there are fewer than one might expect.  Only the immigrants keep their shops open on Sunday.  The town feels oddlly empty on all days.  The professors give the graduate assistants knives and expect them to peel the white asparagus for dinner.  That is how it should be.  Michel Houllebecq’s Possibility of an Island is available here (but not yet in the U.S.) in English; he is France’s most vital current author.  The wines are wasted on me but the raw oysters are not.  I saw Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinettte in the local multiplex.  You would not expect a mix of Kirsten Dunst, indie rock, and the Versailles Palace to be a winner, but this is a beautiful and quite fantastic film; a must-see on the big screen.  Imagine a combination of Clueless, Peter Greenaway, and Lost in Translation.  The city of Bordeaux would be wonderful and charming as France’s ninth largest city.  But it is the fifth largest, which makes me wonder where all this is headed.

And now for something completely different, here is Bryan Caplan’s class autobiography.  Mine would involve lots of sports, a mother who brought me to chess tournaments, a father who didn’t believe in college, and a grandmother who loved Victor Hugo and Shakespeare.

"Tim Harford says we shouldn’t buy rental car insurance!"  That was not The Economist in the Family, that was Natasha (!).

"Now the Chinese are second after the Dutch in overnight stays," Mr.
Noll continued, adding that about 100,000 Chinese citizens visited
Trier [Germany] last year, and about 40,000 of them spent at least one night.

"And they come all year," he said, "even in the low season."

Try to guess why, but you will find the answer under the fold…

1. My favorite demographic charts: Track population changes by borough.

2. My favorite NYC dining guide blog: Click on the categories on the top row of the blog to see the whole thing.

3. Favorite neighborhood: To live in?  Manhattan is getting so uncool.  I will pick the corner of Hudson and Barrow, which is near W. Houston and the West Side Highway, just north of the Saatchi building.  There it still looks and feels like the New York City I grew up with (from New Jersey, that is).  But when will I have the money and the courage to try?  The Upper East Side bores me and the best food is in Queens; neither is suitable for real life.

4. Favorite book about: Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan, by Philip Lopate.  I am surprised how few people know this one.  Compulsively readable, and it makes me want to write a comparable work.  But "A Drive Around Fairfax"?  No way.

5. Favorite dim sum: Oriental Garden, in Chinatown, Elizabeth St., make sure to arrive early.  Don’t forget Flushing, especially if you have time to kill at LaGuardia.  The juicy pork buns at Joe’s Shanghai?  Jackson Diner is still great Indian food though it is not the revelation it once was; the competition has caught up with it.

6. Best lunch bargain: Nougatine, the bistro attached to Jean-Georges.  Get the venison with green chiles for its amazing mix of textures and heat.

7. Favorite Seinfeld episode: How about Master of His Domain?  Soup Nazi is overrated and in fact I don’t even like it.  The one where Jerry and Elaine try to be together again is another favorite, plus Show Within a Show.

8. Favorite free activity that even most New Yorkers don’t do: Browse the auction displays at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, especially before the major auctions in May and November.

Movies, music, literature?  Not today.  You might as well try "My Favorite Things Not in New York" for an easier task.

Here are three items I always bring on long trips.

1.  Kensington noise canceling headphones. These are much cheaper than the heavily advertised version by Bose and they work very well.  With the headphones on you can actually listen to music on an airplane, but don’t think that you are going to sleep all that much better.  One AA battery will get you there and back although I always bring a spare in case I forget to turn off the noise canceling switch.

2.  Paul Fredrick Non-Iron Dress Shirt.  Although not sold as a travel shirt this non-iron shirt looks almost as good on the second wearing as on the first and you can wash it in the sink, hang it to to dry and wear it again on day three.   I have "non-iron," and "wrinkle-free" dress shirts from other manufacturers but none are as good as the Paul Fredrick.

3.  Kodak DX7590 digital camera.  There are plenty of things wrong with this camera – like almost all digitals it’s slow to start and has a long refresh rate between pictures (and thus is not good at capturing action) and it’s bulky.  This camera, however, has two redeeming features.  First, and most importantly, it has a 10 times zoom and not a useless digital zoom but a real 10 times optical zoom.   The zoom makes all the difference when you want to get the close-up of that gargoyle on top of Saint-Chapelle.

As noted, the real lens makes the camera bulky but do you want to impress your friends with your "cute camera" or do you want to impress your friends with your photographs?  (Also, if you want impress your friends with your photos be sure to delete 80 percent of them.)

The other redeeming feature is the battery life.  With an additional 256mb memory card I can take well over 100 pictures, about right for a week trip, and can leave the battery charger at home.