In Case You Missed These Travel Highlights
November 10, 2008
There are a lot of new things happening in the travel and tourism business around the world these days. There’s a new swimming pool in Tokyo, Delta has discovered a new way to make the job of baggage handler more exciting and a new museum has opened in Munich.
In Tokyo, recently, a bald, naked man who said he was a British tourist went swimming in the moat of Japan’s Imperial Palace, climbed the palace wall, and threw rocks and splashed water at police before being taken into custody. He also got out of the water at one point, and chased police with a rock and a plastic construction site pole.
He then went back to the murky water and swam across to the other side of the moat, where he climbed up the 8-meter (9-yard) stone wall of the palace. Television showed passers-by gathering around the moat and watching the chase, giggling and taking photos on mobile phones.
“We are checking on his mental condition now,” a police spokesman said.
In Atlanta they’re checking a baggage handler for cardiac arrest. After opening the cargo hold of a Boeing 757 she found a cheetah running loose amid the luggage.
According to a Delta spokeswoman, one of two cheetahs being flown from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta escaped from its cage. The airline summoned help from Zoo Atlanta, and experts rushed to a closed airport hangar, tranquilized the escaped animal before transporting it to the zoo.
There’s nothing worse than an unexciting job, which is why at first we thought this was all part of an effort by Delta’s Human Resources Department to make airport jobs more exciting.
On the other side of the world, a bit of excitement is being generated in Munich by a new museum which is housed in an old public toilet.
Originally built in 1894, to serve nearby households which lacked facilities, the toilets were locked up in 1992 because of lack of use.
“On the night we opened, around 800 people came to see our work,” initiator of the museum project, Mathias Koehler told Reuters. He said that a toilet was a great place for artistic expression because art is a form of relief in the same way that going to the toilet is.
Herr Koehler has since been nominated for the “Eloquent Spokesperson of the Year” award.
Jim Ferri






