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
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Like most people, I enjoy traveling. What I don't enjoy are people who try to rip me off just because I'm a traveler. And I'm not talking about traveling to Papua New Guinea or deep into Africa or other exotic locales
Take my visit to London's Heathrow airport a few days ago, to the much ballyhooed Terminal 5. The design of the new terminal is fantastic -- broad spaces, good and rapid access to far-flung gates via train and escalators, comfortable seating areas around the gates (although they could have thrown in a few more outlets to recharge laptops and cell phones).
They've got some good restaurants such as the Giraffe -- a great place to grab an American-style breakfast after arrival -- but some of the new restaurants, such as Gordon Ramseys "Plane Food", have prices at the same altitude as the 747s flying in here.
That's one of the problems with Heathrow -- everything is so expensive. Want a glass of OJ at Ramsey's after your early morning arrival? It will set you back about $5. If that's enough to send you to something a bit harder, go for the $15 Bloody Mary. I mean, come on, that's $3 more than the Eggs Benedict.
The problem with Heathrow is that it wasn't designed to be an airport. It was designed to be a shopping mall at which planes land and travelers are trapped.
Worse yet, many of the sales people seem to have been trained to extract every dollar and Euro from your wallet. The folks who ran the Spanish Inquisition could learn a few tricks from retailers here.
Although I wasn't buying anything last Saturday, I walked into various shops to get a sense of the cost of things. When I entered the Duty Free liquor area I asked a clerk (who immediately latched on to me as they had in other shops) if they had Johnny Walker Red. His immediate reply was "Wouldn't you much rather have Johnny Walker Black or Blue?" I felt like making him black and blue.
When I was back out on the concourse I stopped to take a photo of the shop and the surrounding area. Within seconds a sales clerk yelled over to me that I was not allowed to take photos of the Duty Free shop.
My mouth dropped when I said "What?" "No," she said coming over, "it's not allowed and they confiscate the cameras of people who take photos."
"Is that the law?" I asked. "Yes," she replied.
"That's incredible," I said, "I'd like you to call a policeman so we can ask him about this."
"I'm just doing my job," she said, as she quickly walked away. I went to talk with her again a few minutes later but when she saw me coming she quickly moved away.
Jim Ferri
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I don't know if you saw the report two weeks ago about Amtrak reporting record numbers of riders. It's not totally the price of oil that has spurred train travel since it's been increasing for six years now. Maybe people are just beginning to see how good it can be.
I've always enjoyed train travel, although I've never done it much in the US except on Amtrak's Metroliner between New York and Washington, and commuting on the Long Island Rail Road. I was back on the LIRR a few weeks back, chatting with some kids who were riding in to the city for The New York Anime Festival. (That's them all made up in the photo). This train was more modern than the ones I had ridden previously, but other than that, things were pretty much the same -- people with their faces buried in newspapers, commuters dozing off on their way to work, masses rushing through Penn Station...
I developed my affection for train travel in Europe, where I enjoyed the freedom of not only being able to relax and walk around, but also the freedom of having complete freedom.
Today I was back on one of those trains again, this time in Italy with my wife, traveling from Milan out to Como, that fantastic town pinned on to the edge of the lake with the same name. Marjorie and I are really on our way to China but I've brought her here for a couple of days as a surprise, since this has always been one of those special places for me and she's never been here. I'm proud that I've managed to keep it a secret right up to when we got on the train, although I do admit to torturing her for the past two weeks as she's tried to guess where we'd be going.
En route to Como I remembered a lot of the experiences I've had on European trains. Years later, I'm still carrying all those wonderful people and places around in the scrapbook in my mind and, hopefully, I'll be adding a few more on this trip.
Anyway, I'm getting totally off track here, to use an obvious metaphor. Train travel never became popular in the US because it just didn't fit in well with our lifestyle. When we wanted to go somewhere we hopped on a plane since we wanted to be there, not use up our vacation times getting there. After all, it was only those Europeans with the gads of vacation days who could afford a leisurely train ride. Many Europeans, on the other hand, better understood that oftentimes the journey is the destination.
Jim Ferri
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