Category: Travel

After taking a hard look at my budget, my remaining travel plans, and some of the changes I’m thinking about making, I realized I’m going to have to cut back on my largest single expense for the next long while. Yes, no more pursuing platinum status through making those “few extra” trips over the next few months.

I’m not sure I know what to do with myself, not going away every six – eight weeks.

Scary.

Having watched CNN International’s broadcast channel while overseas, I’m even more appalled by the US version of the channel and the website. Just think of the total lack of “newsiness” there are with the following top stories on CNN.com right now:

• Driver plows through street festival at high speed


• Organizers G8 protest condemn violence


• Officials: Terror plot targeted JFK airport


• Castro stands, talks with Vietnamese official on TV


• SI.com: Cavs finish off Pistons, make first finals


• Report: Six militants killed in Somalia


• Larry Birkhead sues attorney in baby fight


• War front-and-center ahead of debates


• Agent’s good looks help net butterfly smuggler


• Only girl’s foot shows after oak falls on house


• Democracy stuns Polish man 19 years in coma


• Baseball manager rants, crawls, plays in dirt

Admittedly, when I imagine what is truly news-worthy, I rank stories by their potential impact from a regional, national and international level. A top story about a driver crashing in to a street festival is sad, but basically local news. What’s the impact, the larger importantance, of a car crash in D.C.?

The G8 protests, Castro’s TV appearance, a terror plot, the presidential debates, and militants killed in Somalia, all have a potential news-worthiness value, if the stories are given context and aren’t just the usual CNN dumbed-down smut product that is put out. Same thing is true for the Polish man who wakes from a coma, if the author of the article uses it to discuss the evolution of Eastern Europe from Communism to democracy and capitalism. Unfortunately, this kind of journalism seems to be far more than CNN, at least for their domestic audience, can handle.

Or take the G8 protests. What are these groups that became violent? What are their objectives, what goals do they have? What about the actual G8 summit? What discussions are taking place? What kind of outcomes are to be expected? What have been the objectives and participation in past summits? Have the desired results been realized from those summits? If so, why? If not, why not?

Unfortunately, the kind of news programming I’m looking for is becoming rarer, not more common. When John Stewart offers the most in-depth discussion on some of these topics, you know you’re SOL.

I found myself sitting on the flight from Amsterdam to Toronto with about 5 to 6 hours to kill, so I started up the video on demand system and browsed through the choices. Night at the Museum was not as bad as I expected, and provided a fun diversion. Moving on, I watched Rough, a Japanese love triangle-ish movie with a whole lot of plot potential that ended in a pretty conventional way. I did appreciate, however, that a live-action movie still used some of the tricks in regular Japanese TV and anime. Go figure.

And then there’s Bridge to Terabithia. I watched this movie adaptation of the book that I read easily 15 or so years ago. I actually hesitated before I watched the movie, knowing that the book had left me in a funk of its own after I read it all those years ago. And, yes, the movie was a fairly straightforward adaptation that tugged the exact same emotional strings the book did.

Exactly, I’m willing to admit, like that old mainstay the Fox and the Hound.

The tickets were a pain even before I left. Never, ever get paper tickets if you can avoid it. When I booked my trip back in October, at a phenomenal price of$255 round trip from YYZ-AMS-VIE-AMS-OTP-AMS-YYZ, I didn’t notice that I’d picked an Austrian Airlines flight that forced me to have a paper ticket. If I did, I might have reconsidered my flight choices.

In theory, this ticket was upgradeable with miles. In practice, paper tickets make simple things much harder. Like, three trips to the airport, a set of phone and e-mail conversations, and still having to again get the tickets reissued in Toronto right before the start of the trip complicated. But business class for an overnight flight does make everything better.

I’ll keep my thoughts on Vienna short. If you have an opportunity to spend a few days there, do it. It was a great, compact, historical city with architecture to die for and a certain charm and culture that easily matches Paris and London, only with lower prices. When the random street car conversations you overhear are discussions on the depth of various indie films playing at some theatre or other, you know what kind of place you’re in. And the Austrian countryside is pretty nice, as well, with some great biking opportunities.

Romania, on the other hand, was a whole other set of experiences that require some posting of their own.

The Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland will be closed again this coming Labor Day. Last year I was out in Califorinia over Labor Day weekend when it was closed, forcing me to spend over an hour in traffic attempting to go the six miles through San Francisco as I headed north of the city to a winery in Santa Rosa.

Now is the best time of year to be in Japan…