Tag: travel

Spain: Whispers from the Past

The playwright Federico Garcia Lorca once wrote that in Spain, “the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country.” He may be right.

How Columbus’s Winter in Iceland Helped Him Get to America

It is a well-known oral tradition around the Olafsvik-Rif-Hellissandur maritime region that Columbus visited Iceland and stayed at the farm at Ingjaldsholl during the winter of 1477 to 1478, likely arriving sometime in the early autumn and leaving in late spring.

EU Border Agency Introduces New Surveillance System

Frontex says its new system will “centralize and store information on external borders crossings, including the non-EU traveller’s name, travel document, biometric data . . . and the date, time and place of entry or exit, in full respect of fundamental rights and data protection.”

A Postcard from Slovenia

Pre-pandemic, I flew at least one long-haul flight a month and regularly clocked 150,000 air miles annually for the previous twenty years. It was novel for my wife to see me ‘in a flap’ over simple things like checking in online and fretting over the contents of my bags.

A Middle Eastern Journey

We can now recognize a clash of two opposing views, indeed two clashing interpretations of reality: that of the local Syrians and that of the Western media.

Taxi Cab Reflections

Mayor Anne Hidalgois currently engaged on a campaign to save the planet by making the streets of Paris hideous and increasingly unbearable.