Why Brits have no idea where they're going ...

Scary stuff. I know that I'm lucky enough to have travelled to lots of different countries and that I'm insanely interested in different countries, their location, their culture, their people ... and other people have, well, other interests. But the stats I just read from a Laterooms.com survey are really scary. It was a survey of British people about their geographical knowledge of Europe, and some of the most frightening results include the following:

• 45% couldn't identify Switzerland on a map
• 19% didn't realise Britain is part of the European Union
• 11% didn't have a clue that Iceland was part of Europe (most thought it was in North America)
• 62% don't even bother to check a map after they book a holiday to somewhere in Europe
• And the winner of the worst known destination is Lithuania, because 81% of people failed to find it on a map.

I have a little bit of sympathy for the Lithuania error: I remember when I was on my way there I kept reciting "Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania" so I could remember how they fitted in from north to south. But almost half couldn't even figure out where Switzerland was ... and a fifth don't know they're in the EU? Call me a travel snob or a geography know-it-all or whatever, but I think it's pretty shocking.

For the record, I definitely don't want to pick on the Brits, because I've seen similarly scary surveys of other nationalities, but really ... they do live in Europe so it wouldn't hurt to have a quick glance at a map now and again.

Web pirouette: Pizzas, French fries and getting fit

It's been a few weeks since I last pirouetted you through a selection of my recent work around the web, but as usual, I haven't been slacking off! As well as blogging I've also been making a big effort to spend time revising my novel, so the letters on my keyboard are rapidly fading (really). Here's a sample of recent blogs and articles:

• At Vagabondish, I discovered that recreating illegal border crossings is a great tour idea, talked about the different bizarre situations you'll find if you get sick in a foreign country, discussed how proud I was when I ordered a pizza in Japanese and confessed my love for playing word games while traveling.
• Meanwhile at Jaunted, I discovered a brand new museum in Belgium that's all about chips (or French Belgian fries) and I've been excited about the build-up to Eurovision 2008 this coming week.
• On the HotelChatter site, the story that most impressed me was the Westin hotel chain installing Wii Fitness systems into their hotel gyms (we even longingly looked at a Wii today at the shops!).
• My rants at Travel-Rants have been about plans to make immigration in the US less stressful and about the overwhelming enthusiasm of the tourist board in Iceland.
  
• At Kathika, I've been busy getting the world to speak Australian English and reading another Frances Mayes book.
  

Same sky: Eating grapes in Japan

Over at the Nerd's Eye View blog, Pam's got an interesting post up about etiquette for travellers - and a very funny story about some Japanese visitors to her company in Austria, who were quite confused when all the employees started greeting each other with the word "Mahlzeit". Literally it means "meal time", and they commonly used it where I lived in southern Germany too, especially as a greeting in the middle of the day. The Japanese visitors in Pam's story heard this as "Mozart", which they thought was quite appropriate since they were in Salzburg, but more than a little strange!

Pam's current contest is about cultural misunderstandings, and I've had my fair share of them. My stomach will never forget the problem of counting in Slovakia, for example, where they hold up different fingers to me when counting, and I kept winding up with three hot dogs when I thought I'd ordered two.

Perhaps one of the funniest cultural clashes I remember was a really simple situation - probably because these are the times when you least expect some cultural clanger to happen. When I was living in Japan, the parents of one of my good friends invited me around to their house for dinner. It was a great meal of traditional Japanese foods, and then we all settled back to watch the video the parents had taken on their recent cruise in Europe. While we watched, there was a plate of grapes to nibble on for dessert.

After an hour or so of footage of the cruise ship, short trips ashore and more footage of the ship, my friend's mother switched the light back on and started to clean up. When she got to the plate of grapes in front of me - now nearly empty - she paused. She looked at me, looked around on top of the table, and even looked under the table. I had no idea what she was doing.

Eventually, she asked me where the grape skins were. The grape skins? I'd eaten them, of course, although I had noticed they were a bit tougher and chewier than the grapes back home. She explained that I should have peeled the grapes before eating them. Now that was something I'd never thought of. Luckily, we all laughed about it, but I was always wary of Japanese grapes after that.

Action in the land of travel blogging

All good things come in threes, right? (Perhaps bad things do too, but let's be optimistic). That's probably why there were three exciting bits of news in my travel blogging world this week:

1. SFO Media, which publishes both Jaunted and HotelChatter, making it my major online employer, has been bought by CondeNet who, among a million other things, are part of the company which publish the gorgeous Condé Nast Traveler magazine. Not sure what that'll mean for the future of us bloggers, yet, but so far, nothing bad. It might even be great!
2. One of my newer gigs, you might recall, is writing weekly for Travel-Rants in the UK, and this site just won a Travolution Award for being the best UK Travel Consumer blog.
3. And didn't you know ... Vagabondish got bought out by the Travel Channel ... except it was on 1 April =) No, the real #3 is that this week, for the very first time, someone in my "real world" actually referred to me as a blogger, and understood that I get paid real money for it that pays the mortgage. Having a job that nobody except my family really understands can get frustrating at times, so it was a real treat!
   

Same sky: Roman the Roman, or is he Bratislavan?

Remember my write-up on St Martin's Cathedral for the Nerd's Eye View micro travel writers' workshop? The very kind Angela Nickerson has now posted some helpful feedback on everyone's pieces and it was a useful exercise for all involved I think - thanks Angela and Pam!

Angela pointed out something which I often overlook these days - assumptions that readers make, and a lack of shared knowledge. Referring to a man I met in Bratislava, I wrote that "this cathedral is Roman’s cathedral" ... because to me, obviously Roman is a man's name. But perhaps five years ago, that wouldn't have been the first connotation for me, especially when discussing old buildings in Europe, and as Angela rightly pointed out, readers could be confused by this.

It opens up an interesting can of worms for me, a can containing a million misunderstandings that can arise because of different cultural bases and different experiences. Even between native speakers of English, there can be all kinds of misunderstandings; I still have trouble remembering that if my American stepfather says he "lucked out", then that's a good thing - Australians use it in the opposite way. Perhaps this means we have to read our writing with the "eyes of the world", trying to imagine how those from different backgrounds will understand something. That's a lifelong task in itself, but for me, interesting food for thought.

Web pirouette: Diseases, driving, and a new venture

How can a blogger get any work done with this pretty little girl is at your feet, asking for attention? Somehow I have still managed to get my usual weekly quota of posts out:

• At Jaunted, I wrote up the story of the guide book writer who got a nice amount of publicity for his new book by getting the story going that he had written a guide without visiting the country - now he's claiming his story was taken out of context, but I think that with an April 22 release date for his book, he probably encouraged the wrong context ...
• On the Vagabondish site I had a very interesting time researching the 10 Nastiest Travel Diseases (and the other dozen or so that didn't make the shortlist). Strangely, my biggest travel disease of chocolate addiction didn't feature in the research.
  
• At Travel-Rants I discussed the possibilities for a driving holiday all the way around the world, if that Bering Strait tunnel ever became reality.

I've also been taking my first baby steps into slightly-more-professional blogging for myself - rather than for other sites - by learning how to set up a Wordpress blog on my own domain. I've transferred my old Blogspot fiction blog to a new site, becomingafictionwriter.com, and although it's still got a few kinks that need ironing out, you're welcome to have a look around. Recent posts include a discussion of Australian online booksellers like Fishpond and some good news about the first chapter of my novel. Leave me a comment there so I know you've dropped by.

Bratislava's St Martin's Cathedral: A Nerd's Eye View challenge

Monday morning seems like a good time for a challenge, and here's one I found at the Nerd's Eye View blog: to tell a building's story in less than 200 words. Here's my attempt.


To most visitors to Bratislava, this is simply St Martin’s Cathedral, an attractive Romanesque church with Gothic and Baroque twists added over the centuries. Now on the edge of the Old Town, it was in the center before the Russians destroyed the Jewish section and built an ugly bridge through the middle, separating the cathedral from the hill leading to Bratislava Castle.

To me, this cathedral is Roman’s cathedral. An academic friend-of-a-friend with a passion for entertaining tourists with tales of bygone Bratislava, on the day I first met Roman he told me about the New Year bells. He said that during communist days when churches and cathedrals were technically off limits, a university friend of his appointed himself responsible for winding the clock of St Martin’s each day, to ensure it chimed every hour as expected.

One December, this friend took a skiing holiday and asked Roman to wind the clock. Half of Bratislava was out in the Old Town waiting for the midnight bells to chime in the New Year. Roman tried to wind the clock as midnight approached. Something broke. The bells chimed ten minutes earlier, and Bratislava entered the New Year ahead of time.

Newsflash: Travel writers can write about music, too!

This blog might usually be about travel writing, but now and again I head to a market that's not about hoping a jet to exotica or rambling a disused backpackers' trail. Recently I've been able to earn a crust writing in a completely different area - music.

I have an odd kind of relationship to music. Mostly, it's lyrics that excite me - after all, as my husband always tells me, I'm a "words girl". But in the right mood, I can listen to anything: heavy metal, German hip-hop, opera (you know that bit from the movie Philadelphia ... gets me every time), and I'm steadily building a real addiction to jazz.

In any case, a new website that needed writers to build start-up content intrigued me, and I've done some work over at JamsBio, a site with the interesting concept of combining sales of music (via iTunes or Amazon) with first person memories related to individual songs. You can read a bunch of my music memories here. It was a lot of fun, and nice to write about something different for a change.

Web pirouette: Cemeteries and supermarkets

What I've been talking about lately:

• Visiting cemeteries and supermarkets on your travels
  
• Remembering to smell, touch and listen when you travel
• The probability that the fantastic idea of tunnelling under the Bering Strait is on the backburner again
• Cats who want bottled water, which they won't be getting at Scandic Hotels anymore
• Advice I don't always follow, about staying fit while travelling
• Another plug for one of my all-time favourite travel books, Bill Bryson's tales of Australia
  
• The neverending saga of my first novel, which now has a better first chapter
• Our cats. I talk about them, they distract me while I'm trying to work, I talk about them some more.
  

South of Mandurah: Cape Bouvard Winery and the thrombolites

My home state of Western Australia really has a lot of hidden attractions to offer. This week my father took us to a small winery just south of his property, which itself is almost 20km south of the growing city of Mandurah. I'd been there once years and years ago, but I was surprised at just how impressed I was by the area. And there are two reasons for that.

One: the Cape Bouvard Winery. It's a fair way from the main wine growing regions of WA, but the buildings are quaint, the setting peaceful, the wine tasty and the food - just take a look at my delicious Cajun prawn salad!


Two: The thrombolites of Lake Clifton, a short stroll from the winery. Windy as hell when you walk out to see them, but fascinating, and the science behind these guys is that they're one of the earliest life forms on the planet. They are protected as part of the Yalgorup National Park and by pure good luck, we arrived at the best time of the year to see them (in March or April).

Same sky: Telling porky pies

Another quick entry for my list of "how amazing" intercultural translations ... in the Business English class I'm teaching, I suggested telling white lies as a possible strategy to use when negotiating. (Of course, that's the textbook's idea, not mine). I asked the class if anybody knew what a "white lie" was.

Berna, a Turkish student, looked at me for a minute, then answered, "In Turkish we tell pink lies. Maybe they're the same?"

Turns out they are, in fact, the same thing. We English speakers tell boring old white lies, but the Turkish jazz it up a bit with some pretty pink. Isn't that neat?

Web pirouette: Globe-trotting and saving money

Sorry gang, I'm still alive. And still writing, just not at the Ballerina. And still dreaming about more travels. From planning tips for a round-the-world trip to a fun article playing around with possible round-the-world itineraries, no corner of the globe has been left untouched this month.

In my own country, a new tree-top walk in Illawarra caught my attention and with March beginning, I naturally spared a thought for my favourite time in Japan, cherry blossom season. Further on the Japanese line but strangely enough in Mexico, I also reported on a Mexican-Japanese fusion restaurant which sounded really tasty.

I've just started doing some work for a British blog called Travel-Rants - with apologies to the Americans, it's nice to earn in a more stable currency - and one of my first posts was about the huge A380s starting regular service to Europe. And just to prove that I'm not entirely one-sided in my writing, I'm also doing some posts for a finance blog and here's one example: how to save money on your water bills. Just call me Ms Versatile.

Web pirouette: Link love and readers-in-residence

Isn't the internet a fascinating thing? In the last week or so I've had several articles up at Vagabondish, including How To Travel Independently For the First Time and Really Slow Travel: Walking Your Way Around the World. I love it when other sites decide these articles are worth linking to: for example, Go Green Travel Green highlighted my slow travel piece, and the independent travel one got picked up (and half translated) by a Spanish site, Diario del viajero, as well as one of my favourite travel sites, Gadling. And still at Vagabondish, the dark tourism series came to an end with The Great Dark Tourism Round-Up: Awards Time.

Elsewhere in the world of internet travel writing, I thoroughly enjoyed writing up a piece about a Reader-in-Residence, coming to the Andaz Hotel in London in April. Sure, it's an expensive hotel, but if you've got the cash, you can have the Reader tell you a bedtime story or recommend some new books for you. At Jaunted I've been wondering if the Blarney Stone's a fake and I'm starting up coverage on Eurovision 2008, my favourite song contest.

Web pirouette: Eat an Anzac biscuit before Doomsday

See this scene? Two cats eating? That means they are not jumping on to my notebook, chasing my typing fingers or trying to catch the cursor on the screen. When they're eating is about the only time I can get a decent amount of writing done these days. Somehow, despite these two black, furry distractions, I've managed to get a few articles done recently.

In the dark tourism series at Vagabondish - it finishes up next week - I've had to deal with a really delicate topic with Suicide Tourism: Landmark Deaths and Traveling to Die. In comparison, writing about Doomsday Tourism: Seeing It Before You Can't was a breeze.

Feeling peckish one day, I wrote up my favourite Anzac Biscuit Alternative Recipes and also had my mouth water when Glimpse published my piece on Edible Art: A Traditional Buddhist Meal.

Shortly after I'd joined the cats in the kitchen and eaten my fill, I got a yearning for a relaxing holiday after publishing Travel Facts for Rottnest Island. And I had an interesting time exploring the notion of fences that guide or interrupt our travel with The Traveling Fence: Over or Around, published at Been-Seen.