EUROQUEST SideTracks

Let us change scenery altogether this time and move to my chosen home in the Desert Southwest and focus on one of the most beautiful desert landscapes in the area - the so-called East Mojave National Preserve. When traveling between Las Vegas, Nevada and Los Angeles, California, most motorists will opt for the fastest route along Interstate 15 via Primm, Nevada, then Baker and Barstow, California. There is, however, a far more scenic route along the former Route 66, leaving the Interstate just past the Californian border and exiting into the East Mojave National Preserve at CIMA. The latter is nothing more than a deserted ghost town in the middle of the desert, but surrounded by beautiful fields of Joshua Tree cacti along the highway. The little ghost town itself looks like something right out of a western movie - it even has a semi-deserted store with a post office boasting the sign "CIMA CALIFORNIA, 92323" in the front. The highway then follows along the railroad tr...

Our recent best and worst of 2009 by no means wanted to suggest a hierarchy of places or that there are no others that could offer similar experiences. In fact, there are many more in our area of travel, i.e. Central and Eastern Europe- many that can be discovered as part of a tour with guests - and many that warrant going to on one's own to infuse travel with culture and a taste of the local. In the following blog posts I would like to look at several such places. It is an open brainstorming effort and again is not meant to be conclusive. Oberschleissheim Palace, Bavaria I can't even count how many times I have had to go to the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site outside Munich in recent years. Its educational merit notwithstanding, it often resembles a bit of death camp tourism between shopping in Munich and is overrun with tourists and school groups alike. Although not as personally uprooting as Auschwitz or the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., the Dachau memor...

When touring Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, it is possible to still find places unspoilt by mass tourism - even along standard itineraries in some of our most popular areas of touring. These places may or may not be visited as part of a "lagniappe"- an unexpected surprise extra treat- during a day of touring, but are certain to facilitate rethinking about Self, Other and the role of Culture in Travel.  They may also, for instance, allow a quieter, unspoilt cultural experience or simply add insights on the host culture beyond standard tour programs or guide books. The following list is by far not complete, but includes some of what I believe are nicer, subtler and more meaningful ways to get to know, experience and savor the Cultural Other. 10. Regensburg, Germany What a delight of a historic old town with gorgeous original Renaissance buildings and bustling to its own pace with university students and locals. Although it is nicely located on the Prague to Mun...

Culture in Travel - almost nowhere else does it seem more relevant than in our wonderful world of touring - where the very purpose is to mediate, educate, entertain and bring a culture, language, way of being, thinking, feeling closer to the Other. Sadly, it is precisely in this very same environment that we also encounter the greatest stumbling blocks to such a new fresh way of seeing life, i.e., places and their management that could care less about culture in travel and that thrive on the profit-making machinery of mass-tourism. Some of these places routinely make us cringe - some more than others - and they are usually the ones totally spoilt by success and overrun with visitors 24/7. Like a top model basking in the glow of unceasing attention, success and demand, they turn arrogant, inhuman, unaccomodating and downgrade the entire travel experience to a hodgepodge of bland stereotypical experiences. In my most common area of travel- Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe-...