Travel

When I saw that the Mickey Tax¹ issue had been taken up by Atrios and Kos, I guessed that it wouldn’t be long before I started seeing some pushback. A former student of mine did some research a couple of years ago that suggests that Kos is the most widely read blog on the Hill, with a fair readership among Republicans (who want to see what’s coming down the pike) as well as Democrats, and I’d imagine that Markos’ fulminations got some attention in the right places. Sure enough, I got an email last night from a flack at the Travel Industry Association (the lobby group that’s been most heavily involved in pushing the Mickey Tax), offering to set me right on my various misconceptions about this Act. I replied that I would be happy to receive any proposed corrections/new information, but reserved the right to publish them on this blog. I haven’t gotten any response and don’t expect one, but will update this post if I’m wrong.

In the meantime, I’d like to take advantage of CT’s cross-national readership, and encourage those of you who live in visa-waiver countries to hassle your politicians, and write to your newspapers about the Mickey Tax. This, unlike the Iraqi translators appeal, is not a life or death issue, but it will lead to substantial amounts of money ($200 million) being transferred from tourists’ pockets to an outrageous boondoggle fund unless it gets stopped.

I particularly encourage you to use the terms ‘Mickey Tax’ or (Markos’s coinage) ‘Disney Tax’ in your communications. I imagine that the fervor of the Disney corporation for this particular rip-off would be dampened if incoming tourists to the US came to understand the political origins of the fee, and were able to draw the relevant conclusions about where to spend, or not to spend, their hardwon money once they had gotten in. The terms ‘Mickey Tax’ and ‘Disney Tax’ seem to me to draw these causal connections in a straightforward and useful way. Of course, Irish people in particular may think that the Mickey Tax is even more outrageous than it is, but that doesn’t necessarily seem to me to be a bad thing.

¹ Term a trademark of This Blog, although I’m grateful to Atrios for seeing that it made for a better title than throwaway aside.

A lot of people I know are heading to Budapest these days (whether for pure touristy reasons or for one of the many meetings being held there) so using the My Maps feature on Google Maps, I’ve compiled some annotated recommendations for visitors. These include pastry shops mostly visited by locals with desserts to die for. No, seriously, these are a must and visiting the city without going to some of these would be sad and wasteful.

I also include a pointer to a grocery store with the goal of finding the Hungarian snack Túró Rudi (details: check the dairy section for items that look like a candy bar in a red-dotted wrapper). I would say it’s the most missed item by Hungarians abroad. It’s basically lemony sweet farmer’s cheese coated in dark chocolate. Yum! Wikipedia conveniently has more info, not that words can possibly convey the experience. Some companies new to the country in the ‘90s have tried to create other versions (e.g., with fruit filling or milk chocolate coating), but I would rather not even acknowledge those as they’re ridiculous imitations. On the topic of grocery stores, someone recently complained that they couldn’t find any fruits and veggies in them. That’s because other than the gigantic supermarkets, these tend to be sold in separate venues.

I didn’t bother listing most of the traditional sights included in guide books, numerous Web sites and guides will point those out. I do highlight, however, an incredibly touching Holocaust memorial on the Danube (first link on my map). It’s relatively new and not something one would stumble upon by chance, yet definitely worth visiting and now you know where to find it.

You know when you wake up in the middle of the night, having dreamt of a great idea. And maybe you wake up on a plane, with your chin and a fair bit of drool on your chest, and, waking, you still think it’s a good idea. And then, the next day as you disembark you think to yourself, ‘wow, that’s a good idea’. You’re probably just jetlagged and waiting for your soul to catch up with you, as William Gibson would say.

Here it is; a transitional use of technology until those instantly downloading paper-like tablets intersect with the demand curve.

When you wake up on a plane after your pretend night’s sleep, and you’re eating the rubber omelette or the semi-defrosted muffin, you don’t want Internet connection and crumbs in your laptop (and the expectation that you’ll do work). What you really want is your morning paper.

In Brussels where there’s a big market of expats you can buy a locally printed version of your home newspaper. The publisher sends an electronic version of the day’s paper to a local printer and it gets delivered to the shops along with the national papers. It’s not on newspaper print, but it’s a more or less identical paper version of your daily comfort. It’s kind of an umbilical cord, and a good bit cheaper than the air-mailed version you get the next day.

Well, why not have this on planes? Stick one of those printers somewhere in the galley (where there’s loads of room…) and let passengers pay a premium to order their paper in advance and have it delivered with their rubbery breakfast. Then you get to read something a bit more timely than the in-flight magazine and get off the plane fully up to speed on the markets, international news and celebrity gossip. How cool would that be?

I first became aware of Dru because she was a member of the Bristol Flickr group, and I was looking to buy a camera. What better way of deciding than to look through other people’s photos, and see what the ones I liked were taken with? So there was Dru, a slightly mumsy, middle-aged woman with a young daughter and a Morris Traveller. In other words, extrapolating from the various signifiers, I’d formed an impression of what Dru must be like. Then I met her, at one of our monthly get-togethers, in the Royal Naval Volunteer. And then she spoke. “Bloodly hell!” I thought to myself, “you’re a bloke … or used to be.” A very quick update of my mental image of Dru took place.

It isn’t very often that people I know have their biography published. In fact, through not paying attention again, I’d failed to notice that Dru’s was coming out. Only when a friend send me a link to the Guardian , with the question “Is this Flickr Dru?” did I catch on. Well, Becoming Drusilla isn’t so much a biography as the record of a friendship, and what happens to it when one of the parties announces their desire to change sex.
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So that way, you can do something about this:

The European Commision has opened the door for mobile phones on planes, introducing measures to harmonize the technical and licensing requirements for mobiles services in the sky. This means that 90 percent of European air passengers can remain contactable during flights, according to the Commission. … As a result of the introduction of the measures by the Commission, local regulators will be able to hand out licenses to make services a reality. One regulatory decision for all of Europe was required for this new service to come into being, according to Viviane Reding, the European Union Telecommunications Commissioner. “In-flight mobile phone services can be a very interesting new service especially for those business travelers who need to be ready to communicate wherever they are,” she said in a statement.

As Kevin Drum remarked recently in connection with the possibility of acquiring the power to remain invisible, the question is not so much whether you would like to be able to do this, but whether you’d be happy if everyone else could do it, too. Looking forward, I wonder whether, in a decade or so, people who are irritated by endless yakking on a long flight will be a robust majority, or whether their disgust will seem more in line with Leon Kass and his intense disapproval of people who eat ice-cream in public.

Usually, when I get invitations for talks or interviews with the press, the focus is my research. Last week, however, in an interesting twist, I got an email from the host of a Canadian radio show asking me to chat with her about my experiences with taking pictures of cheese labels.:) I was amused and was happy to talk. The interview is available here. I’m glad Spark contacted me, because I didn’t know about the show, but am now happy to have it in my RSS feed reader. Spark taught me about speedcabling, something I’ll have to try in my lab one of these days.

As a mini-update, right now I’m on my way to the University of Minnesota to speak in the seminar series of their Institute for Advanced Study about my research. It’s a campus-wide talk with people expected in the audience from all sorts of departments, which should be fun. It’ll also be nice to catch up with some prominent sociology bloggers.

A propos of nothing, I am blogging as I’m boarding the plane to Minneapolis. The flight attendant said I was working too hard (boarding with my laptop open), but who said I was working? I think it’s interesting that even in the age of YouTube, etc. laptops are primarily associated with work.

People regularly ask me advice on what to do when they visit London, so I thought, since a bunch of you are probably visiting in the coming year, that I’d put my advice up for general consumption. It falls into two categories; places to visit, and general “being a tourist” advice. It all assumes that people have limited budgets. If you don’t have a limited budget, stay at the Savoy, ignore most of what follows, and really enjoy yourself. Please feel free to disagree (anyone willing to defend MT?) and to add your own advice.

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I was in Trier, Germany last week, famous for.. among other things, being the birth place of Marx.

I found the store filled with Marx merchandise amusing:

The “opium of the people” quote was only available on a magnet in German, not in English (other quotes were available in English), I’m assuming a conscious choice based on potential interest.

I couldn’t resist getting a copy of the poster that has the entire Communist Manifesto written on it with an image of Marx and Engels coming through from the text thanks to manipulation of the formatting.

I also got a postcard with a cartoon of Marx and the following quote: “Tut mir leid Jungs! War halt nur so ‘ne Idee for mir…”, which Babelfish completely butchers in its translation so I’ll try, but feel free to correct me: “Sorry kids! ‘Twas just an idea I had.”

Boarding a plane to Budapest later in the day added a twist to all this for me. While I can see friends and colleagues in the U.S. understanding why I would’ve picked up those items, I don’t think too many people in the town where I grew up would get why I’d want anything with Marx on my walls.

From the Dept of People Who Will Be First Against The Wall When The Revolution Comes: the recurring case of business travelers who think they are being so frequent flyer sharp by using the Disabled/Family restroom instead of the regular one. Example: me this afternoon in O’Hare, near the H gates, standing for several minutes with my increasingly upset three year old daughter outside the door marked with a Parent & Child icon and labeled “Family and Assisted Care Restroom.” Spacious restrooms for unaccompanied men and women are provided on either side. O’Hare even has self-cleaning toilet seats that extrude a fresh plastic cover after every use. Eventually, and inevitably, Mr Cheap Big & Tall Warehouse Suit emerges with his rolly bag. He looks down at me. “Hey mate,” I say, “Did you just flush your kid away in there? Or your wheelchair maybe?” He goggles. I go in.

As norm enforcement this was probably ineffective, not least because the guy was five or six inches taller than me and weighted about 280lbs. He didn’t look as though he was inclined to take orders from anyone, except maybe his regional widget distribution manager. But then again there can be a payoff in satisfaction to even ineffective sanctioning.

Recently in Geneva, I was filling out this visitor card in a hotel. Notice anything peculiar?

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Here are the things most people would happily pay for at an international transit airport: – a shower – clean underwear (for those of us who habitually forget to pack it) – daylight – an exercise facility to help with the jetlag and minimise DVT – nutritious but not too heavy food – a nap, lying flat, somewhere quiet.

And here’s what is generally available: – Gucci – Chanel – l’Occitane – Bodyshop – Lacoste – Nike – a few plastic seats – McDonalds, dougnuts, and the local variety of fried, sugary dross to add a sugar hangover to your jetlag.

Sometimes there’s a shower, and I’ve even heard of napping capsules – though never in the terminal I’m in. But generally, the big transit airports totally mismatch the actual desires of travellers, and instead lay on miles of the same over-priced globalised tat (Swarovski, anyone?) for the miserable and jetlagged to wander about in.

Is the idea that we’ll buy a Cartier watch because we’re so tired and addled? Or are ‘we’ such wealthy and time-poor businessmen that we’ll buy any shiny expensive thing we see for our neglected wives and mistresses? At Bangkok airport recently, most of the travellers were wearing tracksuits and carrying babies. Chanel, Prada and the rest of them were completely empty. Though at least there are showers and a spa in that airport. But all I wanted to buy was clean knickers and a mobile phone – and the result was 2-nil to the airport. At least I didn’t succumb to those silk and wool scarves they have in every airport in the world, but that only French women wear.

So why the complete mismatch of trapped and exhausted consumers to luxury goods? Surely the airports have woken up to the fact that travelling is mass market. Or are travellers such a captive market that airports can completely ignore what they actually want…?