Globe Corner Blogs

Classic Switzerland--photo by Kate

Notes from Zürich:

I have one serious recommendation for visitors to Zürich: eat as much chocolate as you can. Since waking up to a Toblerone on the empty seat next to me on the airplane, to the Swiss chocolate ice cream I just had at the Mövenpick, to the shared café mocha from this afternoon, every taste has been simply amazing. Take every opportunity you have to eat this stuff. They really know what they are doing here in Switzerland.

Also recommended: checking out the Freitag flagship store, located just past the hipster Züri-West neighborhood. Made of stacked shipping containers to create a 7-story building, after browsing their awesome bags, you can climb up to the rooftop. Enjoy a great view of Zürich and an even better glimpse of the Alps through the binoculars provided.

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Cartagena--photo by Harriet

We arrived in Cartageña to welcome sun and humidity. The 5-10 minute stroll along the harbor, from our hotel in the Getsemaní district to the entrance to the walled city, was glorious even during the mid-day heat. The walled city’s many plazas, varied retail districts, cobblestone streets, and beautifully maintained or restored buildings were breathtaking. It was reassuring to be in a historic port–a cultural travel destination that still somehow retains a sense of everyday life. We wandered down narrow streets, gazing at colorful buildings, pausing in plazas (many with fountains) to take in cafes, check our map, and plan our next route to a museum or church. Continue Reading »

The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie -- by Malu Halasa & Rana Salam

It is sunny and almost warm outside, and I have decided that it is time to come out of winter hibernation mode.  I am also adjusting to a new pair of glasses and here all the far-sighted readers out there will feel for me, because the world became so wobbly and curvy that I feel like Alice in Wonderland. I cannot even read anything while my brain is learning to automatically turn curves into straight lines. But even this temporary impairment cannot dim my curiosity, so here I come with a list of hidden eye candy.

These are books that are not meant to be read, they are meant to be adored and looked through many times. I am writing about alternative, strange and very curious fashion photography book gems packed between our guides and maps. Tweaking a well-known expression, I would say that nothing tells you more about a country than it’s street food and street fashion.

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The Ends of the Earth -by Elizabeth Kolbert

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts currently has an exhibit entitled To The Ends Of the Earth, Painting and the Polar Landscape. It features over 50 paintings and photographs by artists who journeyed to the Arctic and Antarctica during the 19th and 20th centuries. I have always wanted to see the Aurora-Borealis, and even have traveled to Iceland five times in an attempt to see the phenomena. Unfortunately, I have never seen it due to adverse weather situations. After viewing the slide show on the Museum’s website, I figure that this will be a sure-fire way to finally see the Aurora-Borealis…or at least of painting of it! The exhibit is running through the first of March, so make sure to trek through the ice and snow to catch it before the warm spring months come and take it away.

Birdscapes -by Miyoko Chu

Past a certain age, pop-up books no longer seem like an appropriate style of book to have prominently displayed on the bookshelf or laying out on the coffee table. Most would probably choose a leather-bound world atlas or a lovely photography book of, say, Paris, over any pop-up book. After all, pop-up books are always for kids, right? Well, as you may have guessed, there are adult-friendly pop-up books too! And we have two of them: Birdscapes, A Pop-Up Celebration of Bird Songs in Stereo Sound and Modern Architecture Pop-Up.

These two books are carefully designed and crafted by “paper engineers” (yes, that is the proper title for pop-up artists) whose attention to detail proves that pop-ups can be truly complex and artistic.

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I will admit that I do have a soft spot for picture books. Those are little museums for me: I love getting lost in images, the mesmerizing details, in “reading” face expressions, and in thinking through every story caught on camera. Yet at the same time I am incredibly picky when it actually comes to choosing a particular book and taking it home. So it goes — I only want to own those that will keep that grip on me for a long, long time. There aren’t very many of such books, but it only makes my hunt for those gems more exciting.

Now I think I am about to give in and get a new one. Reuter’s Our World Now caught my eye the very moment it appeared in the store, and I still can’t put it out of my mind. At first glance it’s just another world-in-a-year-of-pictures book, but do open it and see for yourself that it’s a real treasure! Every single shot, from oil-covered shores to fashion shows, from subway scenes to soccer matches snaps perfect. Politicians triumph over movie stars in displaying emotions and every single face of a war survivor makes you stop and start thinking…

Yet another wonderful book to get. And knowing that such things don’t last long on a shelf, I better go get myself a copy right now.

Explorer's Guide Cape Cod

Most of my trips to Provincetown seem to revolve around the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. I can usually find $5 parking nearby, it’s good for orienting myself, and I always erroneously think that a public bathroom is located in the museum.

This time, however, I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at it. One of my friends spends the summers performing there and I went down to see his show at the Gifford House. While we were enjoying cocktails on the veranda during one of his breaks he mentioned the “magic of the monument.”

Apparently if you look at the tower at just the right angle, it looks like Donald Duck. Everyone except for me seemed to see Donald’s likeness right away. Even after a few more cocktails, squinting really hard, and having numerous visiting Canadians try to point it out to me, I never saw it. I just saw a really tall tower — the tallest all-granite monument in the entire U.S. at 252 feet and 7.5 inches to be exact, according to An Explorer’s Guide to Cape Cod. Continue Reading »

While perusing the World Travel section of our store, as I so often do in the last, quiet moments of any given work day, I was pleasantly surprised when my eyes settled upon Alain de Botton’s most recent nonfiction book, The Architecture of Happiness. I was instantly brought back to the Christmas morning two years ago when I received this book from my mother. I remember reading this thoughtful and well-illustrated book for the remainder of that break, stacking it on my bookshelf, and unhappily returning to the drudgery of mandatory college reading lists. Lucky for me, the revamped, paperback edition caught my eye and I had the enjoyable experience of rereading my favorite excerpts in recent days. In one such part, de Botton directly correlates the style of architecture one favors to the lifestyle one wishes to achieve and the morals one holds. If you are suspicious of this claim, read chapter three.

At times reading like a philosophy text, at others like an art history coursebook, and still at others reading like an intimate travel diary, de Botton works through his own musings on the importance of architecture while forcing readers to reflect on the role of architecture, both good and bad, on their daily lives. Thanks to de Botton’s accessible yet intellectual narrative style, this book can serve as an introduction to architectural theory for those unfamiliar with the subject, or as a means of reinvestingating and reimagining the eternal question, as stated by de Botton himself: what makes a great building?