For months, I've been itching to see someplace new. Six months ago, I returned to my small southern town in the United States after spending six months in Madrid, Spain. Before this, I had barely traveled, especially not outside the country. While abroad exploring different foods, different people, and different ways, I caught a bug: the travel bug.
We walked up the road on the mountain and found a path that jutted into the shade, continuing upward. My stomach rolled in pain, and the sweat stained my shirt as my bag grew heavier. How much longer, we asked the guide. Only a few more miles, he replied, smiling. I swallowed my groan and looked at my friend Joe, who did the same.
Writing about this place and the experience it gave me feels almost wrong. Though, again, I feel the paradoxical urge, as many writers do, to share my experience.
The Roman Empire was a vast, polytheistic, fascinating civilization. Throughout the eternal city, we recognized and worshiped multiple gods and goddesses. Although the monotheistic religion of Judaism thrived throughout the empire—a religion that eventually gave rise to Christianity and Islam—the original Romans honored multiple deities. We truly believed that these gods and goddesses served a role in founding our civilization. Most importantly, we also believed that these gods and goddesses helped shape our daily lives.
Female pilgrims tell of terrifying aggression, the lingering effects and their belief that their cases are far from isolated
It was on the outskirts of the northern Spanish town of Mieres, as she raced past colourful houses built of stone and wood-framed windows, that Sara Dhooma wrestled with the possibility that she might die.
Sexual aggression said to be ‘endemic’ on route through Spain, Portugal and France with solo female pilgrims at risk
Ashifa Kassam and Mabel Banfield-Nwachi
Lone female pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago have spoken of being subjected to “terrifying” sexual harassment in near-deserted areas of rural Spain, Portugal and France.
| The Head of Franz Kafka, at Prague’s Quadrio shopping mall. |
A hundred years after his death, the author’s presence is as strong as ever in the Czech capital – from his childhood homes and the literary cafes he frequented to the remarkable buildings immortalised in his work
Paul Sullivan
Monday 3 June 2024
It’s a boiling summer’s day in Prague and I’m staring into the austere face of Franz Kafka. Not the real Kafka, of course – he died exactly a century ago, which is why I’m here – but a cast-iron plaque on the wall of his birthplace. The house, a replica as it turns out, sits pretty much on Old Town Square, which as usual is thronged with tourists snapping pics of its fairytale architecture, sipping drinks on terraces and gawking at its 15th-century astronomical clock. It’s impossible to imagine Kafka – 6ft tall and skinny, with dark, intense eyes – in this vibrant, carefree milieu. But then the Prague that Kafka was born into, in 1883 – the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire – was a very different city. And Kafka himself, alienated both as a Jew and a minority German speaker, had a sensitive imagination that interpreted the city’s narrow, winding streets as claustrophobic and its looming spires as threatening.
The symbol of Lisbon, romanticism aside, is the tuk-tuk. There are those with tigers on the roof, with plastic floral decoration, painted bubblegum pink, or disguised as a streetcar: any element that helps to stand out among the tide of tricycles ready to show thousands of tourists the five, 10, 15 or 20 things they should not miss in the Portuguese capital. The streetcar dominates on postcards and magnets, but the tuk-tuk has taken over the streets. When the two meet on the steep, narrow streets that climb up to the castle of São Jorge, historic collisions sometimes occur. The streetcars are rigid transports, incapable of deviating a millimeter from their route, while the tuk-tuks go at a brisk pace, often flouting traffic regulations to facilitate a good photograph and giving their passengers that frivolous, holiday-like feeling that they are in a carefree republic where everyone does what he or she wants. And so, without realizing it,Lisbon has joined the club of charismatic cities that now only make visitors happy.
In a far cry from the isolationist Samurai era, the Land of the Rising Sun has become a victim of its own success when it comes to receiving visitors. A destination that was once considered off the map for the majority of tourists due to its remoteness and the language barrier, Japan has managed to multiply its tourist figures in 2023, making a quantum leap from three to 25 million tourists compared to 2022, according to data from the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO). And this tourist tsunami is expected to become even more overwhelming in 2024: the country has already welcomed around 12 million visitors and expects this figure to reach 33 million by December, surpassing 2019′s record of 32 million.
‘No holiday has attained this level of perfection’: authors on their favourite fictional escapes
From Anita Brookner’s wistful sojourn in France to Elizabeth Jane Howard’s family stay by the sea, Geoff Dyer, Lissa Evans, Joe Dunthorne and more pick the most memorable fictional breaks
Paul Murray on a family holiday that threw up existential questions
I had the pleasure of gorging, earlier this year, on Anita Brookner’s first nine novels, one after the other. A summer holiday for the typical Brooknerian heroine means one of two things: not having one and languishing in a mansion block in London, simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the return of a few friends who will tell her what she’s missed out on; or going away alone and coming home early because it proves unendurable. In her first novel, A Start in Life, Ruth, a Balzac scholar, has a life-affirming romantic holiday planned. Pinning all her expectations on what will happen, she travels to France, each day awaiting the call from her on-off lover confirming the date of his arrival. (It should be added that any attractiveness Brookner’s blokes once possessed – by their blazers shall ye know them! – has since faded from the spectrum of plausible desire.)