Armchair Traveller – serie

In 2006, "Time magazine" listed the King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuk, as one of the 100 'leaders and revolutionaries' who are changing our world today. Yet it was only in the 1960s that the first road linking "The Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon" with India was opened, and since 1974 only a strictly limited number of tourists have been allowed to visit each year. Martin Uitz, a renowned expert on Bhutan, describes how the Bhutanese, in pursuit of the principle of 'Gross National Happiness', are carefully moving towards a more modern future, including a constitution and democracy, whilst preserving their traditional society and attempting to conserve the environment. Uitz made many fascinating discoveries in this enigmatic Kingdom. He was able to explain why the only traffic light was taken out of service, why six men are not allowed to go on a journey together, and what the subtle eroticism of a traditional hot-stone bath is all about. Along the way he also discovered that the Bhutanese hills are more alive with Edelweiss than the hills around his native Salzburg.

Geisthovel aims at discovering which countryside or rather the stories about it might have served as an inspiration for Homer. He gives a detailed and lively description of the individual steps of the "Odyssey", starting in troy and finishing in Ithaca. That way he includes the countries of Turkey, Tunisia, Malta, Italy and of course Greece.

It's time we got to know a little more about the Chinese. Did you know they don't eat soup, they drink it? That their surnames come before their first names? That their good sense is to be found not in their heads but in their hearts? Or that white is their colour of mourning? This guide to avoiding the numerous pitfalls of Chinese etiquette is both amusing and informative. The writer and journalist Kai Strittmatter lived and worked in China for ten years. This amusing, affectionate and perceptive book provides a fascinating guide to this lively, sociable and friendly people and their complex and often contradictory society. As the author says: 'Be prepared for everything when you come to Beijing. It really is unbelievable what can happen here'. The new material in this edition takes a critical look at the challenges posed by this, the next global superpower.

Alex Capus follows every step of Robert Louis Stevenson's last years, studying every clue left behind by the Scottish writer and reaching his own conclusion about the most dramatic turn in Stevenson's life: his decision to settle in Samoa, where the climate was poison for his already diseased lungs. When he arrived there in 1889, neither Stevenson nor his family particularly liked the Pacific island and wanted to stay for only a few days. Yet soon afterwards he changed his mind and, intriguingly, spent what little remained of his savings on a plot of land and began living there on a meagre income. Before long Stevenson set about building an opulent villa and lived out the rest of his days in splendour. What had happened? Capus asserts that Stevenson not only wrote the world-famous novel "Treasure Island" here but searched for the treasure himself and furthermore found it towards the end of his life, on a little island he could see from the peak of the mountain in Samoa where he settled.

Following in the footsteps of John Steinbeck, Cacucci travels through endless expanses of desert, salt mountains and rows of cacti with thorns so sharp that they can impale thirsty birds... Written with humour and heart, this is an insight into an ecosystem under threat and he describes the landscape and its inhabitants with compassion and respect.

Lars Gustafsson and Agneta Blomqvist have written a personal guide to their Swedish homeland. Setting off from the south their journey leads them all the way up to Norrland, from the farms of Scania to the Laponian area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But it is the idyllic fjord in Bohuslan, in the Vastmanland region, as well as Lake Malar and Stockholm that they call home. Alive with their varied interests and entertaining suggestions for excursions - from journeys across the forests and moors to collect berries and mushrooms, encountering the odd elk or wolf along the way, to visits to the graves of Kurt Tucholsky and Strindberg, Smile of a Midsummer Night is knowledgeable, loving and poetic. A must-have for all fans of Sweden.

Combining history and travel narrative, Nicholas Woodsworth journeys around the eastern edge of the Mediterranean, the sea which gave birth to Western civilisation. This sea, he says, should not be seen as an empty space surrounded by Europe, Asia and Africa, but as a continent in its own right, a place from whose coastlines people look, not outwards to distant countries or that capitals but inwards across the water to each other. The Mediterranean has its own culture, its own life, its own way of being. Setting out from Alexandria, in a journey marked by lively and unpredictable encounters, Woodsworth discovershidden corners of Venice, before arriving at Istanbul, where he installs himself in a former Benedictine monastery. In all these places he finds traces of a vibrant and cosmopolitan heritage, and asks what these cities and their inhabitants owe to the sea.

Ten years ago journalist Jens Muhling met Juri, a Russian television producer whose job it was to sell stories to TV stations in Germany but who always maintained that 'The true stories are more unbelievable than anything I could invent.' Ever since, Jens Muhling has been travelling through Russia in search of stories that appear too unbelievable to be true: a hermit from the Taiga who only recently found out that there was a world beyond the woods, a priest who ventures into the exclusion zone around Chernobyl to preach to those that stubbornly remain there, and many more. Jens Muhling shows us a country whose customs, contradictions, absurdities and attractions are still largely unknown beyond its borders.

Starting with a wild taxi ride into town from Ataturk airport, Tillinghast takes his readers on a voyage of discovery through the storied city of Istanbul, known in Byzantine times as the 'Queen of Cities' and to the Ottoman Turks as the 'Abode of Felicity'. As comfortable talking about the distinctive and delicious Turkish cuisine as he is about Byzantine mosaics, dervish ceremonies, Iznik ceramics, Anatolian carpets, and the imperial mosques, Tillinghast illuminates Istanbul's great buildings with stories that bring Ottoman and Byzantine history to life and is adept at discovering both what the city remembers and what it chooses to forget. Easily overlooked mosaics in the church of Hagia Sophia yield stories of a Byzantine emperor who died playing polo while drunk and an empress with several husbands. From an obscure gravestone, the author brings to life the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, when the Doge of Venice, though over ninety and practically blind, led the assault on the city.

Whether it is in Madrid's cafe s or in Barcelona's fish markets, van den Brinks takes you on a trip through Spain where tasting and smelling are the key occupations. You will see the shop windows in Madrid displaying pig's trotters, the famous Serrano ham, or typical Spanish sweet cakes. You will taste crispy pig's ears but also a rich chickpeas soup. You will smell the strong coffee and the damping tortilla when breakfasting out of doors. With historical background and personal memories and associations van den Brink put down a lively description of Spain, its culture and traditions both in the city and the countryside. This story focuses on enjoying various Spanish dishes in both exquisite restaurants and more commonplace settings.

Every year, thousands of people make the pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, honouring a centuries-old Christian tradition by walking the Way of St James. The Road to Santiago is one man’s incredible story of walking almost a thousand miles to experience it for himself. Introducing us to the overwhelming natural beauty encountered along the way. René Freund shares his experience of reaching his physical and psychological limits during this most arduous of spiritual journeys. As he reaches the edge of the European continent – thought to be the end of the world by pilgrims of former times – he learns that the old pilgrim’s saying is true: the journey does not end in Santiago, there it begins.

While much of the Middle East is now engulfed in conflict and repression, Morocco remains a curious anomaly: peaceful and open to the West, it has provided refuge for artists and writers for generations, and it remains an exotic destination for many curious travelers. The country has been influenced by an incredible variety of peoples Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Berbers, Muslims, Jews, and most of Europe s colonizers have played a role and modern Moroccan society is no less rich and varied. In "Morocco," Walter M. Weiss brings extensive knowledge of the region to bear as he travels the breadth and depth of the country s social and geographical contrasts. Berber villagers of the mountains are for the most part still illiterate and consider their king to be divinely chosen, while businessmen in Casablanca s towering offices dream of closer ties to the European Union. Weiss visits the settings of modern legends, such as Tangier, as well as the two medieval "centres Fes" and "Meknes," and sees earthen "kasbahs" and Marrakech s bazaar.On the way, he meets acrobats, Sufi musicians, pilgrims, craftsmen, beatniks, rabbis, and Berber farmers a kaleidoscope of variety and cultural influence."

A region steeped in fable and myth, Provence is a cultural crossroads of European history. A source of inspiration to artists, poets, and troubadours, it is now an enviable refuge for the wealthy and fashionable. Nicholas Woodsworth, who was born in Ottawa, Canada, married into a Provencal family and has lived in the region for decades. Lovingly recounting vivid details of life in Provence, he provides here a welcome antidote to the typical rose-tinted, romantic view of it being a perennially sunny destination for tourists. The true Provencaux have always lived a hard life close to the land and the rhythms of the seasons. And it is in the revelation and understanding of these lives, of the Provencal people, that the truths of the region are to be found. As much a study of Provencal culture and history as a memoir and travel book, this is a deep and soulful investigation into a way of life that remains very distinct from that of the rest of France."

Singer Nicholas Clapton first visited Budapest to record a recently discovered mass by an almost unknown eighteenth-century Hungarian composer. There, he discovered a striking sense of otherness in spite of Hungary s central geographical and cultural position within Europe. And with that, a deep passion for the city was born. Budapest offers an engaging and affectionate look at this beautiful capital from the perspective of a musician who lived and worked there for many years. With rich musical traditions, both classical and folk, and possessing a language like almost no other, Hungary is in the process of abandoning the trappings of its communist past while attempting to preserve its culture from creeping globalization. Clapton delights in the fact that certain old-fashioned attitudes of courtesy, at times stemming from the very structures of the Magyar tongue, are still deeply ingrained in Hungarian society. At the same time, despite its association with world-famous composers such as Bartok, Liszt, and Kodaly, music is far from an activity enjoyed only by the elite.Including plenty of tips on food, drink, and sites of interest, Budapest describes the capital in uniquely melodic terms and will delight lovers of travel and music alike."

Ernest Hemingway is most often associated with Spain, Cuba, and Florida, but Italy was equally important in his life and work. This book, the first on the subject, explores Hemingway s visits throughout his life to such places as Sicily, Genoa, Rapallo, Cortina, and Venice. Richard Owen describes how Hemingway first visited Italy during World War I, an experience that set the scene for A Farewell to Arms. The writer then returned after World War II, where he would find inspiration for Across the River and into the Trees. When Men without Women was published, some reviewers declared Hemingway to be at heart a reporter preoccupied with bullfighters, soldiers, prostitutes, and hard drinkers, but their claims failed to note that he also wrote sensitively and passionately about love and loss against an Italian backdrop. Owen highlights the significance of Italy in the writer s life. On the night he shot himself in July 1961, for example, Hemingway sang a song he had once learned in Cortina d Ampezzo. Hemingway returned to Italy again and again, and the places he visited or used as inspiration for his work are many.At the same time, the inspiration goes both ways: Owen describes how the fifteenth century villa Ca Erizzo at Bassano del Grappa, where the American Red Cross ambulances were stationed, is now a museum devoted to the writer and World War I.Showing how the Italian landscape, from the Venetian lagoon to the Dolomites and beyond, deeply affected one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Hemingway in Italy demonstrates that this country belongs alongside Spain as a key influence on his writing and why the Italian themselves took Hemingway and his writing to heart. "

The town of Foligno in Umbria lies in the geographical centre of Italy and for generations local patriotism has it as ‘lu centru de lu munnu’, the centre of the world. But centrality has not necessarily conferred powerhouse status. On the contrary, Umbria’s centrality is more that of the hole in the middle of the whirlpool; the world swirls around it but inside there is a calm.History might have stormed through Umbria’s valleys bringing great turbulence and creativity, but the ancient ways have somehow remained. Even the modern world has failed to lever Umbria from its time warp and this slow pace of life has, in our feverish times, become an asset.Patricia Clough came to Umbria as an outsider those like her, who flip like fish out of the busy world and land in this tranquil place, think it a kind of heaven. But as she explains in this enchanting book, there is so much more to Umbria than its fertile valleys, its medieval hilltop towns and its ancient churches. The Umbria she describes may no longer be remote, but it remains a complex, enticing place.

Written in the tradition of the rihla – one of the oldest genres of classical Arabic literature – Mumbai to Mecca is a personal, reflective and enlightening description of the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam.Donning the ihram, the traditional garb of the pilgrim Tojanow joined hundreds of thousands of Muslims who each year make the pilgrimage, the greatest demonstration of the Muslim faith. In three short weeks he experienced a tradition dating back over a thousand years.

The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often seen as the quintessential eighteenth-century tourist, though with the exception of a trip to Italy he hardly left his homeland. Compared to several of his peripatetic contemporaries, he took few actual journeys, and the list of European cities in which he never set foot is quite long. He never saw Vienna, Paris, or London, for example, and he only once visited Berlin. During the last thirty years of his life he was essentially a homebound writer, but his intensive mental journeys countered this sedentary lifestyle, and the misconception of Goethe as a traveler springs from the uniquely international influence of his writing. While Goethe's Italian Journey is a classic piece of travel writing, it was the product of his only extended physical journey. The majority, rather, were of the mind, taken amid the pages of books by others. In his reading, Goethe was the prototypical eighteenth-century armchair traveler, developing knowledge of places both near and far through the words and eyewitness accounts of others. In Goethe: Journeys of the Mind, Nancy Boerner and Gabrielle Bersier explore what it was that made the great writer distinct from his peers and offer insight into the ways that Goethe was able to explore the cultures and environments of places he never saw with his own eyes.

When Alejandro Luque is given a book of photographs of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, he sets out with three friends to trace the great writer’s journey through Sicily.Discovering the locations of the original pictures, he begins to uncover the many stories that the island has to tell. In a narrative rich with historical details, Luque’s own observations are mingled with those of writers past and present.

The sights and sounds of Venice provoked and enthralled the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, luring him back again and again to the city in which he found the decaying shipyards and back alleys as enchanting as the iconic landmarks.Throughout Rilke’s ten visits to Venice, whether staying in a simple guesthouse or a palazzo, there was one constant: he walked prodigiously, determined to discover every corner of the city on foot.Birgit Haustedt guides the reader on eleven Venetian walks, retracing Rilke’s footsteps and recounting his words to give travellers a new perspective on this captivating city, from the humble to the sublime.

Chaucer enjoyed numerous international sojourns over the course of his eventful life, but there was one part of Europe that influenced his work like no other: Italy. Tracing Chaucer's journeys and his links to destinations such as Florence, Certaldo, Arqua, Pavia, and Milan, Richard Owen introduces us to the princes, knights, and authors with whom Chaucer mixed.Richard Owen's illuminating new account leaves no doubt that, without the influence of Italian luminaries such as Francesco Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, the English canon ' fathered' by Chaucer would never have existed as we know it.

Tokyo, the ‘Eastern Capital’, has only enjoyed that name and status for 150 years. Before then, it was Edo, a sprawling town by the bay. Earlier still, it was Edojuku, a medieval outpost overlooking farmlands. And, thousands of years ago, its mudflats and marshes were home to elephants, deer and marine life.Jonathan Clements traces Tokyo’s fascinating history from the first forest clearances and the samurai wars to the hedonistic ‘floating world’ era – and onwards to the twentieth century with its destruction and redevelopment, boom and bust. So entwined is Tokyo with the history of Japan that it can be hard to separate them – its position at the nexus of power and people for over a thousand years has made it crucial to the events of the whole country.

'Will someone pay for the spilled blood? No. Nobody.' Mikhail Bulgakov wrote these words in Kiev during the turmoil of the Russian Civil War. Since then Ukrainian borders have shifted constantly and its people have suffered numerous military foreign interventions that have left them with nothing. As a state, Ukraine exists only since 1991 and what it was before is controversial among its people as well as its European neighbours. Writing in a simple and vivid way, Jens Muhling narrates his encounters with nationalists and old Communists, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks, smugglers, archaeologists and soldiers, all of whose views could hardly be more different. Black Earth connects all these stories to convey an unconventional and unfiltered view of Ukraine - a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and the centre of countless conflicts of opinion.

In recent years Naples has become, for better or worse, the new ‘destination’ in Italy. While many of its more esoteric features are on display for all to see the stories behind them remain largely hidden.In Marius Kociejowski’s portrait of this baffling city, the serpent can be many things ― Vesuvius, the Camorra, the outlying Phlegrean Fields (which, geologically speaking, constitute the second most dangerous area on the planet). It is all these things that have, at one time or another, put paid to the higher aspirations of Neapolitans themselves.Naples is simultaneously the city of light, sometimes blindingly so, and the city of darkness, although often the stuff of cliché. The boundary that separates death from life is porous in the extreme: the dead inhabit the world of the living and vice versa. The Serpent Coiled in Naples is a travelogue, a meditation on mortality, and much else besides.

During the enforced idleness of the coronavirus pandemic, Christopher Somerville revisited the 450 notebooks whose pages contain the accumulated thoughts and experiences of a career spent exploring Britain on foot over four decades.The View from the Hill pulls together the cream of this unique crop, following the cycle of the seasons from a freezing January to a Christmas sunrise. In between are hundreds of walks that take in magnificent flora and fauna, ancient traditions, and folklore, and geological peculiarities and wonders – all narrated with moving and humorous sensitivity.There’s no need to move from your chair to go walking in Christopher’s company. Just stir up the fire, fill your glass, and let these spirited tales take you out of here and far away.