Whenever I travel, I always carry a small, portable shortwave radio with me, mainly to keep up with world news, when I’m travelling through countries where English isn’t the main language. You may wonder what the point is, in this age of 24 hour BBC World and CNN satellite television – until you find yourself in a small bed and breakfast or hostel without a television, let alone a satellite receiver.

I was staying in a hostel in Florence back in March 1999, when NATO commenced its bombing campaign over parts of Kosovo and Serbia. The hostel didn’t have a TV room, and there was certainly no English programming on the radio in the city at that time; if I hadn’t had my shortwave radio with me, I probably wouldn’t have even known anything was going on, just across the Adriatic. Now, many might argue that knowing about this might not have helped me in the least – but who knows; I could well have been heading to Croatia at the time, and there’s nothing to say the NATO attacks might not have reignited the conflicts that had been going on in that area for many years.

The BBC have announced that their World Service broadcasts to Europe will close on February 18th, 2008. The World Service has been broadcasting in a number of forms since 1938, and has been one of the most reliable broadcasters of news and information programs available, and I dare say has been invaluable to many a traveller on the road in that time. Unfortunately, the BBC now expect people to hear their service via local rebroadcasts (which tend to only be available in big cities, if at all), the internet (hard to get to that when you’re on the move) or satellite radio (not exactly something you want to put in your backpack).

It’s a pity that the BBC couldn’t wait until future technologies, such as portable satellite radio, or Digital Radio Mondiale broadcasts on shortwave, became feasible, because once they have left the shortwave bands in Europe, they are going to be leaving a very big gap for the traveller in times of emergency.

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Street vendors in Rome

After reading an article in The Age today that pans the tiny republic of San Marino for having an excess of shops selling rubbish that no-one in their right mind should buy, it occurred to me that none of these shops would survive unless there was actually a market for them.

To be fair, San Marino isn’t the only place in that area with an oversupply of plastic trinkets on sale to clueless travellers; I have distinct memories of seeing shady men setting up makeshift stalls on white sheets on the ground, in almost every Italian city that I went to. While on the odd occasion, their wares might have been related to the nearest famous site – for example, plastic colosseums and books on the history of Pompeii (printed in China, of course) – but in general, it was purely junk, like the green plastic soldiers, furnished with a rifle, that vibrate and simulate a real soldier crawling along the ground. While it makes me wonder why anyone would buy such things at all, who would be silly enough to buy them when travelling?.

Many of the vendors clearly aren’t operating legally; I recall seeing one vendor, in Venice, having a worried conversation with a colleague who had just arrived upon the scene, and then quickly packing up his trinkets into a white sheet and running off, very fast; two minutes later, two members of the police force casually strolled into the area – I don’t know if they were even aware that an illegal vendor had been operating there or not. However, if these men are willing to risk arrest to sell their goods, there must be some pay-off and hence I must come to the conclusion that people are actually buying this rubbish.

I see the same here in Australia; Melbourne’s Queen Victoria market is often touted to tourists as a must see, and I’ll admit, the atmosphere is fascinating and it’s a great place to buy food – but half of its stalls are selling the same Chinese-made junk that are sold in similar markets everywhere on the whole planet. I wouldn’t buy any of this in a pink-fit. Do tourists really need fake Gucci handbags? Or even the genuine Gucci handbags, for that matter? Or Bart Simpson t-shirts?

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The French engineering firm Alstom have launched the prototype of their new high-speed AGV train at their rail test centre in La Rochelle. The train, when operational, will be able to travel at 360 km/h, covering a distance of 1000km in just three hours. It will also have more seating than existing TGV trains, with space savings coming from the removal of motor carriages at the ends of the trains – instead, the trains will have distributed motors underneath each carriage.

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I’ve just noticed on the Scanrail website that their railpass, which covered rail travel in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland, is no longer available; sales of this pass ceased on December 31st, 2007.

This is a shame, because it was possible to purchase the Scanrail pass even after a traveller had arrived in Europe, although with a few restrictions. The only remaining equivalent is the Eurail Scandinavia Pass, which is not available to European residents, and cannot be purchased by travellers already in Europe.

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Travelodge is building a hotel in West London made from 86 modified shipping containers. When completed in June, it is expected that rooms in the hotel will cost around €25 per night, less than a third of the cost of the nearest Travelodge in Slough, and cheaper than the nearest youth hostel.

The rooms are pre-fabbed in China, shipped out to the UK, where they are installed and then will be decorated. It is intended that the rooms are recyclable and although the words eco-friendly have been touted in relation to this building, I have to wonder what the insulation is going to be like. How are shipping containers going to deal with an unusually hot summer?



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With a European winter now in full swing, the newspapers are full of European alpine ideas. Firstly, we have the New York Times with an article on night skiing in St Moritz – if you can afford to stay there, that is. Fortunately, it’s not the only resort they list.

Still on Switzerland, the Independent goes ballooning in Château d’Oex, but at €227 for an hour’s flight, it makes the aforementioned accomodation in St Moritz look like a night in a run-down motel.

The Independent also has a look at skiing in some of the lesser known areas of Austria’s Tyrol region; and while you’re there, why not have a weekend in Innsbruck?

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Anyone who’s had to fly this Christmas knows how bad the experience can be. If the trip out to the airport, which by necessity is incredibly inconveniently located, isn’t bad enough, then there’s the queues, delays and cancellations once there. And after that, the flight – stuck in a seat with no leg room, for hours.

Fortunately, just in time for the new year, The Guardian has provided a list of ten non-flying trips. Of course, you have to be in Europe, first…

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Travel through much of Europe is about to become considerably easier: in three days’ time, on December 21st, nine more states will be added to Europe’s Schengen Zone, allowing travel without passport checks across an area that stretches from Portugal in the west to Hungary in the east.

Most of the new countries to the treaty are former communist states; Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Lativa and Estonia. The other new addition is Malta, which will now become the frontier border for illegal immigration from northern Africa.

The UK and Ireland are still hold-outs, having not joined Schengen at all, and while Switzerland and Liechtenstein have joined, they haven’t yet implemented the treaty.

The upshot of this is that travellers will no longer have to put up with regular, and often gruff, passport checks as they travel from Germany into Poland or the Czech Republic, or Austria into Slovakia or Hungary. On the downside, passport checks on the eastern borders will probably get worse.

I recall on one trip from Bosnia into Croatia by bus, my passport was checked three times in the space of about 30 minutes; first officers came through, and inspected passports; then another person came through and collected all of the passports and took them into a building, where they were stamped – and then returned, rather haphazardly, by being given to a passenger to hand out. This was followed by more officers coming through to check them again – presumably Croatian police, this time. Annoying, but not too bad, in the general scheme of things. What’s been your worst border-control experience?

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As of December 9th, it’s now much easier to cross Switzerland from north to south, with the opening of a new high speed rail link, in a tunnel through the Alps. Known as the Lötschberg tunnel, it runs from Frutigen to Raron, and will shave off around 30 minutes on trips from Bern to Brig.

International travel will also improve, with six daily trips from Bern/Basel to Milan starting in 2008.

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Ever since the September 11 attacks, governments around the world have been slowly making it more and more difficult for travellers to enter their countries. We’ve previously detailed how the United States and Japan have been treating travellers as if they were criminals, by fingerprinting them upon entry.

Now it’s the United Kingdom’s turn – everyone who enters the UK for longer than six months will require a biometric visa, which will include their fingerprints. Once again the question must be asked: how does this prevent terror attacks?

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