It’s far from independent travel, but North Korea has become just a little bit more accessible, with the opening of the southern city of Kaesong to very tightly managed tour groups.
Travels on these tours can expect a heavily organised trip, with no ability to wander off and look around for themselves.
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?
Anyone heading to Malta or Cyprus over the new year break should be planning ahead, as on January 1st, 2008, these two countries will be dropping their local currency (the pound and the lira, respectively) and will replace them with the euro.
This will bring the number of countries in the euro zone to fifteen, and will make life much easier for travellers, removing the need to exchange currencies upon entry from other eurozone countries.
Of course, if their experience of the euro switchover is anything like mine was, living in Amsterdam at the time of the 2002 changeover, then prices will rise dramatically.
As part of our series of online language courses, this week, we’re looking at French.
Spoken by anywhere from 100 million to 500 million people (estimates vary) worldwide, knowledge of French is invaluable to a traveler. In Europe, it is spoken in France (obviously), as well as Luxembourg, and parts of Belgium and Switzerland. It is also spoken in Canada, parts of Central and South America, huge swathes of Africa, and parts of the South Pacific.
Next week: Spanish
It’s so rare to see an article on the tiny European state of Liechtenstein that I’ll forgive the fact that it’s mostly about something as dull as winetasting.
Liechtenstein is minute. You could drive in from one side of it and out the other in about ten minutes; you could pass it on the freeway that makes up its entire western border in just twenty minutes, without even knowing that it was there.
Vaduz, the capital city – perhaps town would be a better word for it – has no railway station of its own, the closest being in Schaan, to the north; but given the size of the country, this means it’s only about three kilometres away.
Trains run only a few times daily, between Buchs in Switzerland (3 minutes) and Feldkirch in Austria (18 minutes).
I wish I’d known about this, when I was last in Berlin: Alternative Berlin, a series of tours of that give visitors a taste of everyday Berlin, rather than just sights from a guidebook – everything from graffiti to driving Soviet style tanks. The main tour leaves from Alexanderplatz every day at 11am, and they recommend that you have a daily public transport ticket.
Thanks Drew!
Continuing on from the series we started last week on online language courses, this week we’ll be looking at German.
For European travellers, German is probably the second-most useful language one could learn, after English. It’s spoken by approximately 100 million native speakers worldwide, and is spoken in Germany, Austria, a large part of Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, parts of Belgium, and pockets of Denmark, Poland, Italy and Hungary. It’s also well known as a second language in eastern Europe, particularly by older people.
Next week: French
I’ve previously noted that the United States is treating tourists as if they were criminals, and now it appears that this practice is now spreading further, with Japan set to require foreign tourists to be fingerprinted and photographed upon entry.
While it is hard to see how this will help one iota to reduce terrorism (especially given that the only terrorist attacks upon Japan have come from within), it’s clear that such measures result in a drop in tourist numbers, as travellers find there are more convenient places to enjoy.
One of the hardest aspects to travel is having to negotiate your way around countries where you don’t speak the language. While knowledge of English is becoming very widespread, you’ll get a much better reaction from locals if you try to learn a bit of the local language before you go and are willing to try it out.
Of course, you don’t always have the time to attend a face-to-face course before you leave; preparing for your trip is going to be difficult enough as it is. Fortunately, the internet has come to our rescue – there’s plenty of online courses for many languages out there, it’s just a matter of finding them.
This is the first article in a new weekly series, looking at what’s available. This week, we’ll begin with Swedish, purely for the reason that it’s a favourite of mine.
Swedish is spoken by 9.3 million people, predominantly in Sweden, but also in Finland (on the west-coast and the Ã…land islands). It’s a northern Germanic language, and is very closely related to Danish and Norwegian (and is considered to be mutally intelligible with these two languages) – and more distantly, is related to German, Dutch and English.
Next week: German
After reading this article, which describes an itinerary that will get you from London to Marseilles in six hours, with the newly opened UK high-speed leg of the Eurostar, it made me wonder just where you can get to within six hours, without needing to fly.
Virtually all of Belgium is now within easy reach, taking in the very popular Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, and of course, Brussels.
London to Amsterdam comes in at five hours and 34 minutes, with a change to an Intercity train at Brussels. Theoretically, the Thalys train on the Brussels to Amsterdam leg should be a little faster than the Intercity service, given it has fewer stops, but it’s probably not worth the extra fare.
London to Frankfurt only just overshoots the mark, coming in at six hours and seven minutes, but just once a day: the 14:32 service, changing at Brussels (arrive 17:23. depart 17:59).
Strasbourg comes in at an average of five hours and 45 minutes, with the shortest trip being five hours and thirteen minutes (departs London at 10:30, arrive Paris Nord 13:53 and then stroll across to Paris Est to catch the TGV Est service to Strasbourg at 14:24).
Luxembourg can be reached via either Brussels or Paris, and ranges from five hours 40 minutes to six hours, with ten departures a day.
The area around Cologne, in Germany, is easily reachable in five hours and ten minutes – and two trains a day will get you there in only four hours and 48 minutes, departing London at 6:57 or 10:00 and changing in Brussels).
Lyon, too, with its high speed TGV line, is an easy destination, coming in anywhere between five and six hours, the shortest trip being just four hours and 50 minutes (departing London 11:05).
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