Prep

Been walking around Manhattan with my IPAD, getting into the truly mobile world of digital travel.

A thing of wonder. Even bumped into a family from Switzerland - at a Starbucks on Columbus - which seems like an omen of good things. Next week: mobile London. Then mobile Alsace. And then: back to the beginning on the Swiss border.

The Kind of Picture I Can't Take

But will really try this time.



From Magnum Photos picture of the week.

That's Alec Guinness learning his lines. I'd say Richmond, upon Thames.

Countdown

Whitstable, where it all began, and one of Peter's faves.

So tomorrow the countdown begins: first to New York to hang with Portia, meet old friends, buy that IPAD, and some NYC Sales' clothes. Three years on from the first walk things are different. I am a graduate student at UCL, working on representations of "terror" - Thomas Coryat might come into that as a post-Gunpowder treason "tourist". Who knows? Only the Rhine will tell.

Also, my father Peter, is dead; he died suddenly last summer - so one of my favourite readers isn't around any more. The walk will be for him, of course. All those mountains in Switzerland, the swoosh of German traffic (he hated those autobahns) - I'm sure I'll think of him a lot. Thomas's father died shortly before his walk...

These days those I tell about the journey break down into the "so like Leigh Fermor," or the "so like (that lovely) Rory Stewart" brigade. Nothing is new any more. I'll write about both men on the journey. It isn't new what I'm doing, but the technology to learn, communicate, and publish, is. This time there's a thriving Facebook community, Twitter, 18 MegaPixels instead of 3 (though I love that 3MP roughness, so perhaps I'll stick with the little Leica., and of course the new player, Foursquare. Plus, Ebooks, IPADs, more and more wonderful digital transcriptions of old stuff. Wi-Fi is now a wonderland...

...And Apps! Oh, perhaps I don't even need to leave home. But of course there's still the walking; and there's still the old (now sacred) Merrell boots. The Dean of my faculty asked if - like Tommy Boy - I'll be donating them to the University. I think they'd rather have the IPAD.

Anyway, almost there again, almost starting. Switzerland and those Alps very soon.

It begins again soon...

...but this time with an IPAD.

In preparation: part two of the Journey

I will shortly be starting to post my version of the journey from Venice to Bad Ragatz as an exercise in "recollection in tranquility". Patrick Leigh Fermor, whose Europe walk haunts my own, did much the same only he was in print. In the meantime I'll post a lecture I gave at the Text, Technology and Interpretation conference at Manchester's Chetham library over the weekend.


Robin

Now this is what I think of when I remember that Come Fly with Me is 50 years old

Flickr has some great vintage French tourist shots.
Thanks to Olen Steinhauer.


And here's some Calais now, thanks also to Flickr.

Amiens raises an eyebrow

One more film poster soon for the Jules Verne museum?

...director McG, who let slip that he wants Will Smith to star in his just-announced 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo at Disney.

"The character Nemo in this film is more about obsession, he is obsessed and people tend to forget that when you become so obsessed you end up being the villain," McG told the site, adding "Man I'm trying to get Will Smith to do it, been trying to get a hold of him. I've been wanting to work with him for a long time already. That guy's great."

An Exhibition of the old new media

The resemblance between early Renaissance journalism and the current state of the Internet is uncanny. But there's a chastening lesson here for the Web as well. The Web is exuberant, democratic, unruly and thrilling. But Web-based journalists haven't really pioneered a new form. They've merely rejuvenated some dusty old ways of jousting with words.

From the Washington Post.

Just like that old Thin Lizzy song...

I can't do this, but it looks like the future to me.

A nice feature of Google maps:

Take a GPS log file
Convert it into the .KML format used by Google Earth.
(You can make these with GPSbabel, amongst other utilities.)
Put it on a web server somewhere
Go to Google Maps, and search for the URL of the .KML file
You’ll get a nice map of your track. And you’ll even get information about how to link to it and how to embed it in your site. Here’s a section of the route I walked today, for example:

Here's the result.


...and here's the man who knows how.


Fantastic.

Happy christmas

I'll be speaking about Tom next year. And walking some more, and repeating some of the journeys I've already made.

Robin

Postwar Europe

Without such collective amnesia, Europe's astonishing post-war recovery would not have been possible.

Tony Judt
Postwar

Paris: city of booksellers?

Those Left Bank book stalls in Paris [Bouquinistes] filled with First Editions and rare collections of poetry and are in trouble: books aren't selling so well, and plastic Eiffel towers are doing better. What happens next?

...Paris city hall, alarmed that the garish knick-knacks are damaging Paris's "cultural landscape", has launched a battle to protect the literary soul of the banks of the Seine. Bouquinistes have been invited to crisis talks at the city hall in an attempt to promote more intellectual merchandise. But some warn that if they cannot adapt to the changing market they will "die of hunger".

Imagine this in a market near you:

The trade is strictly regulated. Each bouquiniste is allowed four boxes painted dark green: three must contain books, the fourth can sell items such as prints, collectors' postcards, stamps and souvenirs.

From Le Guardian.

Founder of Technorati launches public beta of his customised print travel guides...

...here's why:

...what I learned is that there is really something special about holding a physical printed book in your hands. Especially when you are travelling. And you know, I travel with my Blackberry and my iPhone and my Laptop and all of that and if I am in the middle of a Siok in Jerusalem or I am lying on a beach in Phuket, Thailand I don’t really want to pull out my Blackberry or end up paying those enormous data rates via my iPhone just to be able to find a piece of information that I could easily find if it was sticking in my back pocket.

Lots more here in an interview with David Sifry.


Gosh: print is back? Just as the E-book gets exciting?

Tom would have loved this

Quicker than Tom

Mr. Rossy, a Swiss pilot, leapt from the plane about 8,200 feet over Calais, France, blasted across 22 miles of water and deployed his parachute, above, over the South Foreland Lighthouse in Dover. Onlookers who dotted the famous white cliffs cheered and waved as he came into view.

Even impressed the New York Times.

The ever generous Paul Theroux

Thinking about Tom and his amazing Jacobean times is actually easier when not in his exact footsteps. But I'm never far away, even back in London. Today I'm off to a conference on renaissance spies. And especially Sir Henry Wotton, who was "bureau chief" as it were, in Venice - during the early part of the reign of James I. And who certainly met Tom in 1608. (There's much more to Wotton, and maybe I will know after my conference). That's him above.


Meanwhile, back on the circle line...Paul Theroux tries to flog a new book in a free newspaper, and sounds as charmless as ever. Wasn't he rather keen on V.S. Naipaul's tracks once upon a time?

A lot of travel writing is a stunt – “Ooh, I’ll bounce a ball around Iceland, I’ll throw a Frisbee around Namibia” – and doesn’t amount to much except someone in need of a subject. The other type is people thinking: “I’ll follow the tracks of Graham Greene, that’ll be exciting!” So I thought, some gap year punk’s going to do that about me, and I don’t want that – it’s my life, my trip, I’ll do my own return journey.

Tom and Now

Thanks Google.


Makes it all much easier. Betwixt continues, and will be back regularly soon.


For now don't forget around robin.

Today is the 400th anniversary of Tom's Departure

A picture from Padua's railway station

Thanks Tom for inspiring my walk, changed my life - a little

And in other news: the Venice bottom snapper has finally been caught.

Normal walking service will shortly resume: I'm writing an academic paper on trust
and it's taking a little time.

Coming soon: The Rhine

A piece I wrote for The Times on Italian towns.

And Shakespeare might have made it to Venice as well as Tom. Read more here.

Another way to cross the Alps?

Happy thing

To 2008, Switzerland, Germany & Turner

For Tom and Everyone Else

Friendly Fires "Paris"

Best song of the Year 2007, and even Tom would have approved