Wide angles, wine and wanderlust

We're currently on the road in outback Australia, with little access to the internet, which is why you haven't been hearing from me much. However, my husband and co-writer, Terry, who occasionally posts here, has been inspired by various experiences (which no doubt he'll tell you about), to start his own blog: Wide angles, Wine and Wanderlust. You can read about why he started the blog and how he hopes to differentiate it from all the other travel, photography and food and wine blogs out there, here on the first post: Dear God, not another blog. We're in the Northern Territory and we're hitting the road again now and going bush, so you'll hear from me at the end of the week when we should have access to the internet again. Pictured? That's Terry shooting a pic of a gorgeous lizard on a post recently at Uluru (Ayers Rock).

Ukraine -- Virtual History and Reconstruction of Golden Rose Synagogue in L'viv

I want to draw attention to the online presentation about the Turey Zahav, or Golden Rose, synagogue in L'viv, prepared by my friend Sergey Kravtsov and others at the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem and posted on the Center's web site.

Not only does the presentation give a history of the synagogue, which was destroyed in WW2 and remains in ruins, but it includes a virtual reconstruction of it -- layer by layer, renovation/reconstruction by renovation, showing how the building changed over time.

It also presents the building, originally constructed in the late 16th century, in the context of other synagogues and monumental buildings of the time in what is now western Ukraine, and provides information on the architects who designed and built them.

Today's Flowers

If you would like to show off your beautiful flowers join TODAY'S FLOWERS which was created By Luiz Santilli Jr, now its managed by Santilli and Denise BC



With all the cold and freezing weather we have had at night i still have these two snapdragons left in my flower bed, Maybe i should plant more of these.

Florence -- Haggling in the Synagogue

Florence Synagogue. Photo (c) R. E. Gruber

I had an experience last week that threw into even sharper relief the contradictions of caricature and irony found in the insider vs outsider use of Jewish stereotypes.

I was in Florence for a very interesting and wide-ranging conference on representations of Jews in European popular culture, organized by young scholars at the European University Institute in nearby Fiesole.

Before the official start of the conference, a group of us visited Florence's synagogue and the Jewish museum housed in its women's gallery. The synagogue is a stately Moorish-style structure with an ornate interior and towering green dome. A grandiose symbol of Jewish emancipation, it was designed by the architects Marco Treves, Mariano Falcini and Vincenzo Micheli and inaugurated in 1882.

The Jewish museum is on two levels -- the lower level is mainly a display of Judaica. The upper level was revamped and reopened last year as a multi-media history exhibit using objects, panels, sound and projected images to tell the story of the Jewish community in Florence.

Florence Jewish Museum. Photo (c) R. E. Gruber

After visiting the museum, I stopped in the gift shop (I love museum gift shops.) It's small, but has a lot on offer -- jewelry, ritual objects, stationery, etc. All seemed rather expensive, but, with Hanukkah gifts on my mind, I found a nice little pair of earrings for €15.

I wanted to get another piece, apparently made by the same designer. The saleswoman showed me a pendant -- for €20.

I didn't want to spend that much, I told her. Her response was immediate. "What would you like to pay? How much do you want to spend?"

Well, the earrings were only €15 -- I didn't want to spend more than that.

"OK -- €15 -- the pendant is yours!"

Damn, I thought. She gave me 1/4 off, just like that. I could have got it for less!

Then I thought about the last place I had come into contact with a reference to bargaining in a Jewish context -- the "At the Golden Rose" cafe in L'viv, where no prices were put on the menu so that patrons could haggle ("like Jews") as to what they would pay...

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As for the conference -- I will try to write something on it later. For now, you can see the program by clicking HERE.

Camera Critters

Join Misty in this neat meme if you enjoy seeing critters from across the lands


Today we decided to take a walk over on the other side of the Old Mill District as we have never gone there before. Nice area and what a great place to walk your dogs. Princess sure loved it. Well this is what I got photos of today.Click on photos for better viewing

Mumbai's nightmare: a terror attack on tourism (on innocents abroad - and at home)

Terry and I stayed at the majestic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai on a trip to India about six years ago or so. We ate dinner at the Indian restaurant that was the scene of a seige by terrorists this week; the restaurant whose chef was one of the first to get shot. And after a sweaty day's sightseeing in the city, we'd cool off with a gin and tonic on the antique swing seat on the elegant terrace by the swimming pool, where this week guests stepped over corpses as they attempted to escape. I spent hours browsing in the hotel's excellent bookshop and took home a dozen or so novels by Indian writers - they were a bargain. If the destruction described in this story in the UK's Telegraph newspaper is indicative of the overall damage to the hotel, the bookshop is probably burnt out. We had lunch at the Oberoi another day, in its chic minimalist Italian restaurant, and I shopped myself silly at the shops there too - all the scene of another bloody rampage. At the Taj Mahal we stayed in the modern tower, as there'd been a mix up with our bookings and all the antique rooms were full, however, we nevertheless got a peek at one and they were as sumptuous as they looked on the hotel website. Having stayed and eaten at the hotels and explored the city streets where this week's horrific attacks took place has made it all the more real to me. Sure I'd been to the World Trade Centre before 9/11, but that was an attack on the USA's financial heart, a symbol of Western capitalism, of greed, of excess. It came as no surprise. That's not to downgrade that tragic event in any way, but there's something more potent about an attack on a hotel (as swish as these two were), a place where tourists and locals are relaxed, at ease, enjoying their leisure time - it's the last place they'd expect to be massaacred. The Taj Mahal Palace was indeed a grand old hotel. I hope it can be saved. But what I hope can be salvaged even more are the lives of the families and friends who lost their loved ones in Mumbai this week. (Read some of the moving first hand accounts of those who survived here.) I leave these Australian native flowers, a rare wattle from the East MacDonnell Ranges near Alice Springs, on the footpath outside the Taj, where Mumbai's destitute used to sleep. I hope they too can find a new home.

Sky Watch Friday

Hope that all of you that celebrate Thanksgiving have a blessed day .

Last week my son flew to California and since i don't fly i asked him to take some photos in the air so this is one he sent me.
And i thought i would take this shot this morning of what our weather was like for Thanksgiving, Beautiful day, about 32 degrees what more can you ask for. Altho Mt Bachelor didn't have enough snow to open for there ski season i heard they were trucking snow in so that people could do the tubing.

Germany -- Forgotten Jewish Modernist Architects and Their Creations

Here's a link to a terrific web site about Jewish modernist architects in Germany and their work, linked to a publication as the Pentagram Papers 37. It's based on the work of the late Haifa-born architect and scholar Myra Warhaftig, who published extensive material about them in her book, German Jewish Architects Before and After 1933: The Lexicon.

Little is known anymore about the more than 450 Jewish architects who were active in Germany before 1933 -- in November of that year, Jews were banned from the state-run artists guild, membership in which was mandatory in order for an architect to work. The web site examines 43 of them, providing biographical information and posting pictures of some of their buildings, many of which are still standing.

Another web site devoted to these architects also arranges walking tours to some of their buildings.

Warhaftig died in March at the age of 78 - see her obituary here, and also an article in Nextbook.org.

“The Jewish architect wanted to show his achievement in the forefront, and to create a new form of building that people would accept,” she told the author of the article, David Sokol.

“Berlin was a living architecture exhibition,” Warhaftig said of the interwar period. “After Weimar, Berlin was flourishing culturally. Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and other modernists were looking for a peaceful and social world, and wished to express their ideas in architecture. I think the majority of Jewish architects chose to settle in Berlin to prove that anti-Semitism would no longer play a role in their lives.”

Jewish architects were active in the modernist movement in many countries.

In the interwar period several synagogues were designed or remodeled in the modernist style by Jewish or non-Jewish architects.

These include the synagogue currently in use in Brno, Czech Republic (designed by Otto Eisler in the 1930s - you can read my article about modernist architecture in Brno in general by clicking here), that in Zilina, Slovakia (built in 1929-1931 and designed by the Berlin architect Peter Behrens), the remodeled synagogue in the Smichov district of Prague (built in 1863, remodeled in modernist/Functionalist style in 1931 by Leopold Ehrmann), and the synagogue currently in use in Rijeka, Croatia (built in 1928 and designed by Gyozo Angyal and Pietro Fabbro).

Synagogue in Smichov district of Prague, 2008. Now the archive of the Prague Jewish Museum. Photo (c) R. E. Gruber

Amsterdam -- No More Anne Frank Apartment

I just checked the web site that was advertising an "Anne Frank apartment" where you could "live like Anne Frank" (and which I wrote about on this blog and in a Ruthless Cosmopolitan column).... the site still advertises the apartment, but I'm happy to report that it no longer is named after Anne Frank, nor does it use its tasteless advertising come-on....

Moldova -- The "Other Europeans" project on the road

Several of the Jewish members of "The Other Europeans" project are in Moldova, traveling around the country to explore the lautari musical tradition.

I'm not on the trip -- but Bob Cohen is writing about it, with photos, on his blog -- he has posted some striking photographs of some of the Jewish traces in the town of Edinets, including its Jewish cemetery.

The Other Europeans project, directed by Alan Bern, is an intercultural dialogue exploring Yiddish and Roma music, culture and identity. It joins together Roma and Yiddish musicians -- they are exploring how music stemming from the same general place (mainly Moldova) is transformed by two parallel but related traditions.

I posted some material on the project this summer -- I took part in a symposium held at the start of the annual Yiddish Summer Weimar festival, and I heard the initial concerts by the two music groups, at Weimar and at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow.

Caucasian Mountain-Tour, "Emerald Valley", second part

After the bee's farm we had to stay in our minibus about an hour or two else till we reached the last aul and had to change vehicle.

There are not roads there, so the locals use these military cars, off-roads, to cross their land. We have seen them near every house that were there. I think, every family earns money transporting tourists. Our guide said, there are incredible quantities of persons that want to make a bath in the cascades we had to visit that day.

It was not so far till the house where we had to eat and to rest a little, but ... to reach it we had an other "extreem". Nothing terrible, but it is not very normal, this bridge.

In the house where we had to rest there was an other presentation of local foods. This time they were mostly wines. The daughter of the owner told us about the wines her father makes and we could taste them all. After that "second breackfast" with "chebureki" (puff pastry with meat inside -mmmmm.....) and we were ready to continue. After that good wine and 4 hours of the car I did not want other as sleep, sincerely, ...





I have to say you with all sincerity: when I came home and looked at my arm and side, I was afraid to see all that parts of my body black from bruises. Thanks God I did not look at my butt...

Moonshadow Villas: accommodation with more than a little good karma

Do you believe in karma? I do. I believe we're responsible for our actions, that those actions determine our future, and that by making decisions about how we act we create our own destiny. So if we sow goodness, we'll reap goodness. When Moonshadow Villas in Darwin, Australia, was recommended to me when we were looking for somewhere special to stay, the Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam) 1970's song Moonshadow began running through my head: "I'm being followed by a moon shadow... moon shadow, moon shadow... leapin' and hoppin' on a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow..." So I arrived at Moonshadow Villas already in a bit of a hippy head space. Then we discovered our welcome package - fresh mangos, champagne, beers, fresh bread, a jar of locally-made mango jam, chocolates, cereals... and learned that every guest staying in a villa (or apartment; more on those in another post) receives one of these very delicious starter kits. Located in a leafy inner city suburb of Darwin, overlooking the Botanic Gardens and minutes from the beach and city centre, the stylish architecturally designed villas (built by owner Peter and designed by wife Moya) are brimming with these sorts of thoughtful touches - lights automatically switched on as we approached (it was late and dark), air-conditioning and fans were on (Darwin's weather is like Dubai's - sultry), and ambient sounds, aromatic candles and scented incense wafted throughout the tranquil gardens, creating (along with the Buddha statues and fountains) a very serene and almost spiritual vibe. The design - which fuses typically Australian style (outdoor living, plunge pool, polished floor boards, corrugated iron walls, etc) with Asian influences (Chinese and Indonesian furniture, Balinese and Thai artifacts) reflects both Darwin's own multicultural make-up and the passions of Moya and Peter who have travelled extensively. The exquisite attention to detail and personal touches - from the pretty Chinese soaps and heavenly coconut shampoo and conditioner in the bathrooms, to the original art on the walls (much of it by Peter, along with other work they've collected over the years) - once again reflects their thoughtfulness and generosity of spirit. Staying here is like staying at the stylish home of a very good friend. They make you feel so welcome you don't want to leave, and when you do, you're already thinking of ways to return. Maybe if I'm very good...

My world is posted on my other blog, click here

Today's Flowers

If you would like to show off your beautiful flowers click here and join the fun

I have no idea what any of these flowers are. But I thought they were pretty, took these at the Shore Acre Garden

The Ghan: nothing like the romance of train travel to rekindle a love for travel

There's a certain romance about train travel that's hard to imagine if you're sleeping upright in cattle class on an overnight interstate train trip in Australia. Ugh. But Australia now has something that comes close to the likes of the luxurious Venice Simplon Orient Express in the romantic train stakes - the new Platinum class service on The Ghan. Named after the Afghan cameleers who trekked the same route from South Australia to 'the red centre' in the Northern Territory with their camel trains in the 19th century, the shiny silver Ghan takes two days and nights to travel the 3,000 kilometres between Adelaide, Alice Springs, Katherine and Darwin. And then it trundles all the way back again. While you can travel on the Red or Gold Service, sleeping upright or on bunks in a snug sleeper cabin, respectively, the spacious Platinum class rooms (pictured) with flat beds, offer a level of comfort that's incomparable to other trains in Australia - as we were lucky to find out for ourselves recently! I'd spent my birthday working until the wee hours of the morning emailing files and maps to editors in London before we hit the road for a few months, and the next night Terry and I were hastily packing until the wee hours of the morning, trying to anticipate what we were likely to forget - aside from sleep and our senses of humour. So perhaps we appreciated that welcome glass of champagne a little more than the other passengers. And the bedside nightcap after dinner. And the coffee delivered to us in bed soon after dawn. There’s an endearingly old-fashioned restaurant car where three course meals were served with a smile (the staff are incredibly warm and friendly) and a smart-looking lounge bar, but our spacious rooms with private bathroom (including shower and toilet!) were very difficult to leave. Our two single beds were made up and stowed away while we dined, leaving plenty of room for us sit back and put up our feet and take in the changing scenery from either side of the train. Not that we had much time to enjoy it. Whistle-stop tours en route range from an early morning hot air balloon ride across the arid Alice Springs desert to an exhilarating helicopter flight over spectacular Katherine Gorge in Nitmiluk National Park. We chose the latter - and it was thrilling! My main complaint about The Ghan? Not enough time on the train; I probably could have done without the tours. I enjoyed gazing at the stars from my bed so much and got a such a kick out of waking up with sunshine in my face, that I would have liked to have spent more time on board and spent longer watching the scenery change.

Camera Critters

Join Misty in this neat meme if you enjoy seeing critters from across the lands

So for many weeks now i have been feeding this cat that has been hanging around here, which i am not thinking could very well be related to Tom Tom as there size is about the same. So i am thinking whoever dumped Tom Tom off is reading my blog and dumping off the rest of the litter, Please stop if you are, LOL i am going broke having to feed them all.Well anyway this cat is nothing like TT as it is not friendly at all, runs off whenever it sees me. Till recently and i am wondering why?I finally got a close enough photo her the other day, thru the glass door.



Anyway lately she has been coming down to eat several times a day and i thought for the amount of food i was putting out, this cat should be extremely fat as she eats everything out there.And let me tell ya, even my house cats don't eat that much in one sitting.So the other night i didn't put any food out and waited for her to come to see if she would come closer to me, well it worked, but not so that i could touch her, but she did come and meow at me to put the food down so that she could eat, Well now i think i know why she is eating so much, i do believe this little gal has kittens somewhere, she has this little bag hanging down which do look like little teets, gosh this is not what i want to see. I do hope i am wrong, can't seem to find out were she is staying so hopeing that it will snow enough so i can watch the foot prints and find out.

Anyway she is a very pretty cat, here she is walking back to her hidy holeAnd here is Mr Black Bird or what ever he is watching her and sqauking as she moves along. He should be happy that she is full and not fending for herself, otherwise he could be her dinner.LOL

Caucasian Mountain-Tour, "Emerald Valley", first part

As promised in my previous posts, I wanted to tell you about a mountain-tour with light extreme I participate when I was in Sochi.

For me, the greatest extreme in that tour were tight deep-lunged torques that continued every 50-100 meters all the 4-5 hours that we needed to reach the place and than -to turn back from there, after the visit. Imagine that we were only about 70-90 km from center of Sochi but we needed 4-5 hours for one way.

I remember when I came in Sochi for the first time, it was in 80-th. There was the same torques way from Adler (where there is airport) till Sochi. They built a new highway from Adler some years ago, and you need only about 40 minutes to come in the center now. But in this, opposite, side of the region, you can admire the original mountain-roads. As you see on my photo.

Somebody told me once that it was a simple method to build ways in the mountains: to follow the steps of an ass. Because the asses knew where and how to go.

We were in a minibus with guide Golubkova Elena and driver Ruslan. They went with us till the last point of the tour. And it was hard enough, you will see it in my next posts. Here I want to show you only some photos from the road to taste the first beauties of the mountains of Caucasus.

This first is a general look on a mountain river how it is near the sea. It is river Shakhe, I think.

This other photo -to show you the mountain-road. Do you see that line in the middle of the photo? With rocks over and rocks under? Nice, no? It's a canyon of the river Ashe.

The first stop on our way was in a bee's farm. The owners built this pavilion where they have an exhibition hall of all products they have to sell. As you see on the second photo, there are many different products and they are really superb while produced in this zone. The team told us many interesting things about honey and it's derivative, we could taste some different honeys. Than we could buy everything we saw there.

We were at the beginning of our way and bought only glasses of "medovukha" -honey-wine. Mmmm... Great!!!



Continue next time...

Playing with Stereotypes -- Brokeback Dreidel

In addition to this Jewish Heritage blog, I maintain a blog on the Imaginary Wild West.

This video -- "Brokeback Dreidel" -- encompasses both:



"Brokeback Dreidel" is a delight -- as Ari Davidow said on his Klezmer Shack blog, it raises the bar on funny Hanukkah videos. It also shows how stereotypes (gay, Jewish, cowboy and otherwise) can have different meanings (and elicit different responses) in different contexts. (I love how the line dancing turns into a hora...)

If you look closely, you will see one (or maybe more) of the singers in the video wearing a (kosher) cowboy hat with fake sidelocks that is remarkably similar to the hats with fake sidelocks provided at the Golden Rose "Jewish" cafe in L'viv for patrons to try on and joke with.



Sam Gruber has written a thoughtful (and angry) blog post about the selling of Jews and Jewish symbols. He writes:

Its one thing when Gene Wilder plays a rabbi and dons payes in The Frisco Kid – a funny film that actually is both an affirmation of Judaism and a historic corrective – since there were plenty of Jews who helped shape the American West. And the case can be made for Barbara Streisand dressing up as Yentl. But it is quite another thing when an Ukrainian café owner encourages customers to dress up as Hasids to laugh and eat and drink on the very site the Lviv’s destroyed Beth Midrash, in the shadow of the ruined Golden Rose Synagogue, whose worshipers were rounded up an murdered. No matter what one thinks of the strictures of the Hasidim, the place of their death is no place for caricature. There is no one to answer back.

I wrote about how Jewish stereotypes and Jewish jokes mean different things in different contexts in an essay published in 2005 (in German translation) in the book Gerüchete über die Juden. Antisemitismus, Philosemitismus und aktuelle Verschwörungstheorien (Essen: Klartext Verlag) edited by Hanno Lowy, the director of the Jewish Museum in Hohenems, Austria.

In the essay, I described how I own several miniature figurines of Jews -- two marzipan "Yeshiva bochers" that I bought at a kosher pastry shop in Budapest, and a tiny "Jew" clutching a coin that was given out as a sort of party favor to guests at the "Jewish style" Anatewka restaurant in Lodz, Poland. The figures all are caricaturish, but the bochers were destined for an internal (Jewish) market, and the little Jewish man was destined for mainly non-Jewish (Polish) consumers.

Boundaries between insider and outsider, believer and non-believer, devotee and ironic observer can sharply delineate the differences between kitsch and caricature, art and artifice, stereotype and homage. But perspectives shift, and the boundaries often blur. The images and their meaning are often decidedly in the eye of the beholder. And they are frequently dictated by changing religious realities, philo-Semitic, often engineered nostalgia, and the powerful exigencies of the marketplace.

Many of the markers identified with Jewishness have religious overtones that have long laid the basis for both anti-Semitic stereotypes and nostalgic yearning for the "authentic" Jewish experience of the East European shtetl.

Signs and symbols of Jewish holidays and domestic observance, and the beards, side curls, black hats, yarmulkas, fringes and other outward trappings of the traditional orthodox or Chasidic Jew spell "Jewish" -- even to Jews -- in a way that, for example, the physical attributes of Jews such as the actress Natalie Portman or the actor Kirk Douglas do not. A case in point is a T-shirt sold online at the www.judaicaheaven.com web site. It features the slogan "Don't Worry, Be Jewish" under a big yellow "smiley face" that is topped by a kippah and long, dangling earlocks. The image, the web site states "shows off Jewish pride." Likewise, I was told recently by a friend that when the Chabad Lubavitch Chasidic movement set up a stand at Budapest's huge annual "Sziget" music festival a couple years ago, its display included a life-sized figure of a Chasid, with a hole cut where the face should be. Visitors could insert their own faces into the image and have themselves photographed in full Chasidic regalia, that is, as a "Jew."

Read the Full Essay

Where does "Brokeback Dreidel" fit in? It's a gay, wild west parody of a Jewish song, loaded with layer upon layer of pop-culture reference....to Brokeback Mountain and beyond. The audience is clearly not all Jewish -- nor it is all gay. But they are all clearly "in the know." (The group also parodies other songs, including "Jingle Bells" and 1980s ABBA hits...). The parody is American, in an American pop culture scene where -- as Sam put it -- there is so much real Judaism, and so much reliable information about Jews is available. But it's also an American scene where parody, gay, Jewish, self- or otherwise, is something of a way of life.

Bartholomew's Notes on Christian Philo-Semitism

In a link to my recent posting about the Anne Frank apartment and to my Ruthless Cosmopolitan column, in which I mention the "virtually Jewish" scene in Krakow, L'viv and elsewhere, the Bartholomew's Notes on Religion blog links to a previous post that describes philo-Semitism and the use of Jewish symbols, "products" etc, by Christians in the U.S. and elsewhere. In it, Richard Bartholomew speaks of

a whole subculture of American Christians for whom Judeo-philia goes far beyond simple Christian Zionism.

This means

selling items associated with Jewish culture to Christians: shofars, mezuzahs, menorahs (engraved with a Star of David merged with a Christian “ichthus” sign), Kiddush cups, tambourines (”mentioned in Psalms”) and, in particular, Tallit prayer shawls

The phenomena have a lot of outward similarities. But at heart, what I was describing (i.e. the "Jewish cafe" and tourism scene in mainly Jew-less, post-Holocaust, post-Communist Europe) is quite different, as, in large part, there is little -- if any -- actual religious identification involved by now. The virtually Jewish scene as a whole in Europe does encompass people who were drawn by their sense of religious or spiritual connection, and I go into these aspects in my book Virtually Jewish Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.

It would be very interesting to carry out a more in depth investigation into the reasons that non-Jewish customers are now drawn to the Jewish-style cafe scene, to see how much of the motivation comes from religious or spiritual interest. The "Please Respond" public art project carried out this past summer by the anthropologist Erica Lehrer, Stephanie Rowden, and graphic designer Hannah Smotrich may contribute to an understanding of this.

I have only recently come across the Bartholomew's Notes blog. But it turns out that Richard Bartholomew and I actually have been published together -- we both contributed chapter-essays to the 2005 book Gerüchte über die Juden Antisemitismus, Philosemitismus und aktuelle Verschwörungstheorien, (Klartext Verlag: Essen), edited by Hanno Lowy, the director of the Jewish Museum in Hohenems, Austria. Bartholomew's essay was on Christian Zionism; mine was on Jewish Kitsch and Kitschy Jews.

, pp. 235-254 (Translated from my unpublished English text, “‘A Curiously Cold Affection‘: Christian Zionism, Philo-Semitism and ‘The Jew’”).

In print and online

We're currently on the road in Australia and while our paid writing gigs and other demands have prevented me from posting much over the last month or two (explained here), I can thank a few other travel bloggers for some wonderful online coverage. I did a thought-provoking interview with globetrotting travel blogger Nomadic Matt which you can read over two posts (part 1 and part 2). Jessie from Wandering Educators interviewed me about our recently published Lonely Planet Syria and Lebanon guidebook, a book Terry and I coordinated and for which we wrote the Syria chapter; it was our second edition of that book and the last one we'll write for Lonely Planet. (Jessie is also giving away copies of the book.) The Happy Hotelier included an interview we did among his top 10 posts for October while the Mr and Mrs Smith blog listed Cool Travel Guide among their favorite travel blogs: do check out their other favorites when you get a chance. I'll post a list of my own soon too. Terry and I did manage to squeeze in a few reviews on Dubai for Fodors Hot Lists and you can read those here: September 3 (Westin Dubai), September 16 (Reflet Par Pierre Gagnaire), and October 1 (Dubai Desert Palm). I'll be uploading posts about our Aussie road trip very soon.

Life of a Travel Writer: when the travel writer needs to get 'away' from it all

My life as a travel writer is one I've come to treasure. So when people tell me I've got the ultimate dream job, I normally agree. However, it's been a tough few months, which explains the lack of blog posts. So tough there have been moments when my commitment to the writing career Terry and I have worked so hard to establish has well and truly wavered. So tough there have been times when I've questioned the very meaning of this travelling life. So tough that there have been more than a few periods when I've thought of abandoning everything and getting 'away' from it all. But when the world is our office, where do we get 'away' to? The fact that we didn't have much of a life at all for a few months was a major factor. Our time was spent chained to our desks writing from early morning to late at night seven days a week from August through October. We'd forgotten what it was like to do 'normal' things, to laze around and flick through a magazine, to watch a program on TV, to read a chapter of a book before bed, to go out for drinks with friends. I've been so busy I've missed birthdays; I worked until 2am on my own to meet deadlines. I've neglected family and friends whom I'm geographically close to for the first time in years (we're currently in Australia) and I'm consumed by guilt for not spending enough time with my mum who has gone through a couple of tough years herself following a road accident that left her without an eye and with an array of injuries. All this would be enough to make most people question the life they're leading. But add to that endless technological problems from excruciatingly slow and intermittent internet access and continuous inexplicable email problems (yes, I'm talking about you mac.com!) to couriers who deliver important documents to the wrong address and postal systems where send things astray. Trivial by comparison? Not when these communications systems are your main means of dealing with clients around the world. Add to that editors with their own communication and technology problems, editors with ongoing demands that far outweigh the fee they're paying, and editors who simply shouldn't be editors. But every job has its challenges, not all bosses are understanding, and nor are all colleagues easy to get along with. When the world's your office there's bound to be a glitch or two. Or three. And whose going to listen to a travel writer complain, right? Well, we're 'away' from it all now, so I hope to resume regular blogging soon and catch you up on the action-packed adventures we've been having.