With Troubles over, Northern Ireland thrives

“Where They Went,” by Diane Daniel, published April 12, 2009, in the Boston Globe

Trish Gannon (left) and Jean Mello with Paddy, Black Taxi Tour driver in Belfast

WHO: Trish Gannon, 43, of Winchester, and Jean Mello, 43, of Dublin.

WHERE: Northern Ireland.

WHEN: Three days in October.

WHY: Gannon took the opportunity to visit Mello while Mello was living in Dublin as part of her job for a Boston-area bank. The two have been friends since attending College of the Holy Cross in Worcester.

GIANT STEPS: Because the weather was nice when Gannon arrived in Dublin, they decided to head right away to Northern Ireland, where one of their prime destinations was Giant’s Causeway, a lunar landscape of interlocking basalt columns and the country’s top tourist destination.

COASTING: ”We booked a coach tour that took us up the coast of Antrim and stopped at sights along the way,” said Gannon, whose ancestry is Irish. “We stopped at castles and sea villages. The coastline was really dramatic.” About half the travelers were American, including US soldiers visiting from their post in Germany. “About 2 miles from Giant’s Causeway, our goal, this nice new bus ran out of gas.” Luckily, they were at the crest of a hill and coasted a mile down to Bushmills, home of the 400-year-old Bushmills Distillery. “We went straight to the gas station and filled up,” she said.

Trish at Giant's Causeway, Antrim Coast

MILITARY INTERVENTION: ”Apparently when any vehicle, especially diesel, runs out of gas, it’s hard to start. It turned out one of the military folks was a maintenance guy for Apache helicopters, and he got it going,” Gannon said. “We took a vote on the bus and decided to skip the distillery and head straight to Giant’s Causeway. Luckily we got there before dark. You could walk all over the formations. It was really amazing.”

Trish Gannon at Belfast Botanic Gardens

BANKING ON TOURISM: The friends stayed at the Hilton Belfast in a newly redeveloped waterfront area. Having visited the city briefly a decade earlier, Gannon was impressed with the progress made in Northern Ireland since the peace accord. “It’s officially a tourist destination now. It’s so hopeful and encouraging. They’re even capitalizing on being where the Titanic was built. There are a lot of new hotels and restaurants, but also the city has a lot of beautiful Victorian buildings, including banks converted to hotels and restaurants.” One of their favorites was the Merchant Hotel. “It was so opulent I couldn’t believe it had been a bank.”

TROUBLES SIGNS: They took a Black Taxi Tour to see political murals and other sights around West Belfast, the center of the Troubles, the decades-long conflict between the country’s nationalist (mostly Roman Catholic) and unionist (Protestant) communities. “It was good to see that some of the murals have been painted over with more contemporary political issues. Many of the schools are integrated now, and there’s more integration in the workplace.”

The roads traveled are two-way streets

I wrote the essay below for a special travel section in the April issue of Ode Magazine.  It’s on their website as well.  If you don’t know Ode, I suggest you check it out. It’s at a magazine stand near you. (Borders, Whole Foods, Barnes & Noble, etc. Or better yet, buy a subscription and keep Ode alive.  Its tagline is: For Intelligent Optimists. Hey, that’s me! And I’m guessing you, too.

Farmer on Lombok Island, Indonesia, plows his fields the traditional way

The Eiffel Tower. Big Ben. The Taj Mahal. Only 20 years ago, these were the notches on the traveler’s money belt, which, incidentally, was stuffed with travelers’ cheques. Today we’ve been there, done that. Affordable airfare and Western wealth (yes, we’re still comparatively wealthy even now, in the midst of the credit crunch) have brought travelers to every corner of the globe. We hop on transcontinental flights armed with our debit cards, functional in cash-dispensing machines from Dubai to Denali.

But simply seeing the sights is no longer enough. We want to stray from those beaten paths, dig deeper, get a read on how the locals live, work and play. This can include eating at a restaurant favored by residents instead of Westerners, participating in an outdoor adventure or visiting sites not found in most guidebooks. In industry jargon, it’s called “experiential travel”-travel we live through instead of look at-and it’s never been more popular. It’s popular because it’s typically cheaper than traditional travel; money is tight but we still want to go on vacation, some of us to faraway places. And it’s popular because we want to tread more lightly during our trips, in terms of our impact on the environment and on the people we visit. We want to give something back.

The desire to experience a different culture through activities and people goes deeper than adding another notch to the money belt, though that plays a role, too. It’s as basic as life. It’s our fellow human beings who transcend us. At the end of the day, we recall the burka-clad woman on the train reciting prayers as much as we do the centuries-old treasures in the museum.

Diane's much-coveted gift from locals in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada

When I think back to one of my life’s highlights-seeing the northern lights in the Northwest Territories, Canada, during 2002-I also relive the hospitality of the citizens of tiny Fort Smith, who cooked for me, took me dog sledding and gave me a polar-bear-shaped license plate that hangs in my house today. The most lasting impression of my 11-week backpacking trip to Europe in 1982 is my still-enduring friendship with Federico, who lives in Vicenza, Italy. In my home state of North Carolina, as I travel to research a farm-travel guidebook, the farmers stand out as much as their bounties or the sweeping rural landscapes.

Diane and Federico Lauro in Vicenza, Italy, in 1986. And, yes, they're still in touch.

My reaction is hardly unique. While I’ve done a fair amount of traveling of my own, I’ve also interviewed hundreds of people over the past eight years for a column I write for The Boston Globe called “Where They Went,”  about other people’s trips. Without fail, these travelers will recount adventures, sights, tastes, but almost always add: “The people were the best part. They were so nice, so warm, so welcoming.” Those people’s stories are the ones they recount to me again and again, especially if they were allowed a look inside a community or a family.

These days, even the most mainstream tour operators include experiential travel on an otherwise-standard tour. For example, in the 2009 Grand Circle Travel land and cruise tour “China and the Yangtze River,” participants will not only visit the Great Wall, Beijing and Hong Kong; they’ll tour a kindergarten or senior center and have a home-hosted lunch. “You’ll see local customs enacted first-hand as your gracious hosts prepare and serve a typical Chinese meal,” the itinerary reads. For the traveler wanting a less-staged version of hospitality and sightseeing, many cities have forms of community-based or locally led tourism, which originates with citizens instead of national or international tour operators.

One of our local guides prepares an Indonesian meal during a hiking trek up Mount Rinjani (12,224 ft.) on Lombok.

Digging deeper also requires that we set aside our demands for a money-back-guaranteed quality and “safe” experience. That can be instructive in itself. I recall a community-based “ecotourism” hiking trek my husband and I chose on the island of Lombok in Indonesia. The guides lit our campfires with the help of splashes of gasoline from the jugs they carried and they littered along the way. I later reported these issues to the organizer, who lived in the capital of Mataram, miles and worlds away. He was extremely apologetic, as he’d been trying to get the villagers to understand tourism basics. On the other hand, I saw the real way of life there. It was worth the trade-off. And I was much happier to donate money to people in the village than to an international travel outfitter.

Schoolchildren in a tiny village on Lombok are excited to see two cycling tourists

After hearing me speak about the virtues of getting off the tour bus, one African safari tour operator told me proudly how at the end of his luxury lodge-hopping trip in Tanzania, he takes his clients into the city of Arusha to visit poor neighborhoods and give trinkets to the local children. “Everyone came away deeply moved,” he said. “The crazy thing was, after seeing all that big game, what I heard from them was it was the most memorable part of the trip.” I suggested he consider moving the outing to the beginning of the tour, so it would be on their minds as they met Tanzanian workers along the way. “Oh no, that would be too much for them,” he said.

Perhaps our challenge as citizens of the world is to decide how much is enough-and then go soak it in. Even if the recession has wiped out a quarter or more of our wealth, we’re still rich by global standards. Experiencing how other people live, whether in Appalachia or Addis Ababa, will make us even richer. And likely them, too.

Dutch dilemma? It’s all in a name

All Dutch citizens carry passports from "the Netherlands," not "Holland"

Don’t ask Wessel (or his father or brother, for that matter) where he’s from in Holland or you’ll likely get this smarty-pants answer:  I’m not from Holland.

Wait, how can a Dutch citizen not be from Holland?

Because the Netherlands has an identity crisis.

Yes, the country is officially, legally, and historically named the Netherlands. Or, in Dutch, Nederland, as in “low country.” Hence the NL country abbreviation you see on car stickers. The country is bordered by Belgium, Germany, and the North Sea. To the west, across the water, is England. (And, for the record, the Netherlands is not part of Scandinavia, as some people mistakenly think.)

So what’s with the name Holland?

Well, two things, one official and one not. 

The provinces of North and South Holland are in the west of the Netherlands

The Netherlands has 12 provinces. Two of those are North Holland and South Holland on the west coast. Until 1840, they were one province, called Holland. Their residents were, and still are, Hollanders. The country’s largest and most well-known cities are in Holland — Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague.

So, Holland has always been the most powerful and populated part of the Netherlands. But it’s only a part of the country. (This conundrum has similarities with the whole United Kingdom / England / Great Britain thing, which we won’t even get into here, will we?)

Dutch guilder that was in use before introduction of the euro in 2002

As you can guess, Wessel and the rest of the family Kok are not from those provinces, therefore they’re not from the official Holland. They’re from the province of Drenthe, in the northeast, which is more rural and has the country’s lowest population density. (Americans, think Nebraska with canals.)

Much to the Koks' dismay, "Holland" is used on most Dutch souvenirs

Making matters even worse for the family Kok, the name Holland has, unofficially, been used interchangeably with the Netherlands for many years now. Many Dutch people from all provinces say they’re from Holland. Even the country’s tourism website, run by The Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, is called Holland.com. Personally, I’ve met several non-Hollanders who refer to their country as Holland.

So, while the Koks’ provincial sensitivity is understandable, I do think they’re fighting a losing battle, and one that does not appear to have all that many soldiers these days. But, as a family member through marriage, I feel compelled to join in and fight the good fight, too. I hereby dedicate this blog post to the family Kok and their fellow non-Hollanders. Lang Leve Nederland!

Untours is unparalleled in the travel industry

You, too, can sample street food in Leiden (in this case, herring) on an Untours trip

Even before I knew much about Untours, the Pennsylvania-based (un)tour company, I loved their travel offerings and attitude. Untours supports longer-term travel with a home base, so visitors have a chance to dig deeper than the usual surface tourist activities.

They provide accommodations for one or two weeks, mostly in Europe (they just added a couple North American locations). For a reasonable fee, you get lodging (with a kitchen), air travel (rare) and an English-speaking local host (unheard of). It’s similar to independent travel, but with someone to hold your hand if needed.

Rome is among the destinations in Italy

Also terrific are Untours’ off-the-beaten path destinations. In Holland, untourists stay in the charming university town of Leiden instead of the big city of Amsterdam, in Greece it’s Nafplio instead of Athens, and in Switzerland Untours offers up Ticino, Oberland and villages between Interlaken and Lucerne. It doesn’t ignore big cities completely, especially in Italy and France, the top destinations. Italy choices include Rome, Florence, and Venice, but also Sicily and Amalfi. It’s similar for France. You can choose among Paris, Normandy, Alsace, and more.

I was surprised when Untours, now in its 34th year, recently added New York City and Quebec City to its offerings. Makes me wonder what’s next. Exciting!

"The Eiffel Tower at night is magical," reported one Untours traveler

While I haven’t traveled with Untours, I’ve interviewed several people who have, and they’ve all loved the experience of feeling like they were living in a community instead of merely passing through. For those of you who just have to be on the move, there are ways to combine destinations with Untours “Samplers.” Untours aren’t cheap, but from what travelers tell me, they’re a bargain when you factor in meals, airfare, etc. Check out the prices for yourself and let me know what you think.

Hal Taussig on his regular ride to work

Like I said, I’ve already loved Untours for years because I had a great feeling about them and their business practices. So I wasn’t surprised but I sure was impressed when last year I learned about Untours founder and president Hal Taussig, 84. Despite his very successful business, he and his wife live in a modest home. Since 1992 they’ve given $5 million in profits from the business to the Untours Foundation, which they founded to help enterprises around the world that create jobs that improve the lives of the poor. Untours has been engaging in “travel philanthropy” way before it became de rigueur. Hal has gotten some great press lately, but you can tell that he’s not in it for the publicity. Thank you, Hal, for inspiring us as travelers and as human beings!

Celebrating Vicenza and pal Palladio

The Teatro Olimpico was designed by Andrea Palladio as his last work and inaugurated in 1585

I was so happy to see this meaty travel story on Vicenza, Italy, by Canadian writer Paul French in conjunction with the 400th anniversary of its favorite son, architect Andrea Palladio (born Nov. 30, 1508), who designed many gorgeous municipal structures and country villas. Said article was even in the paper I usually write for, The Boston Globe. Not only was it interesting and helped spread the word on this relatively little-known architect and unknown area between Verona and Venice, in northern Italy, but its publication meant I could finally stop feeling guilty that I didn’t write anything myself!

Piazza in Vicenza on a dreary fall day (Click to ENLARGE)

Wessel and I went to Vicenza last Thanksgiving, and I swore it would be a vacation for me. As a writer, it’s difficult for me to go anywhere and not write about it. Part of that is that the opportunity is there and I’m spending the money anyway, and also I like making money from stories (though often my hourly rate ends up being ridiculously meager). But above all else, I truly feel a duty to spread the word about things I think are interesting, meaningful, helpful, or just plain fun. In a way I feel I do “social work” through my journalism, trying to help those in need. While Vicenza, a fairly wealthy city, will be fine without my assistance, I do want to point people there because it’s, as the cliché goes, a hidden jewel. (I’d never use that phrase in a story!)

Diane (left) visits Federico Lauro in the mid 1980s (Click to ENLARGE)

Here’s the story of my history with Vicenza. It was 1983 and I was on the last leg of a two-month backpack trip in Europe. I started out with a group of college friends, and then went solo. On the second day of my solo stretch, I was on an overnight train from Milan to Paris. Federico, who was in my cabin, was listening to a cassette of “Speaking in Tongues” by the Talking Heads. He was from Vicenza. We bonded over music, and ended up pitching our tents side by side in Paris and bopped around the city the next day. Then we became pen pals, writing each other a couple times a year.

Left to right: Enrico, Mariella, Mariella and Eloisa's mother, Eloisa and Federico, in 1986 (Click to ENLARGE)

In 1986, after staying in Greece for six months with my American friend Susan Pappas (who had also been on the backpack trip), I headed to Italy in hopes of finding work in one of the large cities. Of course a stop in Vicenza was on the agenda. When I arrived, I was quite under the weather, so not only did I stay with Federico and his family, they nursed me back to health. In the end, Federico and his father helped me find a place to live and a little work teaching English. I got to know his good friend Enrico, his girlfriend, Eloisa, and her sister Mariella.

I made a Vicenza stop during travels in 1988, but Federico and Eloisa were on holiday. Then, in 1990, Federico and Eloisa, now married, stayed with me near Boston for six months while they studied English and toured New England. After that, we wrote, and then emailed, infrequently.

The villa "La Rotonda," just outside Vicenza, was designed by Palladio and built in 1566

So when Wessel and I visited Vicenza, it had been 18 years since I’d seen Federico and Eloisa! They have two sweet, lovely children and live next door to Enrico and Mariella, now married and with children of their own. While Vicenza had grown (I couldn’t remember the outskirts all that well) the “centro” looked pretty much the same. It was very moving to revisit my past and also share my Italian city and friends with Wessel. Vicenza will always be near and dear to me, and now I don’t even have to feel guilty not writing a story about it!

Have ticket, will travel the world

“Where they Went” by Diane Daniel
(Published March 2, 2008, in the Boston Globe) 

From Di’s eyes: A round-the-world trip is just the thing to kick off a law career and is much more interesting and educational than the typical week in the Caribbean. Here’s to great jobs and a wonderful life for these two young adventurers!

WHO: Andrew Hass, 26, of Acton, Mass. and Lauren Hager, 25, of Sacramento, Calif.

WHERE: Around the world.

WHEN: Nine weeks from August to October.

WHY: The friends, fellow law students at the University of Miami, decided to reward themselves for finishing school and the bar exam by taking a trip. “Most students do, but not like this,” said Hass, who attended Boston University for undergraduate studies.

WITH A MAP AND A WISH LIST: “We basically sat down with a map and alternated places we wanted to go,” Hass said of their planning. They booked what’s called a Blue Ticket through the Student Travel Agency. “If you keep going in the same direction you can get great fares,” said Hass, who paid about $4,500 for all his flights. They visited 11 countries, starting in Peru and then going to Argentina, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Mauritius, India, China, and Japan, spending four days to a week in each. Their luggage was lost – and found – twice.

PLOTTING IT OUT: “We got our tickets first, and once we knew where we’d be, we scheduled budget hotels and hostels,” Hass said. In harder-to-navigate countries, such as India and China, they set up personal tours and drivers. By the end of the trip, they’d seen many of the world’s great sites, including the pyramids at Giza, the Taj Mahal, and the Great Wall of China, as well as glaciers, deserts, oceans, and mountains. “Our top three places as far as activities and overall fun were Peru, South Africa, and Japan.”

ANDES FANS: “Machu Picchu is an experience in and of itself,” Hass said. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, up this winding road. It’s so magnificent and breathtaking.” Their favorite view of the ancient ruins was from Putukusi Mountain. ”It was a three-hour hike to the top and you had to go up hundreds of feet of wooden ladders, straight up, without a rope or a net. It was quite a rush.”

GREAT FRIGHT: From their favorite hostel, the Ashanti Lodge in Cape Town, the adventure seekers booked a cage dive among great white sharks. “It was quite an experience,” Hass said of being surrounded by sharks. “They throw chum in the water and the sharks dive at it with their jaws open. It was scary and awe-inspiring.”

SECOND WIND: By the time they reached Japan, after fleeing a typhoon in China, they were ready to get home, but the country invigorated them. “We spent a night in Tokyo, then took the trail to Kyoto. Our hostel was typical Asian budget. You sleep on the floor, and low on amenities, but not in a bad way. It really catches the local flavor.” They spent a somber day touring Hiroshima. “Even 60 years after it happened, it really hits you.” On a lighter note, they were thrilled to attend a major league baseball game. And Hass traveled all the way to Japan to discover he actually liked sushi.

SUSPENSEFUL JOURNEY: Because they left the country a few days after taking the bar exam, they didn’t know their outcomes. “Lauren found out she passed when we were in China,” said Hass, who was in suspense until he returned home – to good news.