Recently in Travel Category

After a fairly drawn-out journey (I always forget how darn slow air travel can be if you're starting in London, especially if I don't fly for six months or more), I'm in Berlin, for two purposes. First of all, I'll be attending and blogging the Web 2.0 Expo here (as one of their premier bloggers, no less). And I'm looking forward to that.

However, I'm also using this as a springboard for a new project within the day job, which I'll fill you guys in on tomorrow. In the meantime, here's some Berlin scenes I grabbed with my Flip Mino earlier:


Arrival in Berlin from Adam Tinworth on Vimeo.

So far, so good. The taxi drivers are far more competent that their Parisian counterparts (the first taxi driver I used in Paris for Le Web last year took me to the wrong part of the city...), the city looks beautiful in the autumn sunshine and I'm only 10 minutes walk from the conference venue. But what about the hotel?

It's enough to put you off flying for life:

From a protest I ran into while in New York last week.

I'm a long way from home and very, very tired right now.

I'm in downtown Manhattan, here to visit our US office and speak at a conference on Wednesday.

However, I've been up for 17 hours at this point, so I need coffee before I can write anything more useful.

Things I've noticed on my journey:

1. For some reason, French trees look distinctly French. They're the same species on the whole, so I suspect it's just planting patterns.
2. I was busy plugging my laptop into the covenient power outlet next to my seat, when it struck me that it was odd to offer just a French socket on a London/Paris train. A little later on, the lady the other side of the aisle from me headed to the bar, and I noticed that the socket on her side was a UK one. A quick scout down the train confirmed it: France and UK sockets alternating. What a strange way of doing it. They clearly don't assign seats based on where you booked, or I wouldn't have ended up with a French socket.
3. There's so much more countryside in France than the UK. Intellectually, I've known that for years, but watching it fly by on the train makes it that much clearer.

Here's a first for me: I'm blogging somewhere under the English Channel. I'm off to Le Web 3 in Paris and finally getting to travel by Eurostar.

And, hmm, well, it's a touch disappointing. All the adverts they show you of the service certainly don't show you the economy class which, like a good corporate citizen, I've chosen. It's cramped, just a little too warm and feels ever-so-slightly grimy. In future, I'll see if I can wing it into business class.

Busy work day today. I'm off on a conference that took up the whole of this evening and will eat up pretty much all of tomorrow. And I'm looking forward to every minute of it. When did that happen?

However, the really cool thing is that both the conference venue and the hotel I'm staying in tonight have completely free internet access. Free WiFi at Sandown Park and free wired broadband in the room at Oatlands Park.

So, I'm keeping up with e-mail, IMing family and friends, listening to podcasts and even getting some blogging done, without it costing me a penny extra. That's customer service. That's what will bring me back to places like this.

Technorati Tags: business, business travel, conference centres, hotels, internet access, mobile working, wifi

I should be in France right now. I really should. I should have taken off from London Stanstead yesterday afternoon and landed in Poitiers an hour or so later. Thanks to terrorism, a somewhat extreme reaction from the security forces and bottled drinks, I'm writing this in London.

And I'm not happy.

Yes, a serious reaction to a serious threat is warranted. But at what point does the reaction actually do the terrorists' work for them. As I tried to cram my camera equipment into my hold baggage and decide what not take, these questions were pretty high in my mind. Not books to distract me from the tedium of the flight. No iPod to ease me through takeoff with great music (I'm a nervous flyer). No basic set of clothes with me in case the bags have lost.

I understand the risk. But if, as we seem to be doing, we make travel so miserable for everyone that all we get to carry on board is a handful of belonging is a clear plastic bag, then we're doing the terrorists' work every time someone gets on a plane. We're allowing them to adversely affect every flight people take. We're letting them win.

Still, I've been spared the flight experience. My passport is out of its plastic bag. Our flights were cancelled. We're not going anywhere. The holiday is delayed, possibly cancelled.

Somehow, we've got this one wrong.

Technorati Tags: aircraft, airports, flying, terrorism, terrorists, travel

A new subcategory has appeared under Travel in the list on the right. Florida is home to a series of posts I made while on holiday in, well, Florida 18 months ago. These lived in another blog, because I didn't want to advertise my absence to London's criminal fraternity, but really deserved a home here, too.

Enjoy.

This week, from yesterday, the15th, through to 21st May, is Malaria Awareness Week.

Why should you care? Well, let me quote a colleague, Piers, who was directly affected by it:

Most people in the UK think of malaria as a tropical disease that has little relevance to them.

Because of this most travellers going abroad do not check if the area they are going to is a malarial hotspot. Of those that do, most refuse, or forget, to take their medication.

My sister, Mattie, was one of those who forgot. Earlier this year she contracted a particularly unpleasant strain called cerebral malaria, which attacks the brain and central nervous system. It went unnoticed, and her GP assumed that she had flu. A week later, in the early hours of the morning of the 26th January, she died. All it took was one mosquito, one bite. She was 19 years old.

Many people, like Mattie, forget to take their pills. Others say that they are worried about the side effects of some Larium-based anti-malarial drugs, such as mefloquine. The fact is that only a handful of people experience any side effects, while just one mosquito bite can be fatal.

We need to raise awareness. Here is a comparison: So far 115 people have died from avian flu, and yet it dominates our newspapers, news programmes and our awareness. Each year over 1.5million people die of malaria, and despite this few people are aware of the dangers.

There is no need for people to die from malaria. It is preventable and treatable and yet it remains one of the major causes of death worldwide.

If you are going on holiday, or if anyone you know is going abroad, do check whether the area is a malarial hotspot. And if you are advised to take medication, follow that advice.

It is within our power to stop this vicious killer.

Please spread the word, raise awareness and take the pills.

And most of all, head to http://www.malariahotspots.co.uk/output/page1.asp  before you fly.

Technorati Tags: health, malaria, illness, travel