Sidenotes: Facts and Thoughts Beyond Travel

We can look at a city as a simple repository of buildings, monuments, streets, restaurants, shops, squares, and green spaces devoid of life but with a glorious past. As tourists though, it’d be nice if a city map could reveal something more, such as places and cultural initiatives creatively shaped by the local community.

Remapping the City: A Map of Madrid and Its Community Initiatives – Illustration by Los Madriles

An alternative mapping project like that of Los Madriles in Madrid, Spain can then become a new way of looking at the urban territory and fully understand its great diversity. All major cities should have one, don’t you agree?

Apple imagines and builds a sad, predictable world where all apps do more or less the same things. The difference is only a matter of price. For example, you look for a customizable GPS tracker and they assume that you want to monitor your amazing sports performance, keep an eye on your employees, or look for your lost phone. Unlike Android, you are trapped in an immutable ecosystem.

Why one would ever want to freely access their app files, easily disable location tracking, or connect a wired headset? BTW, did you know that to perform many tasks you still have to use the crappy iTunes software? As in a historical nemesis, Apple’s fans today are the brainwashed viewers. So, who throws the hammer?

Everybody is trying to convince you to buy a book for Christmas, so why don’t you watch a good movie instead? Here are some of our favorites from 2017.

1. Happy End by Michael Haneke (Drama) – A fearful new world of lives adrift.
2. The Great Buddha + by H. Hsin-Yao (Drama) – Neither new nor improved.
3. Motherland by Ramona S. Diaz (Doc) – Masterpiece of Filipino neorealism.
4. The Rider by Chloé Zhao (Drama) – Frail human nature in the “Wild West”.
5. Can’t Say Goodbye by Lino Escalera (Drama) – Debut film with great acting.
6. Just Like Our Parents by Laís Bodanzky (Drama) – Brazilian cinema at its best.
7. The Sea Stares at Us from Afar by Manuel M. Rivas (Doc) – Time and the land.
8. Faces Places by JR, Agnès Varda (Doc) – A very special journey in rural France.
9. Under the Tree by Hafsteinn Sigurðsson (Drama) – Pitch-dark Icelandic humor.
10. Taste of Cement by Ziad Kalthoum (Doc) – War as the only travel opportunity.

If 2017 was the Year of Sustainable Tourism, 2018, at least in Europe, will be that of Cultural Heritage. Well, the tourism project that probably best represents this transition bears the signature of home rental giant Airbnb, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture and the National Association of Municipalities.

Italian Villages Project: Sharing Rural Italy – Illustration by Airbnb

Italian Villages, this is the name of the interesting joint project, supports and promotes internationally twenty small rural communities, from north to south of the country. We like it for at least three good reasons:

• Offers an alternative to the usual tourist routes;
• Can guarantee the survival of villages otherwise destined to disappear;
• In the country with the largest number of World Heritage sites (53), it shows that there can be life beyond World Heritage sites.

The “Italian Villages” project is part of a wider national initiative, which involves 1,000 towns throughout Italy, and provides a rich and varied calendar of events.

To understand what most travel companies really think and expect from you, you’d better read between the lines when they are in “B2B mode”. Take for example this revealing phrase from one of EyeforTravel’s reports:

According to Reck, GetYourGuide sees the mobile phone becoming a remote control with which travelers can select whatever they want to do in a destination at any time, with instant booking available.

Exactly, be humble, sit down, and choose your fictitious experience from the menu. This is what tours and activities today are all about. It’s kind of an old dial TV with many identical channels. The Netflixization of travel is here to stay but, of course, you can always decide to turn it off until the programming changes.

Apple’s main reason for eliminating the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 was to make the phone water resistant without compromising its stylish design. It’s interesting to note how a year later, with the launch of iPhone X, the company continues to praise that choice, as if the AirPods were the “final tech frontier”, able to project us into a new dimension made of pirouettes in the snow.

The truth is that now the lady can throw her smartphone in a puddle (perhaps) but will no longer be able to use Augment, a really strong argument to choose Apple over other manufacturers. The app, in fact, is only available for iOS.

According to Pharrell Williams and other testimonials, Augment’s effects are even more powerful than those shown in the commercial above. So what to do? Buy the SE if you can’t resist to “hear the world your way” (or save big money).