Matador Network's Blog, page 2152

Paddling Lake Michigan icebergs

A couple weeks ago, we published a teaser for this video. Now that the full-length version is out, it sure doesn’t disappoint. Filmmaker Seth Haley delves into the motivation required to pull on a 6/5 wetsuit and jump into ice-choked water, while also supplying even more incredible footage of the paddlers in action. Filmed in Saint Joseph, Michigan, this video follows a group of intrepid surfers and paddleboarders as they make the most of the waves, wind, and ice of Lake Michigan in wintertime.


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Paris 100 years ago

When one knows Paris as it is now – cramped, noisy, polluted – it is hard to imagine that it used to look like a village with women selling flowers out of carts, horse-drawn vehicles on the Alexandre III Bridge, and a traffic-free Place de la Concorde.

The following images, captured between 1907 and 1930, were taken using the autochrome Lumière process, an early method of photography that allowed artists to capture the world around them in its natural colours. It is believed that most of the pictures featured below were taken by Léon Gimpel, Stéphane Passet, Georges Chevalier, and Auguste Léon. Thanks to Nicolas Bonnell and his blog Paris Unplugged, we are now able to see what Paris looked like over 100 years ago.




1

Flower merchant, Cambon Street, June 1918

Photo: Auguste Léon

2

Faubourg Saint Denis Street, 1914

Photo: artist unknown

3

On the Alexandre III Bridge

Photo: artist unknown

Intermission


1
This is the sickest ski video we’ve ever seen
by Matt Hershberger




A photographic journey through the Torres del Paine, Patagonia
by Michael Marquand




Inside Charlie Hebdo: The Paris attack targeted paper that mocked fundamentalists
by Paul Ames













4

Homeless man by the River Seine

Photo: artist unknown

5

Gardens of Les Invalides, 1909

Photo: artist unknown

6

Family on Pot de Fer Street, June 24th, 1914

Photo: artist unknown

7

Citroën Commercial on the Eiffel Tower for the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts

Photo: Artist unknown

8

Military man at Les Invalides, 1918

Photo: artist unknown

9

Place du Caire, 1914

Photo: Stéphane Passet

Intermission


46
22 reasons why we should all be moving to Barcelona right now
by Elisa Stutts-Barquin




5 reasons to go motorcycle camping
by Rory Moulton




Remembering the 17 victims of the Paris attacks
by Allison Jackson













10

Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral, 1920

Photo: artist unknown

11

Montparnasse Street, July 22nd, 1914

Photo: Stéphane Passet

12

Christmas decorations at La Samaritaine, 1930

Photo: artist unknown

13

Auteuil metro station, 1920

Photo: Frédéric Gadmer

14

Place de la Concorde

Photo: artist unknown

15

Movie theatre, 1918

Photo: artist unknown

Intermission


58
19 things you need to do in the US while you’re still in your 20s
by Katka Lapelosová




NASA releases the highest resolution photo ever taken
by Morgane Croissant



2
20 real world places that have inspired Disney movies
by Matt Hershberger













16

Exhibition at the Grand Palais, 1909

Photo: artist unknown

17

Kitchen gardens in the 16th arrondissement, June 28th, 1918

Photo: Auguste Léon

18

Paris decorated for Bastille day, July 13th, 1919

Photo: Auguste Léon

19

Departure of the zeppelin Zodiac III, August 28th, 1909

Photo: artist unknown

extreme unicycling is badass

Caving requires some serious guts, but unicycle caving is a whole new level of crazy. Combine the risk of being trapped in a small space underground to the one of falling from a one-wheeled vehicle onto rocks and there, you have it.

Regular unicycling looks incredibly technical and physical, but the balance and focus needed to ride the rugged terrain of a cave are even more impressive. “Riding about is second nature, it’s just an extension of my body, […] it’s easier than walking for me!”, explains Tom Luppon. Just looking at these guys riding makes you feel like you’re doing core work.

Even though they remain careful, the passion that drives Steffan Thomas and Tom Luppon is what takes them to push the limit of this unusal sport. “There’s so much stuff underground which is unlike anything else you’ll see above ground, and we just have to unicycle it!”

Feature image: kfsk casual photography

All of the Super Bowl Ads

THERE’S AN ENTIRE subsection of America that has no interest in watching the Super Bowl, and watches it just for the advertisements. In the age of YouTube, though — now that advertisers have realized that if they’re paying $4.5 million dollars for a Super Bowl ad spot, they might as well get as much exposure out of it as they can — you can watch the ads without having to watch the game. Here are all of the Super Bowl ads that have already been posted online, in alphabetical order.

BMW’s “Newfangled Idea”

Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel reunite to recreate their clueless 1994 discussion of the internet — this time to discuss BMW’s new electric car.

Bud Light’s “Real Life Pac-Man”

Bud Light’s ongoing successful “Let’s throw a party for some poor schmuck who’s so impoverished that he has to drink our beer,” ad campaign continues with the latest schmuck being thrown into a real-life version of Pac-Man — which admittedly, looks like a ton of fun.

Budweiser’s “Clydesdale Beer Run”

Because honestly, the only way you’re buying a case of Budweiser is if a horse bullies you into it.

Budweiser’s “Lost Puppy”

“Budweiser: get drunk on our beer and lose your cute little puppy dog so he’ll be rained on and attacked by wolves.”

Dove’s “#RealStrength”

The secret to being a really good, non-negligent father? Soap.

E!’s “The Royals”

E! has a new TV show that’s about English royalty starring the woman from Austin Powers who turned out to be a fembot. It can’t be bad, right? Right?

Kia’s “The Perfect Getaway”

A commercial about how Pierce Brosnan’s getting tired of cashing in on James Bond by making the poor guy cash in on James Bond.

Lexus’ “Make Some Noise”

If you buy a Lexus NX, you’ll be locked into a parking garage and you’ll be forced to perform in STOMP.

Mercedes-Benz’s “Fable”

The guys at Mercedes-Benz spend 62 seconds kicking the corpse of Aesop by defiling his most famous fable.

Mophie’s “All-Powerless”

Mophie makes a complex theological argument that an all-knowing god somehow didn’t know to purchase their all-powerful phone. Also, the universe is actually a phone, which I guess makes us apps.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 puns on Deflategate by pointing out that “balls” is another word for testicles. This ad wins this year’s “Truest Representation of the Product” award.

Terminator Genisys

Question for the runners of the Terminator franchise: if Arnie’s Terminator is a robot with synthetic skin, why is the robot aging?

Snickers’ “The Brady Bunch”

Actually a pretty solid commercial, but it would’ve been better if it’d turned really dark and violent and had turned into another Machete sequel.

T-Mobile’s “#KimsDataStash”

Kim Kardashian wasn’t sure everyone knew how into herself she was, so she decided to make this PSA.

Victoria’s Secret

Victoria’s Secret does not need to be edgy, funny, or creative. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Why other nations think you're weird

Photo: Fluent in 3 Months

One of the main reasons I travel so much is that I find it fascinating to see how different people are across different cultures.

For new travellers, some of these differences can make people from other countries seem completely weird or just plain rude.

Simple things you take for granted as being done in a standard way — like checking into a hotel, greeting a shopkeeper, or ordering food in a restaurant — can have completely different cultural norms from what you’re used to, sometimes leaving you to wonder: “What is wrong with those people?”

Today I wanted to share a few anecdotes I’ve heard from travellers encountering the weird ways other cultures do seemingly standard stuff. I’ll emphasize how funny some of these differences can be, especially when you look at them from both perspectives rather than critique them as “wrong”.

We’ll start with a story my friend Derek Sivers told me about the way hospitality is done in India.

A confused Indian in Finland

Derek (in his own words):

In India, you’ll notice that hotels feel overstaffed.

There will be 5 uniformed men standing in the driveway, waiting to open the door of the occasional arriving taxi. There will be 2 men next to them whose job is just to open the door to the lobby. Inside the lobby, there will be a dozen men and women there to greet you and point you in the direction you’re already walking.

They will insist on carrying your bag for you, even if it’s just a little backpack. Politely declining seems to shock and frustrate them. Once you check in, there will be one or two people to walk you to the elevator, press the button for you and bring you to your room, then guide you around your regular little hotel room, showing you where the bed, TV, and toilet is, and how the AC remote control works.

I guess it’s a sign of low cost of labor, especially when you find out it’s cheaper to hire a car with a full-time driver to drive you everywhere, than it is to rent a car and drive it yourself.

So I was having lunch with a successful Indian businessman one day, and mentioned my observation of the over-staffed hotels. Even though he’s a worldly guy, he was sincerely surprised.

“Really? You think so?” He thought about it for a bit, then said something fascinating:

“Actually I had the opposite experience. I was flown to Helsinki Finland once for a conference. They put me up at a nice high-class Hyatt hotel.

I take the taxi from the airport to the hotel, the taxi driver drops me at the door, and there I stand, alone! Nobody around to help me with my bags!

I wondered if perhaps the hotel has gone out of business.

I walk into the lobby, and again, empty! I was starting to get worried until I saw a woman behind the counter at the other end of the lobby.

I tell her my name, she checks me in, then gives me my room key, and tells me to have a nice night. I thought, What kind of nonsense is this?

How can a hotel have no staff? Am I just supposed to find the room by myself?

I eventually did, but thought it was outrageous, and mentioned it to the conference organizers the next day. They laughed and assured me that’s how things are done there. So strange.”

***

Derek’s story shows that the weirdness of a country is completely a matter of perspective. From a western perspective, the idea of someone pushing our elevator buttons for us and telling us precisely where inside the bathroom we’ll find the toilet is ridiculous. It’s too much. But for Derek’s friend, the absence of this sort of hospitality left him feeling neglected.

I really appreciate this story, because I distinctly remember arriving in India last month and experiencing exactly what Derek described.

I had just arrived in India, flying in from Indonesia at around 11pm at night. I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was get the key to my hotel room and faceplant into the pillow.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, I did indeed have to “endure” the local hospitality, complete with a tour of my room and instructions on how to use the phone. The whole time I was mentally begging the attendant to please leave please leave please leave! and I was left overwhelmed and a little agitated by what I considered to be an excessive and over-the-top greeting for simple hotel accommodation in Mumbai.

Something similar happened to me in Singapore, when the attendant of my rented room listed out and pointed out literally every item in the apartment. “You have two forks (shows me the forks), two spoons, (shows me the spoons)” and on and on and on until she had covered literally everything we had, right down to the two curtains and two curtain ties. I shit you not.

Luckily we weren’t tired or jetlagged during this particular adventure, so we took it in good humour!

Weird restaurant culture
Asking “how are you?”

One of the first conversations I ever had with Lauren when I met her was about how confused she was, from her American perspective, about “something” she was “doing wrong” in restaurants as she travelled through Europe. She told me she kept getting strange looks from people, but couldn’t figure out why.

Ten minutes into lunch with her, I knew exactly why. She would say “Hello, how are you?” enthusiastically to waiters or waitresses whenever they came to they table. And OF COURSE they would give her strange looks as a response. I say “of course” because I benefit here from the European perspective, which screams: Why would she want to know how they are doing?? They just met her!

In Europe, we don’t do that. Questions like “How are you?” are reserved for friends or people who you genuinely want to know how they are doing and what’s going on in their life. If you’re a European just doing your job at the restaurant where you work, having a customer who’s a total stranger ask how you’re doing is just plain weird.

And this is of course a completely different perspective from that of North America, where it’s polite and friendly to ask the question as pretty much a universal greeting!

Beating around the bush

In another example, a Canadian reader told me she was in Berlin in a Starbucks, and wanted to Instagram her coffee. Suddenly the German waiter came up to her while she was getting ready to take the photo and said “Please don’t take photos in our café. Thanks.”

She was horrified by his rudeness!

Of course, in Germany saying that is perfectly reasonable, as Germans tend to be more direct and don’t “beat around the bush” when giving bad news. But in Canada, the norm is to “sandwich” something so “blunt” with pleasantries.

A sensible Canadian waiter would have said, “Hi there, how are you? Everything OK with your mocha? Anyway, no biggie, and I’m really sorry to disturb you, but unfortunately we have a policy of not allowing photos to be taken in our café. I hope you don’t mind! And I’m so sorry about this. Thanks again for coming to Starbucks and enjoy your drink!”

To Europeans like me, this is a mindbogglingly verbose and roundabout way of saying something much simpler.

I, again, can relate to the European perspective here, and I’ve gotten into trouble with some American friends and colleagues for not sandwiching my bluntness! I actually sometimes ask Lauren to “edit” my emails to American companies to soften my language after I once learned the hard way when a very innocent email I sent nearly ended an important business arrangement.

“Good” service or “bad” service depends on which side of the pond you’re from

One of my funniest interactions with North American vs. European differences was when I used Yelp to find a restaurant in Berlin, and I read a two-star restaurant review that went something like this:

….so, I get here and sit down, and then nobody came over to me. I waited several minutes and the waiters just ignored me! I glared at them the entire time and they didn’t flinch. I couldn’t believe it, and I finally had to actually raise my arm and wave them over to give my order! Then, after I finally ordered my food, it took over 20 entire minutes for the food to arrive. When I was finished, no one brought the check and I had to ask for it myself!

To me, this review is hilarious because from a European perspective, this is an example of perfectly good service!

For my confused American friends, let me explain.

In Europe, the whole experience of eating in a restaurant is that the waitstaff bothers you as little as possible. Meals tend to be a very slow process, and part of the restaurant experience is that you get the table to yourself and call the waiters over when you need them. They expect that if you want something, you’ll tell them. Otherwise, they’ll let you sit there, undisturbed, for hours on end, reading your book and pondering whatever you ponder! So for me, calling waiters over in obvious gestures and waiting 20 minutes for food is completely normal.

Whereas in North America, good service requires that waiters and waitresses double check that you have everything you need as often as possible. They’re supposed to anticipate your needs, for example by bringing you the bill before you even have to ask.

I can also attest after spending a lot of time in America that the food just gets prepared way faster there. I don’t know how they do it. In comparison, restaurants in the UK and Europe are tortoise slow. Lauren actually commented to a British person once, “You know how food is really slow to come out in the UK?” …and he had no idea what she was talking about.

Food service in America is completely different to Europe. Kitchens are well-oiled machines where turnover is as important as quality. And it’s not just “fast food” that’s fast — it’s all restaurants! For my American friends, 15 minutes is a long time to wait for food in a restaurant. Anything over 20 minutes is an outrage.

But on the other side of the pond, 20 or even 30 minutes of waiting for your food to arrive is totally normal!

Now try to imagine the American restaurant experience from the eyes of a foreigner.

This means that Europeans in North America feel very rushed and pestered in US restaurants. I can imagine a European Yelp review of an American restaurant saying something like this:

…this restaurant is in too much of a hurry. They made the food in a hurry, slamming it on my table five minutes after I ordered. After that, my waitress wouldn’t leave me alone! Every five minutes she’d annoy me with another question, interrupting an intimate conversation or asking me how my food was while I was chewing! And they brought my bill before I asked for it, basically telling me to hurry up and get out!

When I’m in America I have to remember not to wave down a waiter/waitress whenever I need something, as this is considered quite rude of the customer (as my ex-waitress girlfriend confirms every time I do it). I have to try not to get frustrated when they interrupt me every five minutes to ask how my food is. And I still can’t get used to my bill getting slapped down on the table with a waitress saying “Whenever you’re ready hon!” since it feels like I’m getting kicked out.

That’s a formula for unfortunately misplaced Yelp reviews if there ever was one!

And then there’s the whole tipping thing. I’m not even going to try to explain it — so I’ll just refer you to this article instead!

An Indian on car horns in America

Okay, last story (but I could go on and on!)

When Westerners first get to many Asian countries, the endless car horns can make it seem like everyone has road rage. Because they do indeed honk their horns all the time.

But it does not mean the same thing as it does when people do it in the West, where it usually means something like “Move out my way, asshole!” or “I don’t like that thing you did just there and this is my way of informing you of that fact!”

On the contrary. In many Asian countries, like Thailand and Indonesia and certainly India, it’s simply their way of indicating they are doing something, like turning or passing you. So it’s actually an important part of second-by-second communication on the road.

To wrap up, Derek tells us another story he heard from an Indian on this subject:

“I commented to a young programmer in Bangalore India on the cacophony of the ever-beeping horns of every car, truck, and scooter on the roads there. Again, he felt the opposite.

He had just been flown to America for his first time for some consulting work, and said, “Here I was. Chicago! America! It was even rush hour when I arrived. But in the taxi from the airport to my hotel…silence!

Hundreds of cars, but none of them making a sound! It was eerie! Like a funeral!

Why so silent? What’s wrong? It was hard for me to sleep that night with all that spooky silence.”

***

From my many years of travelling, I’ve learned to appreciate these cultural differences (or at least try). By looking at my own culture retrospectively, I’ve been able to make cultural adjustments with Parisians, I’ve broken through cultural stereotypes to get to know Germans, Dutch, Japanese, Egyptians, Chinese, and many other cultures and I’ve picked up quite a few new habits myself!

I suggest you give it a try the next time you travel, and try to imagine how your ways might seem “weird” from the outside perspective.

This article originally appeared on Fluent in 3 Months and is republished here with permission.

Rare images of flipped icebergs

I’VE DEFINITELY VOWED to take more selfies this year, but damn, does the world really need another shot of my duck face when gorgeous, up-turned icebergs exist? While vacationing in Antarctica, photographer Alex Cornell made use of his skills by taking some amazing photographs of icebergs that had reversed their floating pattern. It’s not something that happens all of the time, and we’re lucky that Cornell was around to capture the moment.

You can see a few more shots from this trip on his Instagram account.

Flipped iceberg in #antarctica

A photo posted by Alex Cornell (@alexcornell) on Jan 6, 2015 at 10:04am PST

Different angle, same iceberg. Superman's house. #antarctica

A photo posted by Alex Cornell (@alexcornell) on Jan 16, 2015 at 8:50am PST

Sort of looks like a wolf about to eat the boat #antarctica

A photo posted by Alex Cornell (@alexcornell) on Jan 26, 2015 at 10:21am PST

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Stop racism — share this video

Ah, a situation every traveler of color must dread: getting seated next to an old, racist white person. Ugh, I can only imagine.

In this British Airways commercial, a racist passenger on a flight from Johannesburg objects to being seated next to a black man. She asks for another seat. The flight attendant says she’ll check for another option and later returns to say there is one seat in first class and that the captain of the plane has approved a transfer to that seat because he feels that someone should not have to sit next to such an awful person. What happens next is a real table-turner. Watch to find out.


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Epic vid of traveling Vietnam

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THIS IS WHY YOU TRAVEL. For the open road, for weeks spent hopping trains and glittering dark nights on surging streets where the neon signs flash like a thousand stars.

Set to Talisco’s “My Home” and filmed with a Canon 5D Mark II, as Georgy Tarasov films his brother Daniil on their 45-day adventure through Vietnam, you can feel the rippling energy of their trip as they swing through the country by every mode of transport possible. And it’s inspiring as hell, an epic reminder that to travel is to be free.

A free ebook for travelers

Author’s note: This year, on Martin Luther Kind Jr. Day of Service in the US (January 19), I answered Dr. King’s question, “What are you doing for others?” by releasing Adventures Less Ordinary: How to Travel and Do Good , a free e-guide to mindful adventures. Months in the making, it’s an anthology of analyses and suggestions from two dozen experienced experts who have been working for many years to improve the volunteer travel industry.

The contributors explore the merits and perils of many established “voluntourism” activities and then provide practical advice to ethically-minded travelers about how to be sure of making a positive impact. It is, in short, a how-to handbook for compassionate people guided as much by the good you give as the good you get.

The following excerpt is part of my Editor’s Note to the book. If you nurture a free-spirited and adventure-minded desire for more to travel than just getting somewhere and being there, please register to receive your free copy at http://bit.ly/1wvCUDS.

Getting an Accurate Snapshot of Travel Generosity

Volunteer Linda Pritchard helps build a greenhouse for the Andean community in Machu Picchu, Peru.

When photographing an object in motion, you have three principal options: use an incredibly fast shutter speed for a crisp capture of both the moving object and the background, but not a sense of the motion; pan as the object passes to freeze just the object against an artistic blur of background; or, for background clarity and an object blur, simply snap the object without panning.

No matter what you do, though, something is missing: a sense of speed, or pixel-perfect detail of either the object or the background.

That was the challenge I accepted when I agreed to commission and edit contributions for Adventures Less Ordinary: How to Travel and Do Good: the necessary omission of something essential. Should our snapshots of the ways in which travel generosity can be harnessed provide a clear sense of what’s happening today against the broader state of travel and tourism, but without addressing any sense of the need for growth and change? Or should it focus on one element (the ways for altruistic travelers to give back, for example) at the expense of another (the tourism context inspiring such responsible behavior) and preserve the sense of progress and development?

Travel-Inspired Community Service

The Inspired Escapes water safari engages in a local clean water project, shadowing local residents as they build clean water wells in their community.

For decades, high-minded, compassionate, and generous travelers have understood the virtues of sharing time and money with worthy projects around the world. Students have offered their vigor and energy. Skilled professionals have donated their services. People of all stripes have made good with their time and money to improve the lot of others less fortunate.

Today more than ever before, there’s a sweeping sense of travel-inspired community service, with a broad embrace of the whole globe as our community. It has prompted growing numbers of free-spirited, adventure-minded explorers to step out of familiar routines and then interact with the world around them in ways that make a positive and lasting impact on the people and communities they visit and of which they are a part.

But while there’s nothing new about the desire to give as much as (or more than) one gets, many of the means by which such charitable assistance can be delivered are quite novel. And these days the knowledge of how best to leverage both big-heartedness and the jargony lexicon used to describe it is constantly in flux. More than just a work in progress, the whole complex of thoughts and actions associated with voluntourism, volunteerism, volunteering, service learning, charity challenges, travel fundraisers etc. is constantly shifting its basic shape and its substance.

This is all the more true as volunteering and fundraising topics are no longer as standalone as they once were. The activities with which they are associated are being integrated into the broad and growing pool of commercial but no less authentic travel experiences so appealing to new generations of travelers.

Acknowledging Complexity

Happy children drink clean water in the Luwero village of Uganda, after the installation of a water well paid for through charity fundraising.

So how could all of this be tackled in one guide, knowingly surrendering to an incomplete picture while hoping to provide as broad and as deep a base of understanding as possible? How could this unwieldy topic be introduced without overwhelming the casual traveler or being too jejune? How could this be accomplished without painting with too broad a brush and misrepresenting the work being done — undermining the good or erroneously overvaluing the bad? How could it be part of a collaborative effort to #MendNotEnd voluntourism?

The trick, I think, has been to acknowledge the complexity of the topic and tackle it from as many perspectives — and with the input of as many voices — as possible.

That is most evident in Part 1 of the guide, called Good Actions: What’s Being Done, which is, in keeping with the photographic analogy used above, the snapshot employing a fast shutter speed, freeze-framing topics and their contexts. A chorus of authoritative voices weighs in on a selection of typical activities through which service-oriented and philanthropic travelers have been doing good — working with children or wildlife, shoring up infrastructure and contributing to community development. By tapping these deep reserves of knowledge and experience, this guide provides readers with a critical lay of the land.

In an effort to reintegrate a sense of percolating change, one that encourages readers to focus on future developments and how best to leverage them, the second section of the guide, called Good Intentions: What to Think About, encourages review of what to think about before, during and after acting.

Three Core Considerations

In both sections, a point was made of assembling information that covers three core considerations:

* the state of the service-oriented travel industry — contributors were asked to hold nothing back when describing what’s going on, how things work, and how successful they have proven to be;

* a sense of the pitfalls of which travelers should be aware — as nothing’s perfect (yet), contributors were asked to explain how to approach service-focused travel planning with a smart and critical eye, teasing out the areas of concern and finding ways to deal with them that help improve the space;

* the kinds of questions to ask when seeking to meet the needs of local communities and the emotional and philanthropic desires of donors — moving toward improvement means giving people the means to root out trouble and then steer well clear of it.

The result is, I believe, a potent resource for compassionate people seeking the ultimate adventure.

All photos are courtesy of Inspired Escapes.

Where to go on your honeymoon quiz

Featured photo by Kellan