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How to piss off a Canadian-Jamaican

Photo: Adrian Araya

I’VE SPENT MOST OF MY LIFE around my Jamaican family and a good part (okay, all) of my formative years practicing the art of pissing them off. I consider myself somewhat of an expert in riling up a Jamaican, but I’m not a Jamaican. I’m Canadian-Jamaican, which brings with it different scenarios that result in being pissed off.

Ask where we’re really from.

I remember reading this in my tenth grade Civics textbook: Canada is a “cultural mosaic” — Canadians retain their unique ethnic identity while contributing to the nation as a whole.

We’re pretty damn proud of it, too, if only because it stands in contrast to the American “melting pot” assimilationist culture. For that reason, people think it’s okay to open a conversation thus:

“Where are you from?”

“Canada.”

If you want to get even more of a reaction, put a confused look on your face and throw in a “really” for good measure.

“No, where are you really from?”

“Toronto.”

“Yeah, but where were your parents born?”

“Jamaica.”

To really get us going, follow it up with this:

“You’re Jamaican? Awesome — I love Bob Marley!”

You and pretty much the entire world. Seriously. We enjoy Bob Marley’s music, too, but we did grow up in Canada. We liked Nelly Furtado and Celine Dion just as much as the next guy.

In a way, we’re just glad you didn’t say Sean Paul or someone embarrassing like that, but if you really want a pat on the back, say you love Beres Hammond or Tarrus Riley. Then we can talk — as long as you don’t ask this:

“Do you know how to speak ‘Jamaican’?”

You mean English? Because that’s the country’s official language. Our parents speak English, our grandparents speak English, and so on, albeit with an accent. Now, if you’re referring to Jamaican Patois, which we suspect you are, then the answer will always be “no” if we think you’re going to try and make us say something. Once we do, it either results in laughter or squeals about how cool it is.

For those of Jamaican descent who didn’t live in Jamaica at all, we don’t always have the most positive attachment with Patois — we generally only heard it growing up when we were in trouble with our parents. If we were lucky enough to have other Jamaican classmates, we may have used it to make fun of you for asking such an annoying question, though.

Quote Cool Runnings to us.

“Sanka, ya dead?” The number of times we’ve heard that line butchered is enough to make our blood boil. The original line was butchered in the first place. Cool Runnings was actually based on a great story that could have been an interesting study of racism in sport and beating the odds. Instead, it has become a punchline.

Most of the actors playing Jamaicans in the film were not Jamaican, their accents were terrible, and it played up stereotypes about Jamaicans. The fact that you’re quoting it only perpetuates this caricaturization of Jamaicans in film, so think for a second before you do that after saying how much you love it.

This also applies to saying “No problem, mon.” We will wish excruciating pain upon you.

Assume that all the men in our family have dreadlocks and are Rastafarian.

Only 3% of Jamaicans practice Rastafari. From what I know about Rastafari (Note: Don’t add the -ism — that’s part of the “Babylon culture” they are critical of), they don’t practice in traditional churches and Jamaica actually has the most churches per square mile in the world. Most Jamaicans are Christians, and that generally applies to our families as well.

Insist that wine is a drink.

Rum and Red Stripe are drinks. Wine is a dance. Maybe you want to call it “twerking” and bring up Miley Cyrus, but Jamaicans were doing it long before the teen queen was even born.

Assume all we ate growing up was jerk chicken.

Only for dinner, actually. For breakfast we had Jamaica’s national dish, ackee and saltfish, with fried plantains and fried dumplings. For lunch, oxtail stew over rice and peas with breadfruit. As a snack, we would have a Jamaican patty with cocoa bread. Then, and only then, did we have jerk chicken served up with steamed callaloo, boiled green bananas, Irish potatoes, and yams, a side of freshly pressed sugarcane juice and pineapple and rum upside down cake, made with pineapples shipped straight from the motherland, for dessert.

Or we had pasta. It was a tossup.

The post How to piss off a Canadian-Jamaican appeared first on Matador Network.

12 surprising facts about emoticons

Photo: Holger Eilhard

YOU PROBABLY take emoticons for granted. I do. Colon-parenthesis is a smile. Semi-colon-parenthesis is a wink. Colon-capital-P is a tongue sticking out. For many of you these have probably been a part of your vocabulary since you remember. They just are. But they haven’t always been. Here’s a history lesson for you.

Your brain reacts to emoticons as if they were real faces, according to a recent study in the scientific journal Social Neuroscience.
The first email smiley face was sent at 11:44 am on September 19, 1982.
The message was not originally saved (they were able to retrieve a copy 20 years after the fact).
Colon-dash-parenthesis was invented by Scott Fahlman, a research professor at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science.
The smiley face was created to mark a lighter or sarcastic tone in the simple text messages and avoid misunderstandings and fights.
The first idea to mark messages as “not serious” was to use an asterisk in the subject line. Scott thought he could do better than that.
It started being used just within the school Scott worked in, then spread to other schools but was limited to how many were joined — at that point, around 10 — over the ARPANET (the Internet in those days).
As more schools joined the network they would take on the use of the smiley face, expanding its reach and use.
The inventor of the text smiley face doesn’t like emojis, the graphic illustration of the character-based emoticons. He thinks they’re ugly.
Some people challenge the validity that Scott invented the first emoticon; a transcript from 1862 of an Abraham Lincoln speech apparently contains a winkey smiley face.
It’s theorized that this winkey smiley face in Abraham Lincoln’s speech is just a typo.
Scott doesn’t claim to be the inventor of emoticons; he just invented colon-dash-parenthesis.

Below is an entertaining interview with Scott Fahlman on CBC’s “Q”:

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How we'd use Oculus Rift travel

FACEBOOK IS IN THE PROCESS of buying up technologies for huge sums of money, and the latest asset they’ve acquired is the company behind the head-mounted Oculus Rift virtual reality system.

The Oculus Rift started as a Kickstarter campaign geared mostly towards gamers — which is what it’s going to be primarily used for. We here at Matador, though, think it shouldn’t stop there: Any number of real-world virtual experiences could be created using Oculus technology, including travel experiences.

Here are ten of the VR travel experiences we’d love to see with the Oculus Rift:

1. Standing at the Sun Gate, looking down on Machu Picchu

2. Floating along the canals of Venice

3. Flying up through the girders of the Eiffel Tower (no elevator lines!)

4. Soaring down over the edge of the Grand Canyon, eagle-style

5. Scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef

6. Hang gliding over Maui

7. Going into low Earth orbit with the International Space Station

8. Heli skiing the mountains of Alaska

9. Trekking in Nepal

10. Running with the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain

What travel experiences would you want to try through virtual reality technology?

The post 10 simulated travel experiences we want to see with Oculus Rift appeared first on Matador Network.

What it’s like to be gay in Russia

Photo: Nuria Fatych

Being gay in Russia is now a criminal act, and journalist Jeff Sharlet spent several weeks profiling a group of Russians who have increasingly gone underground or even into exile. His research culminated in a GQ article: Inside the Iron Closet: What It’s Like to Be Gay in Putin’s Russia.

Sharlet describes how Putin’s government, along with the Russian Orthodox Church and what he calls a fringe element — mostly tough-guy homophobes — work together in an “unholy trinity” to crack down on the country’s queer population. Violence against gays and widespread discrimination have been codified by a law that bans gay “propaganda” — a law that was passed by Putin’s government in June of 2013.

“The law is straight out of Russian literature,” says Sharlet.

We recently caught up and talked about the restrictions queer people face in the same country that hosted this year’s Winter Olympics.

* * *

AH: You say early on in your article for GQ that civil society in Russia is imploding. I found that a really succinct way to explain a complicated concept.

JS: I think when I wrote that, it was before the invasion of Ukraine, and there were a lot more Putin apologists around. And I think there’s a sort of implicit assumption that a European nation with wealth is somehow in one way or another moderate in its governance. It’s just like how there are certain people who’ll say that all the anti-gay laws passed in Uganda were passed because it’s an African country. That’s just some old racist bullshit.

Putin’s government is no longer interested in even maintaining some kind of human rights norms. At least for LGBT rights, things [before Putin] were getting better — there were political lines you couldn’t cross, and now that’s turned around, I think not just for LGBT people. Putin has decided to really rule with a fist.

But the real keyword in that was imploding, I didn’t want to say it [civil society] was destroyed. Some of the aspects are still there — in terms of youth sports leagues — that’s all there, and that’s all intact. But in terms of NGOs, the ability for people to pursue sometimes political things, sometimes non, and freedom of the press — publishing, the banning of books. There’s sort of a larger sense of restriction on culture.

Is the gay community going increasingly underground?

It’s going underground or into exile, if you’re a middle-class person, if you have the resources — a lot of those people are looking into leaving. If you have kids I think it’s insane for you to not be investigating it. Laws like this are not made to be enforced. They’re made to terrify people.

One story I couldn’t fit in was about a lesbian couple with a kid. They were friendly with their neighbors, and their kids all played together. But since the law has passed, the heterosexual couple has decided to supplement their income by blackmailing the lesbian couple. [They’re threatening to turn the lesbian couple in to authorities if they don’t pay a certain amount of money.]

People have gone back into the closet, and there’s a whole generation of people who aren’t going to come out at all.

Given how scary it is to be openly queer in Russia right now, how did you actually meet LGBT people?

I had written about Uganda; I had a lot of connections with LGBT rights organizations. But my method as a writer is I don’t go with lots of important people lined up. I’m interested in regular people. To meet the people who become characters in the story, you go from person to person, you have a lot of conversations until someone connects you to a friend.

I knew going over that I was going to work with a regular translator. Zhenya [a queer activist] was just my kind of translator. He’s not a regular fixer. I knew I needed a queer translator. I’d already made that mistake in Uganda (of having a straight translator). Zhenya had been in exile, and so he was rediscovering his country sort of right alongside me.

In the story we meet a lesbian couple and a gay couple who pose as two separate straight families, who live next door to each other. You write, “In an upper-middle-class neighborhood close to Moscow’s city center, two apartments face each other. Two families, two daughters. They leave the doors open to allow easy access from one to the other.” In fact, the couples have raised two daughters together. So each daughter has two dads and two moms. The arrangement defuses suspicions that the daughters’ parents are all queer. I found this family, and the lengths they go to in order to stay safe, fascinating.

That family is so sad. I don’t know what will happen to them. I don’t think it’s going to be good. I think they will be broken up. Nik was a profoundly square man. This was a family man. Not an activist in any sense. He felt like he’d been pushed to the edge. He had met this woman. They just decided to have a family. That’s what he wanted. He realized as an adolescent that he was gay and also wanted to have a family. Then later he met Pavel, his partner.

You can sense the love he feels for his daughters.

Oh, I mean it really is, it’s very powerful. It’s [being in the closet] sort of — it’s driving him crazy. To me, I have two little kids, the thought of having to teach them that they could never call me father — there’s something so perverse about that.

Of course, in a country like Uganda, things are much worse. But there’s a way this law is like a law out of Russian literature. It’s perverse. It is a truly unnatural law.

You know in Uganda they banned homosexuality. But Russia, in a way, outlawed love. It is literally a crime for you to say that you love your partner as much as a heterosexual person loves her boyfriend. To assert equality is the crime.

While you were in Russia you visited several gay clubs. You used small vignettes of club life to break up your story. What was it like visiting these places given the atmosphere of fear and government crackdowns?

My editor wanted club scenes, and not only am I not a club person, but I was thinking, how am I going to get in? I don’t look… You don’t want me there! And Zhenya, my punk-rock translator, felt the same way. But we did end up there. And we pretty much covered the whole scene in two weeks. I would often go into the club and feel like I’m such a fucking dork here.

A lot of those people [who frequent clubs] feel like the law doesn’t affect them much at all. If you’re 22, unmarried, and living in Moscow, your day can begin at midnight. I met a gay go-go dancer, and he didn’t really know what’s going on in the rest of the world.

And I felt that without these vignettes of club life we have only villains and heroes. But the truth is, not everyone can become Rosa Parks, oppression breaks people.

And on the note of oppression, it seems to operate in a deeply wound-together system in Russia. Could you explain more about what you call the trilogy of Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church, and the homophobic fringe element?

Yeah. The sort of unholy trinity.

The trinity is the flipside to civil society is imploding. [It operates with] a kind of brutal efficiency, which is true of homophobias in all places. We don’t always recognize that it’s not just backwoods evil people hurting queers — in the case of Russia, the state harnesses the church, the church has been so long suppressed and confused about its identity, and then there’s the rabble of the nationalist thugs.

They all get legitimacy from each other. The state needs the legitimacy of the church, the church needs the power of the state, and of course the rabble could use their energy to confront the fact that they don’t have a lot of economic opportunities, or [the thinking goes], “We could just go beat up a faggot and feel better faster.”

Homophobia is a giant bureaucracy of hate.

From your article I came away with the sense that anti-gay lawmakers in Russia learned their tactics from the American right wing.

There are many channels through which this is going. They get it from the American Family Association and the Family Research Council. One Russian lawmaker was deeply informed by the phony social science of the American Right. Homophobia in America is supposedly on the run, but we don’t recognize that some of the phony social science is being churned out by mainline academia as well.

The contemporary right wing is based on ideas, and ideas travel. There’s no conspiracy. There just need to be really awful ideas that can be amplified across other countries. They couldn’t pass the Arizona law [SB-1062], but they can contribute to those ideas becoming law around the world.

The post What it’s like to be gay in Russia appeared first on Matador Network.

Aerial video of a dolphin 'stampede'

Yes, there is such a thing as a dolphin stampede, and, yes, it’s awesome. Dave Anderson, who runs Captain Dave’s Dolphin and Whale Watching Safari in California, managed to capture a “mega pod” (a large group) of dolphins stampeding using a GoPro mounted on a quadcopter drone. He also caught some pretty sick footage of whales from above.

Video like this is enough to convince me that, while Obama’s drones are bombing villages in Pakistan and Yemen, and while Amazon’s drones are murderous sentient death machines, not all drones are bad — we should try to use them as much as possible if it helps us get even more incredible wildlife footage.

The post A drone-mounted GoPro captured this footage of a dolphin ‘stampede’ appeared first on Matador Network.

Middle-aged women travel better

Photo: Thomas Leuthard

We’re non-threatening.

Who’s afraid of their mother? Okay, we aren’t all mothers. But we all could be, and we do look the part. Fear is one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to meeting people — which is one of my main goals as a traveler.

Men are inherently scary (sorry). Youth and beauty are lovely aspects, but let’s face it, they can be intimidating. And old people are just…well…old. Who wants to risk bad breath and repetitive stories about the grandchildren?

But the middle-aged woman…she’s pretty well guaranteed to be receptive, friendly, and polite. Anyone can approach us and feel secure. Practice your English on us — we have infinite patience. We’ll never laugh at you, or be critical. We’ll help you if we can. Need a hug?

We’re generous.

Chances are we’ve spent the past 20 years or so caring for and feeding someone other than ourselves. Old habits die hard. We’re also at the stage of life that we can’t eat whatever we want (and still be able to carry a pack), but we still want to taste everything — another of my main goals as a traveler.

We tend to over-buy and over-order, and are always happy to find someone that we can do the local food justice through vicariously. So feel free to chat up the middle-aged lady at your hostel — there may just be such a thing as a free lunch.

We aren’t (as) afraid anymore.

Young women are the #1 choice for everything…from a holiday romance to human trafficking. They should be wary — and have to limit their activities accordingly. We middle-aged women, on the other hand, have been around the block. Not that we want to be molested by the drunks on the way back to the hostel, but we know that at our age it’s less likely, and we’ve been poked and prodded (mentally and physically) enough in our lives that it takes a lot to shake us up.

So we can take those chances we didn’t dare to before…and as travelers know, that’s often where the best experiences lie.

We’re fun.

By middle age, our “nurturing genes” have diminished sufficiently to free us up from all of that responsibility crap. We’ve done our share (and more) of taking care of other people in our lives, and now it’s time to look out for #1 — which is laughably easy. And the fact that we’ve earned it means we don’t have any guilt about it.

We’ve accumulated all the skills to plan, organize, fund, problem-solve, and innovate our way through whatever challenges a trip can present, and maximize the outcome. The saying, “Every adventure involves a certain level of discomfort” is definitely true — and dealing with discomfort with a laugh is the middle-aged woman’s forte.

We’re smart.

We’ve been listening to everyone all these years — we aren’t deaf. We often have careers as well, but just what we’ve picked up along the way is enough to make us a lucky find on a long bus ride or to pass the evening. And best of all, we’re old enough to have lost our shyness — we’ll tell you stuff other people won’t, without shame. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll — we’ve been there, done that, and aren’t afraid to tell it like it is.

By the same token, you can tell us anything. Try to shock a middle-aged woman — it ain’t easy. That makes us a cultural exchange opportunity on steroids. It’s the open-minded tolerance combined with knowledge of experience that makes us such great travelers — versatile, resilient, and enthusiastically embracing the best part of the second half.

The post 5 reasons middle-aged women are the best travelers appeared first on Matador Network.

Disney's

EVEN AS AN adult, I still get excited about seeing the latest Disney animated feature film. The past few have seriously lacked the elegance and enchantment I grew up with, but it looks like Frozen has filled that void pretty well.

I love how flawlessly put together this video clip is: it features the film’s signature song, “Let It Go,” translated into, and sung as, 25 different languages. It even includes Norwegian, the language of the country where Frozen is set. If you aren’t obsessed with this song enough to know what the lyrics actually are, check out the English version here.

The post Watch Disney’s “Let It Go,” performed in 25 languages appeared first on Matador Network.

Sumba's bloody Pasola Festival [vid]

DATO DOESN’T BULLSHIT. He was our guide and our friend. A village chief and a former champion at the Pasola fist-fighting matches. I loved and feared him equally. And when I asked him why all Marapu men wear swords in their belts, his answer made my throat go dry.

“It is useful for opening coconuts or for cutting off another man’s head,” he said without a hint of bravado.

Modern Sumba exists in a virtually prehistoric state. They carry swords. They ride on horses. They use buffalo as currency. And if you kill another man during the annual Pasola Festival, you will not be charged with murder.

Amongst the tribal clans that occupy this Indonesian island, feuds run generations deep, tempers run hot, and fighting is part of everyday life. Villages are set up like fortresses, located on tops of mountains with high stone walls (which makes access to water very difficult — a constant problem on the island). That’s not to say they aren’t warm, gracious, and kind people as well. But they wear their hearts on their sleeves, and their swords on their belts.

When I first heard about the Pasola Festival a few years ago, I promised myself I would someday attend. As a filmmaker, I knew I had to attempt to capture the experience. But this shoot would prove the most difficult and dangerous of my career. The mud and the rain. The hostile and riotous crowds. And the very nature of the festival — a human bloodletting ending in a all-out riot — by the end of the day we considered ourselves lucky simply to leave uninjured and with all our equipment intact.

Two short incidents that couldn’t find their way into this short video:

FIRST… At dawn on the beach, the ratus (chiefs) were sitting on the cobblestone bluff chewing betelnut, discussing the quality of the nyala worms (the emergence of these sacred worms determines the timing for the year’s Pasola Festival), and preparing to sacrifice a black cock. Down at the water’s edge, we noticed all the locals around us were discreetly filling their pockets with fist-sized stones. An ominous sign. These were being squirreled away for the end of the festival, when the entire crowd erupts into a violent bloodletting riot, complete with police gunfire, wild horses, and many shattered windows.
LATER… my filming partner Andy and I were pressing our luck out on the battlefield and both watched one of the riders take a spear and jab the spear-gatherer. It only took a second to realize the spear-gatherers — who were as close to referees as a pitched battle might have — were very much off limits. The spear-gatherer freaked out, started chasing the offending rider and hurling spears at him. Other men joined the chase, drawing their swords as they pursued him up the beach. Andy started to run behind them to film the scene and was stopped suddenly by Dato. “Don’t go anywhere near that scene,” Dato said. “Why not?” asked Andy. “What’s going to happen to him?” Dato made a chopping motion with his arm. His other hand had fallen to the hilt of his sword. We looked down the beach and saw the crowd that had assembled around the prankster. Swords were rising and falling in the air. That’s the kind of place Sumba is.

Now watch the video (or watch it again). See those spears flying right over our heads? Last year a spectator caught one of those through the eye and out the back of his skull. He died instantly. It was a good harvest.

Special thanks to Dato, Chris Bromwich, and Nihiwatu Resort for making this video short possible. We didn’t create this for any commercial purposes…it was just something we felt compelled to document. Thanks for watching.

The post Blood, sport, and ritual on the Indonesian island of Sumba appeared first on Matador Network.

29 baller castles you can rent

And the neighbors keep trippin’, I’m like “I’m in a castle … f*ck your condo.”

- Macklemore, “Castles”

IT’S BEEN A DREAM of mine to stay in a real castle since I was a young kid. My parents would break the mundane summers indoors in Vegas by taking my little brother and me to the arcade at the Excalibur Hotel. Let me tell you, it’s a powerful thing being in a themed hotel as a kid, and the Excalibur, with its enormous animatronic dragons and knight-staff in full suits of armor, was my absolute favorite.

So, when I found out I could stay abroad in my dream castle for $163 dollars a night, you can imagine how stoked I was. Turns out, there’s quite a handful of castles and manors around the world you can rent. Here’s a list of 29 of the best from Airbnb.

The ultra-cush

$8921/night • Castle Road, Clevedon, Avon, United Kingdom

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At the top end of the list, this castle is ideal for those looking for a remote citadel to retreat to. From the golf course on the surrounding property grounds, to the suites in the outlying turrets, to their ability to hold weddings with their new wedding license, this castle is a one-stop, full-service fortress.

$8621/night • Golspie, Sutherland, United Kingdom

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This is pretty much the real-life equivalent of the Disney Castle, a real fairytale destination. The attention to detail is superb, and from my searches it really doesn’t get any better than this in terms of exterior look. I will say, however, that I find the lack of interior photos and ability to accommodate 16+ inhabitants in one bedroom/one bathroom highly suspect.

$5603/night • Old Military Rd, Perth and Kinross, PH10, United Kingdom

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A kickass castle and one of Scotland’s most romantic hideaways, this place is perfect. Its 17 rooms are large and luxurious, for the laird (lord) the mansion was originally designed for. The property also boasts a golf course — because the ability to play golf is intrinsic to having the ability to pay $5603 a night to stay somewhere.

$4680/night • N, Cloghaun, County Galway, Ireland

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Yep, it’s a castle. Despite the questionably few photos of the interior, this place looks as authentic as it gets. Though, at almost $5,000 a night, not only should it be authentic, but it should also come with some incredibly rare gilded dessert, which I did not see in the listing.

$3949/night • Shaw Lane, Holywell Green, Halifax, Calderdale, United Kingdom

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Modern castle + indoor pool = drool. Oh my god you guys, this is the most epic castle I have ever seen (and at almost four Gs a day, it probably should be). Winner of “Britain’s best home, 2008,” this place is pretty much ideal if you’ve got the money. Plus, they have a swimming instructor and academic tutor, so if you’ve got kids, they’ll be plenty occupied while you enjoy everything about Nicola’s castle.

$1854/night • Dirleton, EH39 5EQ, United Kingdom

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Halberds over the fireplace, Batman — look at this freakin’ castle! Polished copper tubs, stone fireplaces in the bathroom, and a suit of armor in the dining room make this the absolute complete package. Fortunately for Fenton Tower, few competitors have a fireworks show, so this castle really stands out as an incredible all-around destination, should you find yourself in the UK.

$1276/night • Unnamed Rd, Durhamstown, County Meath, Ireland

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From the strange placement of the pink couch in the master bedroom, to the fuzzy wreath separating the two very different beds in the guest room, to the purple tub and “moody purple” dining room, this castle is unusual. In fact, every single room is starkly different from the last, and perhaps that can provide the dozen different experiences necessary to justify the $1276 price tag.

$1085/night • Lisheen, Thurles, Co. Tipperary, Ireland

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Though we’re approaching the midrange price, this castle is nonetheless a proper castle, as you’d expect when being asked to pay upwards of a grand a night. This castle is gorgeous and just makes me want to hop on a horse and ride around hunting pheasants for leisure-sport. The dining room is flawlessly iconic, and nothing says luxury like statues in the bathroom.

$1030/night • Dairsie Mains, Cupar, Fife, United Kingdom

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This castle is serving up some storybook realness. Considering the exterior, the castle grounds (and the fact that you can call the surroundings the “castle grounds” in the first place), the paintings, the banister busts, the weird totem pole things, and the kickass bedroom décor, this is a legitimate castle through and through. The icing on this delicious kitsch-cake for me has to be the bathtub, which has been painted with The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

The midrange

$708/night • Rue du Château, Saint-Hippolyte-de-Caton, Languedoc-Roussillon 30360, France

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Now, when you have an enormous place like the Château de la Condamine, if it’s not overstuffed with décor and curios, it’s probably going to look a little sparse. Sadly, it does look a little sparse, but you’re really not paying for the interior. This park-facing 14th-century mansion with blessedly updated bathrooms is a bit on the pricey end of mid-range, but with the amount of history this building has seen (and a writing room bizarrely reminiscent of the Oval Office) it’s pretty easy to overlook that.

$300/night • Bangor, BT19 1RN, United Kingdom

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Now this is what I’m talking about. This tower has a novel of a description, including two poems written about it from separate authors. Its exterior is iconic, and its interior is pretty much exactly what I’d hope for from a castle interior. It even has an octagonal period room, spiral staircase, and rooftop reading room.

$262/night • Route d’Isdes, Brinon-sur-Sauldre, Centre 18410, France

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The price is the same whether you have a party of two or people. Wait, $262 divided by eight — that, my friends, is a castle at a potential $32.75 a night (though, to be fair, that’s more of a big-ass manor than a castle, but who’s counting?). I’ve stayed at Motel 6s that were twice as expensive and 1⁄16 as nice.

$232/night • Rue D’Arbre, Anhée, Région Wallonne 5537, Belgium

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There are two things I can’t help but find endlessly amusing about many of these castle listings. The first is the inclusion of wifi, as somehow I imagine routers were never designed to turn stone fortresses into hotspots. The second is the occasional “house rules” tab, as if the people who can afford to stay in your castle (and have the lust to stay in a castle at all) can be reined in and told not to run down the spacious hallways, make the house echo, or play with the swords on the walls. Though this might just be my particular brand of juvenile.

$206/night • Melville Gate Rd, Midlothian, EH22 3NL, United Kingdom

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This castle, though a tad square for my tastes, apparently served as the hunting seat for Mary Queen of Scots, which means you’re not only walking in the footsteps of royalty, you’re sleeping in the beds of historic royalty. That’s like taking a nap in George Washington’s cabin or something.

The cheap

$169/night • Barnay, Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France

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This incredibly French castle, adorned with Templar seals above the fireplace, is a bizarre fusion of past and present. If you want to feel like suburbanite medieval French royalty, or if you feel like you need to be eased into staying at a place that’s older than your parents’ parents, this place would be ideal.

$163/night • South Stainmore, Kirkby Stephen, CA17, United Kingdom

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Here she is, my pick for best ‘cheap’ castle on Airbnb. It’s perfect — seriously, King Arthur status. The colors are sick, the rooms are sick (especially the bar), and there’s a goddamn movie theatre in the castle. In the immortal words of Liz Lemon, “I want to go to there,” and when I do, expect an elated recap.

$163/night • Ballytarsna-Hackett Castle, Cashel, Tipperary, Ireland

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Combination castle and school of stonemasonry? Yes, please. On a more serious note, this place looks awesome, particularly from the inside. Though still not quite my perfect castle, I’d happily settle for a moment to read in that library, underneath that incredible crown-post roof.

$141/night • Galway, Galway, Ireland

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Have you ever thought, “Gee, what I’m really looking for in a castle accommodation is a hammock swing in the bedroom and a hideaway bathtub in the living room?” Thank goodness host Peter was on that same wavelength and made sure to outfit his reasonably priced castle with those amenities. Yes, the “homemade limestone-carved toilet” scares me a little, but for a stereotypical castle, it’s a step up from the hole in the floor I expected.

$133/night • Chandpol Bazar Rd, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

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When I think of castles, this isn’t exactly what comes to mind. Then again, I don’t really think of castles as being in India, either, so I may just have to add “stay in a castle in India” to my bucket list. This castle offers amenities typical of a luxury hotel — and, of course, bragging rights — so, for the price, this is a pretty killer deal.

$120/night • Le Moulin de Granjou, Montferrand-du-Périgord, Aquitania 24440, France

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Admittedly, this listing makes me a little dubious. The photos are pretty grainy and few and far between, and there are no reviews and not a whole lot of information about the mysterious host Raphael. However, it is a castle that accommodates up to 5 at no extra charge, which means you and your crew could stay there for $14 a night each.

Honorable mentions

$5151/night • Hillfoots Road, Causewayhead, Stirling, United Kingdom

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You can’t even stay here, which is a shame because look at that tower! It’s got a sword in the museum and knightly statues! Knightly statues! It’s a shame that such a location is being wasted for weddings only, but it was too perfect not to include.

$3679/night • Carrer del Xarel·lo, St Pere de Ribes, Cataluña 08810, Spain

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This is the intersection between modern resort and the Addams Family home. I don’t find it particularly spooky per se, but I do find it really bizarre that a place can be so modern on the inside that you completely forget that you’re in a place that considers itself a castle. It just defeats the purpose.

$1552/night • The Clumps, Suffolk, England IP12, United Kingdom

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Sure, it comes up when you use the castle filter, but this is no castle. In fact, looking at the façade, I’m not entirely sure what you’d call it. Other than, of course, really freaking cool. The inside, however, tells a different story. Somewhere between a mansion and a church, the architecture of the archways and stonework could have had me fooled.

$1347/night • D, Plaigne, Languedoc-Roussillon 11420, France

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Though the price is a bit steep for a manor-looking castle, the interior is absolutely incredible. From the library dining room to the pool, this place has all the features but, for me, just doesn’t quite have the look.

$1060/night • Lautrec, Midi-Pyrénées 81440, France

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It’s the surroundings, rather than the actual accommodations, that earned this place a spot on the list. From the sunflower field to the plains in the distance, this place is incredible. You could probably find a cheaper way to put yourself into that scene, however, and since it’s not really a castle, there’s almost no advantage to staying at the Château Brametourte.

$304/night • Poligné, Bretagne, France

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More of a château than a castle, the house-ish-ness of this place is the main reason it didn’t qualify for the main list. That said, it’s a massive manor, and just look at the interior! The colors and the décor could almost convince me not to go outside and instead enjoy the illusion of thinking I was in a castle.

$300/night • Benderloch, Oban, Argyll and Bute, United Kingdom

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It’s really not this castle’s fault for looking a bit blocky on the outside — it was just born that way. At least the interior is stellar, and the location looks incredible, but at $300 a night, there are probably better options.

$163/night • Crossmichael, DG7 3BB, United Kingdom

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According to the listing, this bucolic retreat was originally gifted to the Duchess of Grafton Culgruff on her birthday. Constructed in 1889, late in England’s Victorian Gothic Revival movement, the house features Jacobean interiors with a 40-foot-high ceiling and original wooden chandeliers. The duchess had some serious style.

$114/night • Main Street, Cork, Cork, Ireland

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Though this place looks like the very corner of a full castle in isolation, at $114 a night (and with a decent interior), it was enough to qualify for an honorable mention. Built in 1683, this tower house surrounded by woods and a nearby beach might just be ideal for your castle-esque experience.

The post 29 baller castles you can rent on Airbnb appeared first on Matador Network.

Life goals don't have an expiration

ALL OF MY FRIENDS managed to graduate college and land cushy jobs the year before the recession of 2008 hit. I wasn’t so lucky. I graduated right when it happened, and as I neared 25, realizing I had nothing significant to show for my life, I began to think that the integral nature of those first post-graduate years had been lost to me. It sucked.

Now I’m 26, and I’m a Managing Editor for Matador, I’ve published my first eBook, and I just got engaged. It’s proof that life goals have no expiration date — if you want to achieve something badly enough, it can happen. It might take you longer than you thought, or it might happen at a different time in your life, but age is just a number we shouldn’t take so seriously. It’s what we do with our lives, that matters.

Check out this infographic if you need further reassurance.

Image via Funders and Founders Notes.

The post Your life goals don’t have an expiration date [infographic] appeared first on Matador Network.