In Transit Blog: A Travel Book With a Global, and Personal, Touch

A 21-year-old artist has reinvented a cherished commodity for world travelers seeking an authentic experience in a new place: a local's recommendation.

In a limited-edition book (just 200 copies were printed) titled "For You the Traveller," New Zealand-born Nabil Sabio Azadi has collected the personal experiences of natives in destinations across five continents: a scientist, a metalworker, a musician, a political analyst among them. The storytellers reveal how they spend their days and what their city means to them; and then they provide readers a phone number to contact them.

Mr. Azadi has collected guides in cities around the world through his own travels, and those featured in "For You the Traveller" live in Tehran, Paris, Sapporo, Seattle, New York, Berlin and Antwerp. Each participant promises to be a port-of-call for those who purchase a book. "If you share yourself with them," Mr. Azadi said, "they will share their shelter, philosophy and land with you."

The book, with its hardbound cover sheathed in reclaimed rabbit fur, is part guide, part directory and part art project. The brief blocks of text, set by hand, are accompanied by simple black-and-white sketches and maps, all hand-drawn by Mr. Azadi.

"I've received several e-mails from people who've bought the book," Mr. Azadi said. "People have quit their jobs and sent me these great declarations before they set out on their adventures."

Many of the book's entries include an appeal to the tourist from the host. "Traveler," says the guide in Lotan, Israel, "We love visitors who bring part of the outside world to our remote desert community. We like to share what we do with them, and gain immensely from that ourselves. You may telephone me at –"

Editions from the small run of 200 copies are now for sale on Mr. Azadi's Web site, www.foryouthetraveller.com, for 220 euros, about $283. Proceeds from book sales are donated to the Swiss charity Nouvelle Plantète, which finances projects in Madagascar.

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Cultured Traveler: Call It Beyrouth: Beirut With a French Accent

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

At Villa Clara, the menu is in French.

I was finishing an aperitif on the porch at Villa Clara while other guests tossed pétanque balls in the nearby yard. The hotel's 4-year-old namesake cozied up to her papa, showing off her latest crayon creation. "Oh, c'est magnifique," said Olivier Gougeon, a French chef and an owner of the property with his wife, Marie-Hélène, an editor of a French-language home décor magazine.

The tiny boutique hotel, its restaurant and guest rooms stocked with Parisian antiques, opened last year around the corner from an Asterix chicken shack and across the street from its neighborhood boucherie. But this was not Marseille or Lyon, it was the eastern edge of Beirut.

"A Frenchman can easily live in Beirut without feeling displaced," said Mr. Gougeon, who moved to the Lebanese capital from Paris in 1999, as he sipped local wine in Villa Clara's leafy backyard after cooking a dinner of crispy-skinned duck confit and old-fashioned île flottante.

For more than a century, through all manner of turmoil, including a 15-year civil war and, more recently, ongoing conflict in neighboring Syria, a distinctly French character has pervaded the city. Much of it is the legacy of the French colonial period — the mandate that lasted from 1920 to 1943 — but a cultural kinship goes back much further than that.

I had come to Beirut to see just how much French influence remains, and discovered an East-West blend more complex and layered than ever. Having left the country for France during particularly troubled times, many affluent Beirutis have returned, bringing with them cravings for Parisian life. A younger generation, meanwhile, has embraced a new hybrid culture — a French, Anglo and Arabic stew — evident in shops and restaurants and trilingual discussions across the city.

On an immediate level, Frenchness is everywhere — and, even for a first-time visitor, awfully easy to spot. Beirutis, though, sometimes take it for granted. "I don't think there's much French influence anymore," a resident might insist, as you wander past the neighborhood bistro Goutons Voir serving "salade Nice-Beyrouth"; the jewel-box boutique of La Ferme St. Jacques, a local foie gras producer; and the retail shop of Domaine des Tourelles, a winery in the Bekaa Valley founded by a French engineer in 1868. But big international chains are increasingly replacing mom-and-pop Francophile spots, and the mandate-era buildings that house them are giving way to sky-high steel and glass condos.

Some locals are trying to protect that architectural legacy, a mix of stone mansions and low-rise Haussmannian towers. "This house is in danger," said Giorgio Tarraf, a young preservation activist, during a tour of the city's vanishing landmarks, as he pointed at the carcasses of once-magnificent homes, abandoned during the civil war that started in 1975.

For the last three years Mr. Tarraf's group, Save Beirut Heritage, has been fighting a losing battle to restore these old buildings instead of tearing them down. "At the end of the war we had a golden opportunity to have a beautiful, well-preserved city," he said. "We chose to ignore that." The group's new iPhone app features an interactive map noting the status of each site: "urgent," "saved" or "too late."

We cut past the Grand Theater, said to be modeled after the old opera house in Paris; Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier performed there in the 1930s. During the civil war the theater, by then a partial ruin set along the Green Line dividing East and West Beirut, began to show pornographic films to fighters on both sides. Now developers want to turn it into a boutique hotel designed by the architect Richard Rogers. Preservationists would prefer to see the site's original character retained. "We're lobbying to have a theater in there or a cinema," Mr. Tarraf said, "accessible not just to people paying $500 a night."

Driving down the Avenue de Paris, along the Corniche, the palm-tree-lined esplanade that hugs the city's Mediterranean coast, I gazed up at a defunct lighthouse, striped like a barber pole, that was built by the French in the 1920s. Our destination was the 19th-century home next door, the last of its kind in the neighborhood, known simply as the Pink House.

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In Transit Blog: Calendar: Coming Events in Budapest; Portland, Ore.; South Dakota

Budapest International Wine Festival, Budapest Held in Budapest, above, at Buda Castle, this wine event, from Sept. 11 to 15 will salute female winemakers in interviews and special tastings amid the showcase of nearly 200 Hungarian wineries. Guided tastings cover pinots, rieslings and merlots along with the Tokaji wines. Musical programming highlights Hungarian jazz and folk bands. Dairies from 15 nations will participate in the festival's inaugural European cheese contest.

Feast, Portland, Ore. From Sept. 19 to 22, chefs, artisans and winemakers will take over downtown during this food and drink festival. Four-day passes are sold out, but plenty of tickets remain for individual events, including the Sandwich Invitational, where on Sept. 19 you can sample 15 chefs' creations ($95); a tasting panel on Sept. 20 called "Wine vs. Beer: the Rematch" ($45); and High Comfort, an event on Sept. 21 that answers the question of what grandma's home cooking would taste like if it were done by a Michelin-starred chef ($175).

Buffalo Roundup, South Dakota Driven by cowboys and pickup trucks, some 1,300 buffalo that roam Custer State Park in the Black Hills will be corralled Sept. 27 in the park's annual roundup. They are later inoculated, and up to 500 are sold at auction to control the population, but the classic Western spectacle itself draws spectators to viewing stands and to events including an art show and Dutch oven and chili cook-offs, through Sept. 29.

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T Magazine: Travel Diary | Michael Voltaggio’s Gutsy Food Adventure in Copenhagen

Earlier this week, the brothers Michael and Bryan Voltaggio, American chefs and former "Top Chef" contestants, traveled to Copenhagen for the third MAD Symposium, an annual food festival that brings together chefs and farmers. Curated by David Chang and his Lucky Peach team, this year's two-day sold-out symposium was dedicated to guts — meaning both innards and courage. Chang introduced the theme literally, however, by bringing out the butcher Dario Cecchini, who proceeded to carve a pig on the stage. Between events, Michael, the chef and owner of Ink in Los Angeles, and Bryan, the executive chef of Volt restaurant in Maryland, caught up with fellow chefs and friends. Here, Michael shares his photos from the event.

Slide Show: Food and Friends in Denmark

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Cultured Traveler: Call It Beyrouth: Beirut With a French Accent

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

At Villa Clara, the menu is in French.

I was finishing an aperitif on the porch at Villa Clara while other guests tossed pétanque balls in the nearby yard. The hotel's 4-year-old namesake cozied up to her papa, showing off her latest crayon creation. "Oh, c'est magnifique," said Olivier Gougeon, a French chef and an owner of the property with his wife, Marie-Hélène, an editor of a French-language home décor magazine.

The tiny boutique hotel, its restaurant and guest rooms stocked with Parisian antiques, opened last year around the corner from an Asterix chicken shack and across the street from its neighborhood boucherie. But this was not Marseille or Lyon, it was the eastern edge of Beirut.

"A Frenchman can easily live in Beirut without feeling displaced," said Mr. Gougeon, who moved to the Lebanese capital from Paris in 1999, as he sipped local wine in Villa Clara's leafy backyard after cooking a dinner of crispy-skinned duck confit and old-fashioned île flottante.

For more than a century, through all manner of turmoil, including a 15-year civil war and, more recently, ongoing conflict in neighboring Syria, a distinctly French character has pervaded the city. Much of it is the legacy of the French colonial period — the mandate that lasted from 1920 to 1943 — but a cultural kinship goes back much further than that.

I had come to Beirut to see just how much French influence remains, and discovered an East-West blend more complex and layered than ever. Having left the country for France during particularly troubled times, many affluent Beirutis have returned, bringing with them cravings for Parisian life. A younger generation, meanwhile, has embraced a new hybrid culture — a French, Anglo and Arabic stew — evident in shops and restaurants and trilingual discussions across the city.

On an immediate level, Frenchness is everywhere — and, even for a first-time visitor, awfully easy to spot. Beirutis, though, sometimes take it for granted. "I don't think there's much French influence anymore," a resident might insist, as you wander past the neighborhood bistro Goutons Voir serving "salade Nice-Beyrouth"; the jewel-box boutique of La Ferme St. Jacques, a local foie gras producer; and the retail shop of Domaine des Tourelles, a winery in the Bekaa Valley founded by a French engineer in 1868. But big international chains are increasingly replacing mom-and-pop Francophile spots, and the mandate-era buildings that house them are giving way to sky-high steel and glass condos.

Some locals are trying to protect that architectural legacy, a mix of stone mansions and low-rise Haussmannian towers. "This house is in danger," said Giorgio Tarraf, a young preservation activist, during a tour of the city's vanishing landmarks, as he pointed at the carcasses of once-magnificent homes, abandoned during the civil war that started in 1975.

For the last three years Mr. Tarraf's group, Save Beirut Heritage, has been fighting a losing battle to restore these old buildings instead of tearing them down. "At the end of the war we had a golden opportunity to have a beautiful, well-preserved city," he said. "We chose to ignore that." The group's new iPhone app features an interactive map noting the status of each site: "urgent," "saved" or "too late."

We cut past the Grand Theater, said to be modeled after the old opera house in Paris; Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier performed there in the 1930s. During the civil war the theater, by then a partial ruin set along the Green Line dividing East and West Beirut, began to show pornographic films to fighters on both sides. Now developers want to turn it into a boutique hotel designed by the architect Richard Rogers. Preservationists would prefer to see the site's original character retained. "We're lobbying to have a theater in there or a cinema," Mr. Tarraf said, "accessible not just to people paying $500 a night."

Driving down the Avenue de Paris, along the Corniche, the palm-tree-lined esplanade that hugs the city's Mediterranean coast, I gazed up at a defunct lighthouse, striped like a barber pole, that was built by the French in the 1920s. Our destination was the 19th-century home next door, the last of its kind in the neighborhood, known simply as the Pink House.

17.36 | 0 komentar | Read More

In Transit Blog: Calendar: Coming Events in Budapest; Portland, Ore.; South Dakota

Budapest International Wine Festival, Budapest Held in Budapest, above, at Buda Castle, this wine event, from Sept. 11 to 15 will salute female winemakers in interviews and special tastings amid the showcase of nearly 200 Hungarian wineries. Guided tastings cover pinots, rieslings and merlots along with the Tokaji wines. Musical programming highlights Hungarian jazz and folk bands. Dairies from 15 nations will participate in the festival's inaugural European cheese contest.

Feast, Portland, Ore. From Sept. 19 to 22, chefs, artisans and winemakers will take over downtown during this food and drink festival. Four-day passes are sold out, but plenty of tickets remain for individual events, including the Sandwich Invitational, where on Sept. 19 you can sample 15 chefs' creations ($95); a tasting panel on Sept. 20 called "Wine vs. Beer: the Rematch" ($45); and High Comfort, an event on Sept. 21 that answers the question of what grandma's home cooking would taste like if it were done by a Michelin-starred chef ($175).

Buffalo Roundup, South Dakota Driven by cowboys and pickup trucks, some 1,300 buffalo that roam Custer State Park in the Black Hills will be corralled Sept. 27 in the park's annual roundup. They are later inoculated, and up to 500 are sold at auction to control the population, but the classic Western spectacle itself draws spectators to viewing stands and to events including an art show and Dutch oven and chili cook-offs, through Sept. 29.

17.36 | 0 komentar | Read More

In Transit Blog: A Travel Book With a Global, and Personal, Touch

A 21-year-old artist has reinvented a cherished commodity for world travelers seeking an authentic experience in a new place: a local's recommendation.

In a limited-edition book (just 200 copies were printed) titled "For You the Traveller," New Zealand-born Nabil Sabio Azadi has collected the personal experiences of natives in destinations across five continents: a scientist, a metalworker, a musician, a political analyst among them. The storytellers reveal how they spend their days and what their city means to them; and then they provide readers a phone number to contact them.

Mr. Azadi has collected guides in cities around the world through his own travels, and those featured in "For You the Traveller" live in Tehran, Paris, Sapporo, Seattle, New York, Berlin and Antwerp. Each participant promises to be a port-of-call for those who purchase a book. "If you share yourself with them," Mr. Azadi said, "they will share their shelter, philosophy and land with you."

The book, with its hardbound cover sheathed in reclaimed rabbit fur, is part guide, part directory and part art project. The brief blocks of text, set by hand, are accompanied by simple black-and-white sketches and maps, all hand-drawn by Mr. Azadi.

"I've received several e-mails from people who've bought the book," Mr. Azadi said. "People have quit their jobs and sent me these great declarations before they set out on their adventures."

Many of the book's entries include an appeal to the tourist from the host. "Traveler," says the guide in Lotan, Israel, "We love visitors who bring part of the outside world to our remote desert community. We like to share what we do with them, and gain immensely from that ourselves. You may telephone me at –"

Editions from the small run of 200 copies are now for sale on Mr. Azadi's Web site, www.foryouthetraveller.com, for 220 euros, about $283. Proceeds from book sales are donated to the Swiss charity Nouvelle Plantète, which finances projects in Madagascar.

17.36 | 0 komentar | Read More

T Magazine: Travel Diary | Michael Voltaggio’s Gutsy Food Adventure in Copenhagen

Earlier this week, the brothers Michael and Bryan Voltaggio, American chefs and former "Top Chef" contestants, traveled to Copenhagen for the third MAD Symposium, an annual food festival that brings together chefs and farmers. Curated by David Chang and his Lucky Peach team, this year's two-day sold-out symposium was dedicated to guts — meaning both innards and courage. Chang introduced the theme literally, however, by bringing out the butcher Dario Cecchini, who proceeded to carve a pig on the stage. Between events, Michael, the chef and owner of Ink in Los Angeles, and Bryan, the executive chef of Volt restaurant in Maryland, caught up with fellow chefs and friends. Here, Michael shares his photos from the event.

Slide Show: Food and Friends in Denmark

17.36 | 0 komentar | Read More

Cultured Traveler: Call It Beyrouth: Beirut With a French Accent

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

At Villa Clara, the menu is in French.

I was finishing an aperitif on the porch at Villa Clara while other guests tossed pétanque balls in the nearby yard. The hotel's 4-year-old namesake cozied up to her papa, showing off her latest crayon creation. "Oh, c'est magnifique," said Olivier Gougeon, a French chef and an owner of the property with his wife, Marie-Hélène, an editor of a French-language home décor magazine.

The tiny boutique hotel, its restaurant and guest rooms stocked with Parisian antiques, opened last year around the corner from an Asterix chicken shack and across the street from its neighborhood boucherie. But this was not Marseille or Lyon, it was the eastern edge of Beirut.

"A Frenchman can easily live in Beirut without feeling displaced," said Mr. Gougeon, who moved to the Lebanese capital from Paris in 1999, as he sipped local wine in Villa Clara's leafy backyard after cooking a dinner of crispy-skinned duck confit and old-fashioned île flottante.

For more than a century, through all manner of turmoil, including a 15-year civil war and, more recently, ongoing conflict in neighboring Syria, a distinctly French character has pervaded the city. Much of it is the legacy of the French colonial period — the mandate that lasted from 1920 to 1943 — but a cultural kinship goes back much further than that.

I had come to Beirut to see just how much French influence remains, and discovered an East-West blend more complex and layered than ever. Having left the country for France during particularly troubled times, many affluent Beirutis have returned, bringing with them cravings for Parisian life. A younger generation, meanwhile, has embraced a new hybrid culture — a French, Anglo and Arabic stew — evident in shops and restaurants and trilingual discussions across the city.

On an immediate level, Frenchness is everywhere — and, even for a first-time visitor, awfully easy to spot. Beirutis, though, sometimes take it for granted. "I don't think there's much French influence anymore," a resident might insist, as you wander past the neighborhood bistro Goutons Voir serving "salade Nice-Beyrouth"; the jewel-box boutique of La Ferme St. Jacques, a local foie gras producer; and the retail shop of Domaine des Tourelles, a winery in the Bekaa Valley founded by a French engineer in 1868. But big international chains are increasingly replacing mom-and-pop Francophile spots, and the mandate-era buildings that house them are giving way to sky-high steel and glass condos.

Some locals are trying to protect that architectural legacy, a mix of stone mansions and low-rise Haussmannian towers. "This house is in danger," said Giorgio Tarraf, a young preservation activist, during a tour of the city's vanishing landmarks, as he pointed at the carcasses of once-magnificent homes, abandoned during the civil war that started in 1975.

For the last three years Mr. Tarraf's group, Save Beirut Heritage, has been fighting a losing battle to restore these old buildings instead of tearing them down. "At the end of the war we had a golden opportunity to have a beautiful, well-preserved city," he said. "We chose to ignore that." The group's new iPhone app features an interactive map noting the status of each site: "urgent," "saved" or "too late."

We cut past the Grand Theater, said to be modeled after the old opera house in Paris; Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier performed there in the 1930s. During the civil war the theater, by then a partial ruin set along the Green Line dividing East and West Beirut, began to show pornographic films to fighters on both sides. Now developers want to turn it into a boutique hotel designed by the architect Richard Rogers. Preservationists would prefer to see the site's original character retained. "We're lobbying to have a theater in there or a cinema," Mr. Tarraf said, "accessible not just to people paying $500 a night."

Driving down the Avenue de Paris, along the Corniche, the palm-tree-lined esplanade that hugs the city's Mediterranean coast, I gazed up at a defunct lighthouse, striped like a barber pole, that was built by the French in the 1920s. Our destination was the 19th-century home next door, the last of its kind in the neighborhood, known simply as the Pink House.

17.36 | 0 komentar | Read More

In Transit Blog: Calendar: Coming Events in Budapest; Portland, Ore.; South Dakota

Budapest International Wine Festival, Budapest Held in Budapest, above, at Buda Castle, this wine event, from Sept. 11 to 15 will salute female winemakers in interviews and special tastings amid the showcase of nearly 200 Hungarian wineries. Guided tastings cover pinots, rieslings and merlots along with the Tokaji wines. Musical programming highlights Hungarian jazz and folk bands. Dairies from 15 nations will participate in the festival's inaugural European cheese contest.

Feast, Portland, Ore. From Sept. 19 to 22, chefs, artisans and winemakers will take over downtown during this food and drink festival. Four-day passes are sold out, but plenty of tickets remain for individual events, including the Sandwich Invitational, where on Sept. 19 you can sample 15 chefs' creations ($95); a tasting panel on Sept. 20 called "Wine vs. Beer: the Rematch" ($45); and High Comfort, an event on Sept. 21 that answers the question of what grandma's home cooking would taste like if it were done by a Michelin-starred chef ($175).

Buffalo Roundup, South Dakota Driven by cowboys and pickup trucks, some 1,300 buffalo that roam Custer State Park in the Black Hills will be corralled Sept. 27 in the park's annual roundup. They are later inoculated, and up to 500 are sold at auction to control the population, but the classic Western spectacle itself draws spectators to viewing stands and to events including an art show and Dutch oven and chili cook-offs, through Sept. 29.

17.36 | 0 komentar | Read More