For those of you who don’t know, over here in euro land we hand the Presidency of the EU to a different country every six months. An egalitarian policy that opens Europe up to radical policy changes and shifts in emphasis twice a year. At the beginning of 2007 EU Presidency passed to Germany, who decided in a fit of well meaning guilt that they would make Holocaust denial a crime and ban Nazi regalia all over Europe. Not that Holocaust denial is a major problem in Europe and last time I saw anyone wearing a swastika it was Prince Harry. Well actually the last time I saw anyone wearing a swastika it was an elephant at Amber fort near Jaipur. The swastika is, as anyone who has been to India or Tibet will tell you a Hindu and Buddhist symbol that dates back thousands of years. No one has seen fit to mention in Germany that copyright theft was just one of Hitler’s many crimes.

At the time of the Prince Harry debacle, when the spare-to-the-heir of the British crown wore a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party, Der Spiegel online Der Spiegel online reported European Parliament member Silvana Koch-Mehrin as saying “A symbol like the swastika not only has no place in Germany, but it also does not belong anywhere in Europe.”

Now apart from the fact that having the German government telling the rest of Europe that they shouldn’t be racist or xenophobic is a bit like having Ronnie Wood tell you to cut back on your drinking, no European country has the right to monopolise and demonise an ancient Asian religious symbol, let alone ban it completely.

In a less hysterical article around the time of the start of the German Presidency of the EU, Der Spiegel online revisted the issue, and quoted Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain who likened the banning of the swastika to a potential banning Christians from using the cross, just because a burning cross was the symbol of the Ku Klux Klan! He also shed more light on the swastika, “In Sanskrit it means May Goodness Prevail,” he asserted.

Certainly in India the swastika is seen everywhere: painted on houses for good luck, on temples and rickshaws – even daubed on elephants and the ubiquitous sacred cows. In Tibet too, the symbol is often seen, and is incorporated into religious art and designs.

Soon after the article, and as a result of a furore of protest from Hindus, Buddhists and free thinking people all over Europe, a press release appeared on the website of the German EU Presidency stating that they would not after all be seeking to ban the swastika across Europe. The end of the argument you might think, but it does shed light on the fact that this ancient, 5000 year old religious symbol is illegal in Germany.

I took up the issue of the swastika with some German friends, who despite having travelled considerably, had no idea of the real origins of the symbol. They were amazed to know it’s significance to Hindus, which is never referred to in Germany even though school children have compulsory lessons about the Nazi era. They also couldn’t believe that the peaceful religious use of the symbol has been banned along with it’s use by neo-Nazis.

No one in their right mind would seek to minimise the horrors of the Nazi era or for one minute suggest that the Holocaust should be forgotten, but to attempt to outlaw racism by banning a symbol is at best naïve, and at worst counter-productive. It is ignorance of other peoples and other cultures that allows racism to flourish in the first place and the blanket-banning of the swastika in Germany is prime example of cultural ignorance.

In a lighter mood, this got me thinking to some of the other stupid, and knee-jerk laws that exist around the world. Laws that might be well meaning – even laudable in their aims, but do so in a ham-fisted and ignorant way. In Thailand, where I am at the moment, it is apparently illegal to go out without wearing underpants. In Tennessee it is illegal to drive a car when sleeping.

Some laws are just forgotten gems, that may have had some significance in the past, but have been left of the statute books by default and now sit there, mocking us all. In my country, England, you can still be executed for treason for sleeping with the monarch’s wife even though the death penalty has long since been repealed. It is also considered treason to put a stamp on a letter upside down.

There are a number of websites that boast lists of these laws from around the world. Most are probably urban myths and recycled from other sites, but in a spirit of humour, here are some that might keep a few Perceptive Travellers out of trouble on the road. Travel legal!

Words & Jaipur image ©stevedavey.com 2007

A scattered round-up of travel writing and related Web entries:

Literary Traveler: Okay, I admit ignorance. I didn’t know the author of Pippi Longstocking was Swedish. Stephanie Nikolopoulos did, though, and has written an essay about the Pippi exhibits at Sweden’s Junibacken Museum. She spends a lot more time reminiscing about her own Pippi memories than taking us along for the tour, but still, I got a welcome hit of nostalgia thinking about nail soup.
Recent articles also include a Da Vinci Code tour of Southern France, and the influence of Norwegian fjords on Roald Dahl.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Travel writer and editor of the Sun-Sentinel’s travel section Tom Swick has a tongue-in-cheek response to Drew Barrymore’s declaration that she’s sick of Hollywood and is going to run away to be a travel writer. His usual expertise (both writing and traveling) is also at work in his essay about eating and driving in India.

Ask the Pilot: Patrick Smith’s weekly column for Salon branches out from his usual–and welcome–task of educating the public about the goings-on in the cockpit and air traffic control towers. This time, he’s on a trip of his own, hitching a plane ride in West Africa, supposedly the world’s “most dangerous place to fly.”

Wild Blue Yonder: Lonely Planet author Carolyn McCarthy maintains her own blog detailing her travels in Central America and her life in rural Chile. A recent post starts a series about Patagonia’s back country by trekking with a friendly local. Wish someone would tie homemade marmalade on a pack horse when I go hiking.

SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle) Travel: Susan Lendroth has written a short but curiously evocative piece about the lasting impression our first encounter with a place has on us, no matter how many times we visit again, or how much we travel. At first I thought it was a little sappy; then I remembered how the initial experience–even the most banal cab ride–in every country I’ve lived in crops up every time I return.

Far Flung Magazine: Couched among a video game fantasy during a wild drive in Tanzania and a dreamy piece about Alaska’s Inside Passage is Rory MacLean’s essay addressing the personal duties of the modern travel writer. “Today it is no longer enough to travel across a country, rather one must travel into it,” he says. “The travel writer becomes less a geographer of place, more of the human heart.”

Slate Travel & Food: Seth Stevenson contemplates the possibilities of breeding tolerance in Dubai (an older post, but worth reading) and Matthew Polly butts up against a war museum and pets a tiger in Thailand.

NPR: This week journalist Philip Reeves is reporting from the Ganges River, in five dispatches chronicling the old and modern, poor and newly wealthy, of India while he travels the river. If you’ve missed his dispatches on Morning Edition, you can listen to them here. The link also leads to pictures and Reeves’s longer Reporter’s Notebook entries.

It takes a special kind of interest, either in theater (most New Yorkers) or in Russian history (me) to get excited about a trio of Tom Stoppard plays detailing the progress of Russian philosophy–from nihilism to the cusp of revolution–in the mid-1800s. And it’s a pretty dedicated audience that goes for the 9-hour marathon version and sits on their bums in New York City’s Lincoln Center from 11am to 11pm, scurrying around in between plays to forage for sustenance. The Coast of Utopia is the production in question, whose three component plays (Voyage, Shipwreck, and Salvage) have been running in tandem at the Lincoln Center since last September.

And what, as fellow blogger Sheila might ask, does this have to do with travel? To answer, I’ll just squish my travel philosophy into a few bite-sized pieces. I’ve always felt that true travelers, who wish to understand a place rather than skim over its more well-known sights, have to make an effort to read the literature, find out the name of the current prime minister/president/dictator, and study a little history before barging in and asking what sort of experience a new country can provide them. You, the perceptive traveler, have an obligation to go beyond your Rough Guide and Lonely Planet, no matter how helpful they are in steering you to the wackiest pub.

Of course, I don’t always hold to my precepts (who does?), but Russia happens to be my particular area of pseudo-expertise. It’s a place that Westerners always think we understand while it constantly confuses us. We don’t get it, either the 1917 Revolution or the grip communism had on the country. The Coast of Utopia goes a long way to closing that comprehension gap. After reading Stoppard’s play, I had no idea how any cast could translate reams of Russian philosophy into an interesting, dramatic performance that really meant anything to a modern audience. Now I know.

Utopia follows the progression of Russian thought from activist efforts after the 1825 Decembrist revolt right up to the beginning of Marxist socialism. The play and production were so well done that I literally felt, near the end, like standing up and warning the characters of what they were about to get themselves into. But, of course, they never imagined a Stalin. And they failed to comprehend the average Russian’s faith in authoritarian leaders. This is especially true of aristocratic main character Aleksandr Herzen, who was exiled for advocating freedom of Russian serfs (slaves). The problem of serfdom is the lynchpin of his and his colleagues’ struggles.

The second major character is Mikhail Bakunin, whose enthusiasm knows no bounds as he throws off one once-loved philosophy after another to finally find his calling in violent revolution. Stoppard uses him as a mouthpiece to voice a central question of Russian existence: “Where are we off to? Who’s got the map? We study the different utopias…power to the experts, to the workers, to the philosophers…property is a right, property is theft, the evil of competition, the evil of monopoly…central planning, no planning, free housing, free love…and each of them uniquely harmonious, just and efficient. But there’s one question none of the maps explain: why should anyone obey anyone else?”

In the end, the stage is set for the rising of Lenin and the revolutions of 1905 and then 1917. It starts to make sense. But the “Russia question” is never answered. Herzen, Bakunin, and others–they’re always asking, “What’s wrong with Russia? Why did the Renaissance pass us by? Why do we have to get all our ideas second-hand from France and Germany?” They have a lot of ideas, but no real answers. And I’m still left wondering, even after the development of thought led to the Revolution, how did it stick for so long after it became a disaster?

Producing The Coast of Utopia is a massive undertaking, and it’s questionable whether cities outside of London and New York will commit to it. If they do, and you’re interested, go. If you have the stamina for a marathon, do it.

I’m going to honor the Boys of Old Florida.

As a former short-term resident of Gainesville, the hometown of the University of Florida Gators, it is clearly time to offer up a quick tribute now that another team got the Big Chomp and the Gators are national champions again in college basketball.  We’re not even going to mention the national championship that they’re also currently holding in football.  Or going to the 2005 NCAA College World Series final in baseball.

I hear you out there, muttering about “what the heck does this have to do with travel?”  Well, watch me pretzel into that one!

Too many people think only of Orlando, theme parks and maybe Miami when they consider Florida, but that is a partial picture of an amazing state.  Because of the differences in topography and demographics, the further south you go in Florida, the less “Southern” the culture.  I like Miami and the Everglades, the beaches are great (tip: head to the Gulf of Mexico side for the best ones) and Key West is a special place, but there are hidden treasures in north central Florida, in and around Gainesville, that you might enjoy.

**  Micanopy (Mick-an-OH-pee) is the perfect little movie-set Florida town, just south of Gainesville.  Stroll languidly past massive gnarled Spanish moss-draped trees and poke into crammed curiosity shops.  Around noon, pause at the friendly local ice cream/sandwich joint, the Coffee N Cream, when local fiddlers and banjo players stage a porch concert.  Menu recommendation? Aunt Sherry’s chicken salad.  Another dining option:  the perfectly-named Blue Highway Pizzeria.

**  Sinkholes.  Walk down the wooden stairs next to lushly burbling streams that disappear into the bottom of Gainesville’s massive Devil’s Millhopper Geological State Park.  This self-contained ecosystem is pretty interesting for just a big ol’ hole in the ground.

**  Fast Car.  Drag racing fans already know about the yearly pilgrimage to whiff those nitro fumes and enjoy 7,000 pounds of deafening dragster horsepower at the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Gatornationals, but don’t miss a quick visit to see the Big Daddy.  Racer “Big Daddy” Don Garlits’ Museum of Drag Racing and Classic Cars is south of Gainesville in Ocala, an easy jump from Interstate 75.  What’s it like at the drag strip?  I wrote about it here and here.

**  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park in Cross Creek.  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling lived in this Cracker farmhouse for 25 years, stashing her booze in the closet during Prohibition and typing her manuscripts on the front porch.  Stubbed-out cigs in the ashtray make it seem that she’s just stepped out to tend to her orange grove.  Hungry for primo gator tail, cooter (turtle) and frog legs?  Go to the Yearling Restaurant in Cross Creek.

**  Springs and Rivers.  On a sticky Florida midsummer day, take the proverbial flying leap into refreshing clear turquoise spring waters at Poe Springs, Blue Springs or Ginnie Springs or O’Leno State Park.  For a bit more forward motion, laze down the Ichetucknee River in a giant inner tube. (more…)