Our Frappr map has hit the 100 mark! Fantastic! One of the things Marina and I enjoy most about the podcasts is to find out where people are tuning in from. South Africa, Japan, Argentina, New Zealand, Denmark and much of Europe and the US of course. Check it out, and if you haven’t already, then please add yourself to the map – we’re especially grateful to all of you that have added a photo and/or a comment as well. Thanks!
Over in the right-hand column there is a pointer to my book Errant in Iberia. At least one person has noticed that it used to say ‘Coming soon in Audio Format’ underneath. Well, I’ve kind of taken that project off the to-do list. I tried recording a couple of chapters but just wasn’t happy with the results, so I’m afraid that it shall, for the immediate future at least, stay in that antiquated ‘book’ format, the old-school paper and ink kind. Ideal for getting to sleep at night. Or reading on the beach, so you don’t get sand in your iPod.
Speaking of to-do lists, I am revolutionizing my life (I think) with the ‘Getting Things Done’ system, GTD to me. It really seems to work – empty inbox, empty in-tray, loads of clear ideas about what needs to be done next in every aspect of life. Wow. Read all about it here. Why not give it a try?
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Many travelers find this an invaluable aid to traveling in Spain, especially when coupled with a more extensive listings guide like the Rough Guide. The appeal of this book is the incredibly wide selection of photographs, drawings and maps. Not only does it allow you to get a real feel for the country before you visit, but the street-level city plans are well detailed and an enormous help when navigating from site to site. Plus, this is a book that looks great on the coffee table once you get back! Pick up a copy at: Amazon.co.uk (Europe)  Amazon.com (USA)  |
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Great podcast here on a woman who lost her house in New Orleans flooding. Well worth a listen.
Back with the death on the roads theme… The Department of Traffic has a web page where you can look up accident black spots. Now what’s the point of that? To make you drive extra carefully in those spots? Should we all be checking where we are most likely to wipe-out before we get in the car? I thought the idea would be that once they know about them, they should do everything in their power to identify the problem and stop these stretches of road from being black spots permanently.
Then again their latest slogan is ‘No podemos conducir por ti’, we can’t drive for you, so they probably think that just telling us where to be careful is enough – we can do the rest.
Click here to see the black spots and stats for one of the busiest stretches of motorways in and out of Madrid (40 kilometres of the A6). And keep a real eye out as you approach Valencia on the A3! Scary stuff.
So this is a famous case and every single one is just as important, but two things are so wrong about the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams. First of all the death penalty is just so crazily ethically corrupt – especially in a country run by a religious zealot who ought to set some store by rules particular to his religion such as ‘Thou shalt not kill’…
And secondly because the man perceived to be behind this decision, even if he is only a puppet figurehead, is ‘Arnie‘, a once famously slightly ridiculous muscle man who somehow made it into politics.
Anyway, Amnesty International explains the rights and wrongs of this far better than I.
Here’s the story in Spanish.
So, the double December bank holiday week is over and we have the usual figures to contemplate: 98 dead in 80 traffic accidents – an average of 10 deaths a day. A third of those that died weren’t wearing a seatbelt, and 45 % of the accidents involved excess speed. No figures on the involvement of alcohol yet but I’m sure it played a significant role.
I still believe that a bit of ‘mano duro‘, no-messing discipline is what’s needed here. A year ban for drink-driving on any scale, and higher fines or bans for everything else. Many Spanish regularly drink and drive, speed like crazy, and drive 2 feet from the car in front. Up the punishment and double the level of enforcement, and maybe these figures will fall to rest-of-the-world levels one day.
Meanwhile, in related news, 5% of drivers that died on the roads last year had cocaine in their system, double the figures from four years previously.
Santiago de Compostela and the Santiago Way. A walk through the old town and tapas for supper.
Includes an extract from Tim Moore’s book Spanish Steps – I’m still only on chapter 5, but very ineresting and entertaining so far, with loads of facts, history and info on the Santiago Way.
Click on the Firefox button over at the top of this page’s right hand column, and get the Firefox browser. Firefox is far better than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Why? Because you can have several sites open in just one window at the same time, using ‘tabs’. Because there are loads of invaluable extensions to add which do loads of cool things (like tell you the weather, search wikipedia etc), and because Firefox is far less vulnerable to Spyware. Plus a little bit of top-quality competition for Mr B. Gates is never a bad thing!
And for everyone who downloads a copy of Firefox via NFS, I get up to 1 dollar from Google, much needed for funding my charity India bike ride!
We’re touring around rainy, green Galicia in Northern Spain for a few days. As soon as we find a hotel with decent internet (tomorrow with any luck…), I’ll upload the first podcast from our trip. ¡Hasta Pronto!
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 