I recently picked up 101 Places not to Visit
Russ' list of 101 cities tells us why we really should just stay away. All in the tradition of Great British xenophobia, the reviews are not to be taken seriously, very tongue-in-cheek and quite funny.
Some of the worst destinations are: Mogadishu, Astana, San Salvador, Murmansk, Atlantic City. Ulaanbaatar is described as the ultimate destination for those wanting to get away from everyone and everything. Western cities do not escape criticism with Copenhagen (amongst others) labelled boring. The Little Mermaid statue, he claims, looks mournfully at the water wishing she could swim away.
In the spirit of fairness, I'm going to test the accuracy of his criticisms for places I have been to.
London, he claims, is full of angry commuters, and workers who must get their drinking in before everything shuts at 11pm. | TRUE |
| Barcelona is full of street entertainment - only mildly entertaining unless you like pickpockets, political rallies and fires. | FALSE-ISH |
| Norwegians in Oslo are "most unbearably smug people that you'll meet in Scandinavia". | TRUE-ISH |
| Riga's red-brick cathedral is like any old library or STD clinic in Britain. | FALSE |
So, only about half right, then. I finished the book and found myself really wanting to go to all the places he'd listed, just to see them!
7 comments:
Slough made hislist. If I remember rightly, the other UK places were Scottish - Edinburgh and Glasgow - and Northern Ireland (Belfast).
Atlantic City ~ ah, now there's a destination. It's actually so bad it's worth a visit. I can give you a long list of those. ;)
Did Limerick get a mention? Or even the Godforesaken Athlone?
that was me by the way, Cathy
Cathy - No, Ireland was conspicuous in its absence! I was quite surprised at that.
Is Albania in the book??
The author didn't like Riga? Well, burn the book, his judgement is not to be taken seriously anyway... ;)
Post a Comment