Kategorien-Archiv: English
book review: down under
Bill Bryson's book "Down under" is probably one of the best-selling Australian travel diaries of the last years. Bryson writes about his travels in a very entertaining and easy-to-read style. Down under is quite entertaining and full of supposedly well researched peeks into Australian history, geography, foreign relations and politics. However, while "Down under" might be an entertaining read, Bryson hasn't done a great job in portraying the places he visited. Even though Bryson seems to have done a lot of research, he hasn't done a great job in planning his itineraries and researching the destinations.
While his approach of just going to various places and looking around might lead to unexpected discoveries and some entertainment for the reader, Bryson also managed to miss interesting and important aspects of some cities. This is perhaps most apparent in Canberra: Bryson stayed at a hotel that is just a couple of minutes' walk from the Civic center, but he almost entirely missed it [...]
Veröffentlicht in down under Kommentieren
The Parliamentary Triangle
I went to the Parliamentary Triangle today--a part of Canberra mostly occupied by Parliament House (=Parliament Hill), government offices, embassies and very expensive residential properties. Now that most of the trees have leaves and some are still in bloom, Canberra is getting nicer than it was in those cold rainy november (...umm...July) days. I felt as if I was cycling on a highway that had been built right through a park. Of course, highways wouldn't have bike lanes. [...]
Veröffentlicht in down under Kommentieren
Newspapers&TV in Oz
I bought a newspaper last weekend. I normally don't buy newspapers here, because B&G has a subscription for the Australian, the Canberra Times and the Sydney Morning Herald and these papers are usually lying around on the tables in the kitchen. However, I felt I needed to spend the $2.20 (1,43 Euro) on the weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. The price may seem a bit steep, but in fact the paper had 402 pages altogether and weighed a couple of 100g. Of course, the carreer and cars sections were quite large. But still-one could really spend more than a weekend reading it. The downside is that most Aussie papers are surprisingly light when it comes to international news. The Sydney Morning Herald had a special on the dire consequences of global warming, but as Oz is the nation emitting the largest amount of carbon dioxide per capita, and also very affected by droughts, I won't really classify this as international news. They also don't really follow the convention of having [...]
Veröffentlicht in down under Kommentieren
Wasser