Los Angeles-Bukowski

The most famous writer from the rabble, Henry Charles Bukowski, worked as a postman in LA till 50 years old. He lived his life as he wanted, but he wrote 45 books in his life. He wandered pubs and bars in Sunset strip unless sitting in front of typewriter.

Most of his poem and novels shows the life of East Hollywood and Hollywood road. Bukowski spent his latter years in Sanfed, southern port city. There is a grave of him in Greenhills Memorial Park which says "DON'T TRY".

Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

3911 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90037

When Bukowski was in 5th Grade, his teacher instructed him (and the rest of his class) to attend a ceremony here where President Herbert Hoover was to speak and then write an essay about it. Bukowski wrote the best essay in the class — and then confessed that he hadn’t attended the ceremony. This apocryphal tale epitomizes Bukowski’s nonchalant dedication to realistic fiction, even at 10 years old.

Bukowski Court

5124 W. De Longpre Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90027

This is the apartment building where Bukowski lived between 1963-1972. In 2008, in a victory for Bukowski fan’s everywhere, the Los Angeles City Council saved it from destruction by declaring it a culturally significant landmark. And hey, if people really want to visit apartments where guys used to binge drink and use a lot of filthy words, my old apartment is right nearby.

Bukowski on Wikipedia

Russia- Saint Petersburg

One of the most famous literary works of Tolstoy, "Anna Karerina" has a background of Saint Peterburg's upper classes. Saint Peterburg was the role of "Open Window of Europe of Pyotr 1" for 200 years, and was the capital city of Russia before Russian Revolution in 1917.

Saint Pertersburg is the second largest city in Russia, Fourth in Europe. After finishing trip here, we should go to Moscow where Boronski and Anna meet first and where Anna finishes her short life.

St. Petersburg and the world of Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment

Fyodor Dostoyevsky used the slums of St. Petersburg and Leo Tolstoy used the trappings of its upper ranks in society to make the same point in their novels: Russia was on the verge of monumental changes..

Both Anna Karenina and Crime and Punishment are about characters swept up by events that occur after very personal decisions are made. Tolstoy’s dislike of St Petersburg, detailed in his sharp insight into the upper ranks of society in Anna Karenina is matched by Dostoevsky’s devastating descriptions of poverty and despair in the slums, in Crime and Punishment.

“The highest Petersburge society is essentially one” Tolstoy.

“This place, with its tattered population, its dirty and nauseous courtyards and numerous alleys.” – Dostoyevsky.

Bridges and trains in Crime and Punishment and Anna Karenina are not just passage routes from one place to another in the novels. They represent life and death.

 

Anna Karenina (1875-77)

Near the end, when Anna realizes her love for Count Vronsky is diminishing and the prospects of returning to her old life with her husband unpalatable, she rushes around St. Petersburg trying to figure out what to do.

It’s so with me and Pyotr, and the coachman, Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the people living along the Volga, where those placards invite

one to go, and everywhere and always,” she thought when she had driven under the low-pitched roof of the Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran

to meet her.

Making her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room, she gradually recollected all the details of her position, and the plans between which she was hesitating. And again at the old sore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of her tortured, fearfully throbbing heart.

 

Crime and Punishment (1866).

Impoverished student Raskolnikov murders pawnbroker Alyona Ivanovna and hopes the crime will solve his problems.

The building that served as the model for Raskolnikov’s home is located at 19 Grazhdanskaia ulitsa [Street], formerly known as Sredniaia Meshchanskaia ulitsa. it is on the corner of Ulitsa Przhevalskogo, number 5 (formerly Stoliarnyi pereulok [Carpenters' Lane]).

To get to the pawnbroker’s apartment, Raskolnikov walked down Stoliarnyi Lane towards the Griboedev Canal.

 

He crossed over the Kokushkin bridge and turned right

 

He walked along Griboyedova Kanal:

After murdering the pawnbroker, Raskolnivkov buried the loot under a boulder in a courtyard near Voznesensky Avenue.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Heart of darkness written by Joseph Conrad was based on Congo Free State governed by Belgium in 1800s. Barbara Kingsolver's book, Poisoned Wood Bible, exploring the same place for 60 years was written by women writer's point of view. These to literary works are describing the atmosphere of Congo well.  Look around the sightening over the river in Congo.

 

Travel Alert: The Democratic Republic of Congo remains a very risky travel proposition. Travellers should exercise extreme caution, check the BBC for news updates or Safe Travel for current government warnings.

More a geographical concept than a fully fledged nation, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly Zaïre) is a bubbling cauldron of untamed wilderness carpeted by swathes of rainforest and punctuated by gushing rivers and smoking volcanoes. Rendered almost ungovernable by the central administration in Kinshasa, the country remains closed to all but the most brave-hearted travellers. The nation’s history reads like something out of Dante’s Inferno – from the brazen political folly of King Leopold of Belgium to the hideously corrupt ‘kleptocracy’ of maverick megalomaniac Mobutu Sese Seko, and the blood-stained battlegrounds of Africa’s first ‘world war’.

The DRC isn’t all failed politics and wasted natural resources, however. Somewhere in the midst of this proverbial heart of darkness lies a lumbering African giant. With ground-b­reaking national elections in July 2006 giving voice to 60 million shell-shocked inhabitants, a corner may have been turned. Despite early post-election violence in Kinshasa, incumbent president Joseph Kabila took office in October 2006 under the watchful eye of the world’s largest UN peacekeeping force. In some senses, the future can only get better. With five Unesco biospheres, whole ecosystems of teeming wildlife and an estimated US$24 trillion of untapped mineral capacity lying underneath the ground, it goes without saying that the country’s potential is breathtaking.

London Fleet Street

Fleet Street runs from the Strand by the Aldwych in the east to Ludgate Hill near St Paul's Cathedral. Fleet Street has a long tradition as the home of printing. When it was the publishing centre of Britain, Charles Lamb (1775-1834) the essayist put it thus:
'The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street!'
Just to the north of Fleet Street is the home of Dr Johnson, who is credited with creating the first English dictionary.

National daily newspapers were printed in Fleet Street until recent years, and the local pubs were always filled with journalists. In the 1970s all the newspapers moved out to new buildings. Most moved along the river to the giant Wapping print works, which is now home to all of the English national papers in the Rupert Murdoch stable.

Now many of Fleet Street's newspaper buildings lay empty, such as The Sun buildings just off Fleet Street in Bouverie Street. Back in 1846 Charles Dickens worked for a short time as editor of the Daily News in Bouverie Street. In David Copperfield he refers to the giant figures that can still be seen along Fleet Street on St Dunstan-in-the-Wests clock.
There are also a number of historic pubs along Fleet Street, including the 17th century Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which was a favourite haunt of Dr Johnson, and later of Charles Dickens too.

Address: Fleet Street, City of London, London, EC4A 2BU

A Moon and Sixpence- Tahiti

The Moon and Sixpence is a book based loosely on the story of artist Paul Gauguin. The book has also been produced as a play and for television. Gauguin, like the book's main character, journeyed to the Polynesian islands where he produced a number of paintings. The main character of The Moon and Sixpence is Charles Strickland. Charles leaves his family, his London life, and his relatively safe position as a stock broker to pursue his artistic dreams. He travels first to Paris, then to Tahiti, making life choices that could be considered less than the best along the way. Eventually, Strickland kills himself, but not before breaking up a marriage and betraying a friend.

In this book, Strickland put his last passion as an artist in Tahiti. In this island, there is a museum of Gauguin where his works are placed in real.

This museum/memorial to Paul Gauguin, the French artist who lived in the Mataiea district from 1891 until 1893, owns a few of his sculptures, woodcarvings, engravings, and a ceramic vase. It has an active program to borrow his major works, however, and one might be on display during your visit. Otherwise, the exhibits are dedicated to his life in French Polynesia. It's best to see them counterclockwise, starting at the gift shop (which sells excellent prints and reproductions of his works). The originals are in the first gallery. An interesting display in the last gallery shows who owns his works today. The museum has a lagoonside restaurant, although most visitors have lunch at the nearby Restaurant du Musée Gauguin, at PK 50.5.

The museum is adjacent to the lush Harrison W. Smith Jardin Botanique (Botanical Gardens), which was started in 1919 by Harrison Smith, an American who left a career teaching physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and moved to Tahiti. He died here in 1947. His gardens, which now belong to the public, are home to a plethora of tropical plants from around the world. This is the wettest part of Tahiti, so bring an umbrella.

The Beatles Tour in London

          Abbey Road is the eleventh released studio album by the English rock band The Beatles and their last recorded.

Abbey Road is a thoroughfare located in the borough of Camden and the City of Westminster in London running roughly northwest to southeast through St. John's Wood, near Lord's Cricket Ground. It is part of the B507.

The north-western end of Abbey Road begins in Kilburn, at the intersection of Quex Road and West End Lane and was named for the nearby Kilburn Priory and its associated Abbey Farm. It continues south-east for roughly a mile, crossing Belsize Road, Boundary Road, and Marlborough Place, ending at the intersection of Grove End Road and Garden Road.

The Abbey National Building Society (later the Abbey) was founded in 1874 as The Abbey Road & St John's Wood Permanent Benefit Building Society in a Baptist church on Abbey Road.

EMI's Abbey Road Studios are located at the south-eastern end, at 3 Abbey Road, St John's Wood. The Beatles and many other famous popular music performers have recorded at this studio, and The Beatles named their final 1969 studio LP Abbey Road. The album's cover photograph shows the four group members walking across the zebra crossing located just outside the studio entrance. As a result of its association with The Beatles, since 1970 this section of Abbey Road has been featured on the London tourism circuit. In December 2010 the crossing was given Grade II Listed Building status by English Heritage.

The crossing featured on the Beatles cover, as well as the crossing directly north of it, have become popular photo-opportunity areas, despite the road still being a busy thoroughfare for traffic. The iconic Beatles album cover has been parodied many times over the years on the crossing.

The tin street sign (pictured below) on the corner of Grove End Road and Abbey Road was recently removed as well. The street sign is now mounted high on the building on the corner, to save the local council the expense of cleaning and replacing the sign, which was frequently defaced and stolen. The council repaints the wall next to the crossing every three months to cover fans' graffiti.

The Book Thief- Munchen, Germany

Most of The Book Thief takes place in the small, and fictional, town of Molching, just outside of non-fictional Munich, Germany. Molching is on the way to the concentration camp Dachau (which the novel does not enter). This Molching is an imaginery palce based on place Munchen in Germany where the war and Holocoster was taken place in real.

Whether you spend your time in Munich enjoying traditional sausages, drinking famous Munich brew or touring some of the castles that make Munich and Germany so interesting, you are bound to have an incredible experience in Munich. Munich day trips can involve all the afore mentioned attractions, as well as time spent strolling the historic streets and enjoying the excellent museums.






Karlsplatz

Karlsplatz is the name for the district that makes up most of the city center of Munich. This is an excellent place to start Munich day trips and Munich tours. A long line of stores, an area zoned for pedestrians, makes up one of the best places to shop for all things German in Munich. The zone leads directly to the Marienplatz square, a major hangout for tourists. A Glockenspiel and the Old Town Hall await travelers here in the square, as well as some great places to enjoy a traditional German lunch of sausages and beer. Spend the afternoon and evening visiting the Alte Pinakothek and the Deutsches Musuem before checking out some more of the local brew scene at one of the local Bavarian pubs in downtown Munich.

Schwabing/Maxvorstadt

 Schwabing is the University District of Munich, and is often considered to be one of the more upscale neighborhoods in Munich. Munich day trips and Munich tours through Schwabing offer views of some excellent theaters, museums, and of course the university itself. First head to the Englisher Garten located in the district, an enormous park which dates to 1789. Spend time walking, biking, having lunch or even nude sun bathing in the park. Also in the area are the Alte Pinakothek, Neue Pinakothek, Glyptothek, and Antikensammlung; important art works that can all be viewed in this diverse district of Munich. If you have time left after viewing all of the action, spend time in one of the popular beer gardens that continue to make this section of Munich popular. Munich tours and Munich trips through the area can also end up at one of the incredibly popular discos in the university district, where a traveler can dance the night away.