December 2011

Demonstrations in Athens, Greece, continued in October with over 50,000 people gathering in Syntagma Square on Oct. 20 to protest the austerity measures passed by Parliament. The measures include, among other items, tax hikes, pay cuts, pension cuts and temporary layoffs of 30,000 public workers.

In Athens a week before, on Oct. 13 and 14, several demonstrations broke down into violence between rival groups of protesters. More than 50 people were injured, and some policemen and civilians had their clothes set on fire when gasoline bombs were thrown.

Travelers are being advised to avoid traveling to any coastal area of Kenya within 100 miles of the Somali border. The British Foreign Office stated, “Beachfront accommodation in that area and boats off the coast are vulnerable.”

In Egypt, sectarian violence, police strikes, concern with the military transitional government’s handling of protest marches and contentious election campaigns all are bringing thousands of people to protest in Cairo.

A torrential rainstorm that stretched over Italy from the Alps to Sicily on Oct. 25-26 caused flash floods and mudslides that ripped through villages in the Tuscany and Liguria regions. At least seven people were killed, homes were demolished and several roads and bridges were destroyed.

Heavily damaged by mudslides were Aulia and Massa-Carrara in Tuscany and, in Liguria, Borghetto Vara, the area around La Spezia and, hit especially hard, two of the five villages of the Cinque Terre: Monterosso al Mare and Vernazza.

Weeks of heavy rains during October caused devastation in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. More than 80 people died and hundreds of thousands were affected. El Salvador experienced the worst damage, with over 30 dead and 50,000 people displaced. Dozens of roads and bridges were damaged by landslides and floodwater, and the international highway was closed around San José, Costa Rica.

A magnitude-7.2 earthquake struck in southeast Turkey on Oct. 23. More than 1,000 buildings collapsed in the city of Van and the town of Ercis, with over 600 killed, more than 1,400 injured and tens of thousands left homeless.

In 1976, a major earthquake in Van killed 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless.

Southeast Asia’s worst floods in five decades followed a three-month series of storms that began in July. As a result, by late October more than 840 people had died in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines.

Thailand had the most deaths reported, over 400, with 2,000,000 people affected. About a third of the country was under water, including agricultural and industrial regions as well as Chiang Mai, the tourist site of Ayutthaya and some areas of Bangkok.

From 1821 to 1914, more than 44 million people left Europe heading for North America, and, of those, over seven million sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany. To trace their travels, in Bremerhaven the Deutsches Auswandererhaus, or German Emigration Center (Columbusstrasse 65, 27568 Bremerhaven, Germany; phone +49 [0] 471/9 02 20 0 or fax 9 02 20 22), has been open to visitors since 2005.

Our family of 20 was planning a June ’11 visit to Ireland, where we would rent six vehicles. Our son mentioned that Visa would not provide insurance coverage on his rental, though it normally does when he uses that credit card to rent a car. Our daughter’s American Express card wouldn’t include insurance coverage, either.

Granted, the fabulous, Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum is a centerpiece of Bilbao, Spain, but the city has much more to offer.