Street Art (2): Berlin, The Invisible Billboard Pod Hotel

Berlin Pod Hotel

Where
Located on Death Strip, the piece of land along the former Berlin Wall where people used to be shot and now a waste land dedicated to sculptures, French artist Etienne Boulanger formed a one room hotel between billboards. It definitely is a Room without a View. A night costs a mere Euro 20.- (approx US $ 30.-). It is on view (or use) up to March 2008.

Berlin Pod Hotel 2

It is accessible by ladder and is a fully equipped as a two star hotel room.

Philip Horst, one of five artists running the Sculpture Park Berlin Centrum, said: “Boulanger’s idea was to make use of an economic cycle and use the rented out advertising spaces to finance the hotel.”

Reservations

Berlin Pod Hotel 3

Via Etienne Boulanger‘s website

The ITN Video on Youtube:

Via
Vacant ready and ITN UK

Christchurch: The SO Pod Hotel

Hotel SO BAR
The Bar of the SO Hotel

The So Hotel
Hotel SO in Christchurch, New Zealand is another and massive (284 rooms of which 190 are pod size) Pod Hotel that opened on 6 November 2007. Room rates for a double start at an affordable NZ $ 89.

Its Team
The team is made up of people from industries as diverse as property development, hotel management, marketing and advertising. They believe this diversity in backgrounds is essential in providing the fresh perspective needed to develop an experience unencumbered by the traditional ways of designing and managing a hotel.

Its Philosophy
Some hotels offer a budget experience at a cheap price. Others offer a luxurious experience at a high price. SO believes that great design, great technology and great service should be available to everyone at a great price. Other than the “strict” pod hotels like Yotel Qbic and Easy Hotel it also offers bar, restaurant and business facilities.

Its History
Looking into its history and background is interesting. The Hotel has been developed by Dave Henderson who became famous in the middle 90ies for his struggle with the NZ tax authorities. It started when he claimed a tax refund that resulted in a tax review with a huge back taxes claim. It even put him into bankruptcy from which he was able to come back when he successfully overturned the tax claim. The whole story is documented in the feature film We’re Here to Help. The NZ release of the film coincided with the Hotel opening. (Note to myself: Have to advise Filmgirl whether it is feasible to have this film released at the Rotterdam film Festival).

The funniest thing is that the hotel is located in….the former Tax Office. After Henderson bought the property he refused to extend the lease of the Tax Office and after having them vacate the building he started converting the building in a hotel.

More Reading
It is also featured by The Guardian and
USA Today

Street Art (1): Istanbul Cow Parade

Istabul Asus Laptop Cow
Istanbul Asus Laptop Cow

Catching up, because there are many posts in statu nascendi (draft form), but every time I want to catch up , something else draws my attention.

I always wanted to start a Street Art Tag.

This summer Istanbul served as background for the Cow Parade. I took some pictures in September. The three best of The Istanbul Cowparade I would like to share with you.

Istanbul Latte Cow
Istanbul Latte Cow

I had seen Artsy Cows in other cities in the past, but I didn’t know is what a serious organization and what a mass of cows were already shown around the world by Cow parade.

Istanbul Paparazzi Cow
Istanbul Paparazzi Cow

Photos © Happy Hotelier, off course Yours Truly Happy Paparazzi:-)

The Death of the Travel Blog

Make The Great Escape Logo

The provocative title “The Death of the Travel Blog” drew my immediate attention to the blog “Make The Great Escape”.

Read the post and see for yourself what I mean: A refreshing new approach to travel blogging.

That is what i mean with a Gem. I found it while updating my T-List somewhere between the Technorati backtags, even before Worldhum referred to it, but reminded me to pay some attention to it.

Most certainly the Worldhum attention for a Travel related Blog barely a month old will draw some more attention to them. Now I only hope they keep hanging in.

Added December 23, 2008:
I noted the blog was discontinued. So I deleted all links. From time to time you have to check your old posts and old links… Food for a post about The Dead Travel Blogs Society. This is an analogy to a former life of mine as a Rosarian. Many rose I used to grow died after one or two years and became members of my Dead Roses Society.

Edit June 20, 2009
In my prior edit I left the Worldhum link where it was. It amazes me that Worldhum doesn’t have a linkchecker on its site….now I took the link to Worldhum that in itself links to the dead blog, away from here.

T-List and other Travel Related Blogger Communities

T-List

It was a hassle, but also fun to udate the T-List .

Here are some backgrounds, as I hope to get some advice from a more technical guy or girl who can give me some guidance (or maybe even a snipped of code) as I would like the list to be searcheable and thus sortable.

Why did you do it?

I did it, because my first approach of keeping track of the additions to the original T-List by simply deli icio us tagging them as T-List or TB-List and then widgeting them into a page of this Blog didn’t satisfy me anymore: The Deli Icio us widget provides a maximum of 100 links only. The number of links was nearing 200, so I would have to create a third del icio us tag TC-List and corresponding widget.

In a short time I will also update the T-List page with an updated list in stead of a widget and split the T-List and The L-List page in two pages.

How did you do it?

I wanted to bring more order in the list. I know that with advanced PHP / SQL techniques you can solve the problem (and the sorteability), but I am not that expert in PHP / SQL (yet). However I know the bit that you can export cell entries from a spreadsheet into a Database format. So I started to fudge around with a quatropro spreadsheet and exported it into HTM, then I picked it up in Dreamweaver, cropped it a bit so that its width would not ruin my template. I hear you moan “A Quattro Pro Spreadsheet?”. Yes the reason is that when you try to do this in Excel you have less export possibilities than in Quattro Pro and I am still a Word Perfect afficianado.

Sources

The T-list started as an idea of Matthieu Ouillet of Radar

Other Communities?

Yes! To me it seems there is an explosion of Travel Related Blogs (and not to forget an implosion of abandoned Travel Related Blogs).

  • Bloggers Choice Award 2008 with currently listed more than 630 Travel related Blogs
  • The Bobs Which means so much as Best of the Blogs. It is an initiative of Deutsche Welle and is multi lingual. It counts 184 Blogs under its Travel tag
  • The Blog Topsites & Blogflux combination. The link points to currently the latest page of its Travel related Blogs, counting 645 Blogs

So why do you keep wading through all those Blogs?

Very simple: Among them there are gems to be found. I like to share my finds. I also want to encourage those gems. I myself got encouraged by others in the field when I started to go on with what i did.

In the meantime (my version of) the list has grown to over 250 blogs. I found some gems already.

Keep in touch!