Essays – Flung

Is Travel Worthy of Its Carbon Footprint?

Sarah Stodola — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 13:19:53 +0000

To read travel magazines or watch Anthony Bourdain’s shows or browse Instagram today is to come away always with the sense that travel, intrinsically, improves both the traveler and the world. It is to be inundated with familiar quotes that cumulatively tell us that as a concept, travel does not contain multitudes, it contains only positives. Not all those who wander are lost. I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list. The world is a book, and those who […]

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Stuck in Traffic, a Mexico City Story

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 15:37:18 +0000

In unfamiliar cities, I tend to be a walker. I love the particular relationship it carves out between me, who doesn’t belong there, and the place that of course, belongs exactly there. I love the way walking tips the power balance just a little, emboldening me to navigate this new city as I please, to potentially discover things that no one or guide book would have taken me to. I’ll admit that I like walking in strange places also partly […]

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With Migrants and Nomads

Jaime Jacques — Thu, 12 Jul 2018 10:01:50 +0000

My friend drives me to the airport. We pull into the drop-off zone amidst dirty, day old snow and we both get out of the car. I shiver in my thin grey turtleneck as we hug, bid farewell and play out a familiar scene. I thank her profusely for the ride. She marvels at my economy in packing, at the way I am able to fit my life into a bag, at the things I am able to live without […]

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Turks, Punks, and Hipsters in Berlin’s Neukölln District

Erum Naqvi — Sun, 01 Jul 2018 16:55:44 +0000

It’s my first night in Neukölln and I’m itching for a Turkish pizza. Comprised of flatbread spread with a thin layer of curried meat and served alongside salad, mint and cucumber yogurt, plus herbs, lemons and pickles, all for you to pile on the pizza as you please before rolling it up and stuffing it in your mouth–it’s fresh and satisfying at the same time. As a Persian, anything served with minty yogurt makes me want to sing. We call […]

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When They Build It, But No One Comes

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 24 Apr 2018 18:16:07 +0000

On our second day on Nias, the Bali-sized island off the western coast of Sumatra, in Indonesia, my boyfriend and I took a long walk down the shore toward the spot where the bay meets the ocean, and then beyond it, just to see what we’d find. We’d chosen Nias for a few days of vacation after some time spent working in Singapore initially because it seemed like a convenient option, geographically speaking. It wasn’t. What might have been an […]

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Full Historic Immersion in Granada

Sarah Stodola — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 23:18:36 +0000

Any arrival to Granada, the city in Nicaragua founded by the Spanish 500 years ago, necessarily happens via road vehicle—there is no airport or train line. As a result, the sensation getting there will be one of happening upon a lost paradise. The hot, dusty countryside seems just the kind that would play host to not much of anything. But then it gives way rather suddenly to a grid of tidy streets flanked to a one by colorful, low-slung buildings […]

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The Lost Art of Getting Lost

Sarah Stodola — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 21:54:27 +0000

On the last Saturday of last August, we got in a fully packed car, at the time parked in Brooklyn, and headed out. North toward Queens, then the Bronx, over the Tappan Zee Bridge to the other side of the Hudson a bit further north. We then settled into I-87, where we’d stay for the next few hours, until turning off onto the small highway toward Lake Placid. We’d done this drive before, many times, at least once a year […]

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Booking Ahead: My Evolving Approach To Hotel Rooms

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 18:30:59 +0000

The summer in the late nineties I spent with a Eurail Pass and the contents of a single backpack, I took pride in never booking a place to stay ahead of arriving. This meant, most often, that I ended up in the hostel that hit the best ratio of not-gross to train station proximity. The approach usually served me well, and it gave me some of my best adventures, a day spent eating baguettes and cheese and drinking wine in […]

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A Weird Year for Travel, as It Was for America

Sarah Stodola — Sat, 30 Dec 2017 00:17:51 +0000

It’s been a bizarre year for travel here in America. People who shouldn’t have been banned from entering the United States were, Americans grew more cautious about venturing to other countries. “Travel Ban” became a contentious phrase. Laptops were banned, phones were searched. All in the name of countering dangers that haven’t done nearly the damage to our country that our homegrown ones have. The new reality has produced a reluctance on the part of foreigners to come here. After […]

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The Hotel Pool Enters Politics (This One Is a Trump Supporter)

Sarah Stodola — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 03:39:59 +0000

Before the plan emerged for me to come here for two weeks, I knew little about Singapore. I had a sense of powerhouse Asian megacities only in the abstract, and my generalizations of them ran toward the overly sterile, overly materialistic, full of suits and really expensive cocktails. I knew Singapore was a fast-paced economic hub, and I knew it boasted some level of multiculturalism. Beyond the abstract, though, what I truly knew about Singapore was that it had the […]

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