Charity begins at home, goes the old saying, and given all the scams in this world, one should exercise extreme caution in practicing it abroad. Simply put, in strange lands it’s nearly impossible to know who to trust.
 
Here are a few eye-openers I’ve gleaned from the web.
 
Anyone who’s seen Slum Dog Millionaire can’t forget the scene where a child is blinded to make him more useful for begging. It’s shocking, but reality in a city like Mumbai. Here’s a Slate article on “beggar mafias."
 
I came across this link on Air Fare Watchdog, an unexpected source on potential dilemmas that may crop up when travelling. Things are not always as they appear, so inform yourself well.

Here is a list of seemingly harmless attractions that contribute to animal cruelty.
 
Finally, let me recommend this site of general interest, Tourism Concern: Action for Ethical Tourism, which covers a large number of issues, backed up by professional reporting. "Voluntourism" may in many cases do more harm than good. For instance, helping out in an orphanage sounds like a great idea, but--among other potential negative consequences--bonding with kids and then leaving after a couple of weeks may contribute to attachment disorders in the young.
https://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/
 
For logistical reasons, I’m switching my day for posts from Monday to Thursday. See you next week!

You don’t always have to travel far to get a taste for other cultures. At this past weekend's Norfolk NATO festival in Virginia, I met with people from some of the 28 countries represented and saw folk dances that reminded me of my years in Europe—as well as time in folk ensembles here in the States.
 
As soon as I got there, I could see that the group onstage was Polish by the men’s candy-striped trousers and long blue vests, the dress of a Krakowiak, or Cracovian. I’d worn such a costume when singing with Columbus, Ohio’s Lajkonik ensemble. Soon, they were reliving Śmigus-dyngus, the Easter Monday custom of throwing water on girls—which I’ve blogged about before. In the version of this Michas ensemble of Virginia Beach, the guys get the bucket dumped over their heads. A dance called the Kujawiak, a wreath dance from the region of Kujawy, followed--one of the five so-called “national dances of Poland” with polonaise, krakowiak, oberek,and mazurka. 
 
Later, the Chicago-area Tatra Foundation ensemble did their highlander numbers—just a couple of feet above sea level near the docks, out on Norfolk’s Town Point Park lawn. Since I’ve spent six years of my life on the other side of the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia, the harmonies were familiar, as were the costumes.
 
I got to drink German beer with Germans celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Reinheitsgebot, the brewing purity law, limiting ingredients to water, barley and hops, and mentioned on many labels of imports here in the U.S. Of course, it might have been better to be in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, where Chancellor Merkel marked the occasion by quoting Martin Luther: If you have no beer, you have nothing to drink.
 
And I enjoyed just chatting with the dozens of nationalities present.

Oh, and one more thing to celebrate: today is the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, my "name day" in many countries. In Slovakia, I'd celebrate by pouring friends shots of slivovica, while female friends and colleagues would like up to kiss me and give me flowers.

Slovakia rolls off the tongue—but Czechia? Since the split of Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic has struggled to find a suitable short form in English, and it will soon be registering this new name with the UN. But will it fly with Anglophones?
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The controversy takes me back to my early days, 1990-92, in the old bi-national federation, when Slovaks pushed for hyphenated spellings like Czecho-Slovak, arguing they were as natural as Serbo-Croatian. It never stuck, among either English-speakers or Czechs, but no matter—the country soon divided.

The Slovaks got the better deal on the name. Československo and Czechoslovakia shortened nicely to Slovensko and Slovakia. But even Czechs took years to get used to Česko as short for Česká Republika, and “Czechia” never took off among English-speakers. And so the search goes on for a snappier name, better suited to tourist brochures and hockey jerseys.

Somehow this recalls the dispute over the Budweiser brand, which shared its name with a far better beer from the Southern Bohemian town of České Budějovice, known in German as Budweis. The derivation was simple: just add the –er suffix to get the proper adjective: Budweiser. After litigation and negotiations, the U.S. brewing giant came to an agreement with the small Czech outfit, which now markets its product internationally as Czechvar and domestically as Budvar.

The country’s name in German helps explain why some officials are pushing for Czechia. For decades, the bi-national state had been called die Tschechoslovakei. But after the split, the short form die Tschechei was out because it had been used for the Nazi-era Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The German, Swiss, Austrian and Czech press agencies soon agreed to use Tschechien instead.

In the search for a Bud-Light equivalent for the Czech Republic, many possibilities come to mind. The “Czech Lands” is one, but it smacks of former times, as in “Crown Lands.” “Czechland” or “Czechistan” would be a bad joke. Czechia became confused with Chechnya in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. And given all the sour puns on the Czech/check homophony in English, all the hand-wringing seems understandable.

Czechia would be the most closely analogous to Česko, Tschechien, and equivalents from Spanish Chequia to Russian Chekhia. But to most English-speakers, Czechia just sounds awkward. Or is it a matter of habituation? After all, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, I gradually dropped “Belorussia” and learned to say “Belarus”—even if it did remind me of “walrus.”


For more on the issue, see the link in the first paragraph or these:
Radio interview with Jan Čulik, who teaches Czech studies in the UK.
And a BBC print article.

My contribution to April Fools. I got this tea for Christmas. Back in January, I was looking at it on my table and realized--that's the four-your old Otto von Habsburg stepping out of the carriage. The occasion was his father's coronation as Apostolic King of Hungary in 1916. I wrote about it in another post, as the event was organized by author Miklós Bánffy.