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Society

Mendoza's "Recycled" Winery — Argentine Eco Architecture With A Splash

Architects in Mendoza, western Argentina, have used hundreds of tons of recycled building material, shipping containers and discarded decorations to create an otherwise high-tech winery.

MENDOZA — Winemaking and wine tourism installations are usually built with a tasteful nod at the landscape around them. In the case of the MAAL winery in western Argentina, its environment-friendly design includes use of 300 tons of discarded construction and decoration materials found in and around the district of Mendoza.

Local architects Mora Hughes wanted to make the project a badge of their "commitment to nature," but with all the "charm of a Mendoza winery." MAAL winery is in Las Compuertas, on the outskirts of the city of Mendoza and at the heart of a celebrated winemaking region.

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Mezcal, The Trendy Spirit Has An Ugly Secret

As demand soars for the traditional spirit, so does the mountain of waste created in producing it. Producers see creative, sustainable solutions.

PUEBLA — Mezcal, Mexico’s traditional agave spirit, has enraptured palates across the country and abroad. But as demand soars, a more bitter note emerges: the amount of waste its production generates and the risks that poses for the very environment that sustains it.

Like tequila, mezcal is a distilled beverage produced from agave, a plant native to the arid and semiarid zones of the Americas. Both mezcal and tequila are produced by cooking and fermenting the piña, the heart of the agave, and distilling its juice. The byproducts of these processes are highly polluting, resistant to decomposition, and potentially toxic for aquatic life if dumped in rivers without treatment.

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Eating Through Lockdown

-Sponsored content-

Lockdown was severe in Istanbul. No sooner had Wuhan shut down, than we did. We are a city that never sleep: social and always out — in cafes, bars and tea-gardens.

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Frida Kahlo, Capturing Her Pain In Painting And Photographs

The Costantini collection of Latin American art, on display in Buenos Aires, includes family photos of Mexico's Frida Kahlo, whose singular paintings and resilience in suffering made her, in death, a symbol of female strength and creativity.

BUENOS AIRES — The Tercer Ojo (Third Eye) exhibition in the MALBA museum in Buenos Aires, displaying one of Latin America's outstanding art collections, will give visitors a glimpse of the lives of two celebrated Mexican painters of the 20th century, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Kahlo turned to painting to escape years of acute back pain, and is often associated with the Surrealists of her time. The display includes pictures taken by her father among others, showing private moments in the life of a passionate woman who has become an icon of modern popular culture.

In 1929, Kahlo married Rivera, a towering figure of Mexican modern art and in particular, Muralism. Throughout her life as an artist, she remained in his shadow.

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Society
Julián López de Mesa Samudio

Colombia Celebrates Its Beloved Drug For The Ages

This essential morning drink for millions worldwide was once considered an addictive menace, earning itself a ban on pain of death in the Islamic world.

-Essay-

BOGOTÁ — October 1st is International Coffee Day. Recently it seems as if every day of the calendar year commemorates something — but for Colombia, coffee is indeed special.

For almost a century now we have largely tied our national destiny, culture and image abroad to this drink. Indeed it isn't just Colombia's star product, it became through the course of the 20th century the world's favorite beverage — and the most commonly used drug to boost work output.

Precisely for its stimulating qualities — and for being a mild drug — coffee was not always celebrated, and its history is peppered with the kinds of bans, restrictions and penalties imposed on the 'evil' drugs of today.

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Green
Jean-Marc Vittori

My Failed Attempt At An Eco-Friendly Summer Vacation

Mass tourism developed by taking advantage of cheap and abundant energy. But those days are over and we are all going to have to reinvent how we holiday. But as I found out, that is no easy task.

-Essay-

PARIS — I had a wonderful vacation, thank you for asking. At the same time, I couldn't let go and relax fully because one question has been on my mind all summer. Is my vacation sustainable? In other words, will my kids be able to take the same kind of vacation 20 years from now?

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food / travel
Laura Valentina Cortés Sierra

Family Sacrifice: How I Found My Colombian Grandmother At Eid In Morocco

The writer, a Bogota native, was in Tangier for the recent celebration of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice. She had been warned about how shocking the ceremony could be, but an impromptu invitation from a local family brought her back to her own.

TANGIER — Four years ago I went to Rabat, Morocco as an exchange student from my native Colombia, arriving in early August just after the Eid al-Adha celebrations, the festival of sacrifice that was so important for the worldwide Muslim community.

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Society
Marina Artusa

Holy Mess! Spain's Disfigured Christ Mural Remains A Hit With Tourists

The clumsy restoration of a mural of Christ in a Spanish chapel 10 years ago shocked, then amused Spaniards and millions more abroad, and gave the local town a level of publicity, and tourist revenues, it never had nor could have hoped for. Here's how it looks 10 years later.

BORJA — Among the countless pictures and images of Christ around the world, it might not be outlandish to imagine that one of them might seek revenge — using humidity as the instrument of its vengeance.

One might say this of a by-now notorious mural of Christ inside a chapel in Borja in the province of Aragón, northern Spain.

Painted in 1930 by a painter and academic, the image was smothered in 2012 by Cecilia Giménez Zueca, a local resident and amateur painter. She wanted to help no doubt, but her "unfinished" restoration turned a venerable image of the suffering Christ — an Ecce Homo — into a bloated, indefinable cartoon.

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Society
Eric Delon

How Our Post-COVID Travel Fever Is Changing Tourism For Good

Frenzy has replaced frustration, and some have dubbed it "revenge travel." But far away or nearby, people want to move, move, move...to travel! Beyond the ridiculous moniker, “revenge travel,” this never-before-seen rush may bring on lasting changes for tourism.

PARIS — Lilly, a social media manager at a large French-speaking media, was still living with her parents when the first lockdown took the planet by surprise in mid-March 2020.

Lockdown after lockdown, this 23-year-old travel lover waited impatiently. In early Oct. 2021, she finally headed out alone to Thailand, criss-crossing the country with just a backpack and her reporter's notebook. “It was super intense. I met many people there. There were almost no tourists. Life was cheap, I was in my element.”

Responding to a “gentle family pressure”, Lilly eventually came back to France in January. But she had the same goal: Leaving again “far away” next October and broadening her range of destinations: South America, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia where she will join a French-Swiss friend she met during her first trip in Thailand.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Hannelore Crolly

Baden-Baden Postcard: Haven For Wealthy Russians Reduced To Tourist Ghost Town

For 200 years, the Black Forest spa town of Baden-Baden has been the destination of choice for Russian tourists, with oligarchs shopping in the luxury boutiques and buying up swathes of property. Now Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has changed all that and the town's once-bustling streets are empty.

BADEN-BADEN — Some idiot hung a bag of cartridges on the door of the hotel, receptionist Juri tells us. He says it happened one night towards the end of February, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. “It had live ammunition in it,” he adds, shaking his head as though he can hardly believe it.

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The perpetrator must have had insider knowledge of the hotel world because who else would know that a nondescript three-star hotel in the center of Baden-Baden, a popular tourist destination in southwest Germany, was owned by a Russian family? That is why Juri does not want us to use his full name here or that of the hotel.

When Russia invaded Ukraine five months ago, the “most Russian town in Germany” felt the impact straightaway. The spa took down its Russian flag, and the town hall started flying a Ukrainian one.

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Economy
Thomas Straubhaar

Why The Era Of Low-Cost Air Travel Must End

Many of us have become accustomed to cheap flights, but as prices spiral, it's time to ask about their true cost. And politicians' plan to bring in cheap labor to keep down prices is doomed to fail.

-Analysis-

BERLIN — You get what you pay for. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. It is hypocritical for passengers to complain about the chaos that has dominated airports since the start of the holiday season. These problems could easily have been predicted.

No one can seriously believe that a business model whereby passengers are transported from A to B for such a ridiculously low price is sustainable. When flights cost a fraction of a train ticket, something must be wrong. Costs are either being disregarded or passed on to someone else.

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food / travel
Ahmed Medhat and Rana Mamdouh

Denied The Nile: Aboard Cairo's Historic Houseboats Facing Destruction

Despite opposition, authorities are proceeding with the eviction of residents of traditional houseboats docked along the Nile in Egypt's capital, as the government aims to "renovate" the area – and increase its economic value.

With an eye on increasing the profitability of the Nile's traffic and utilities, the Egyptian government has begun to forcibly evict residents and owners of houseboats docking along the banks of the river, in the Kit Kat area of Giza, part of the Greater Cairo metropolis.

The evictions come following an Irrigation Ministry decision, earlier this month, to remove the homes that have long docked along the river.

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