Spin, Spin, Spin the Globe

Growing up, my siblings and I played a highly involved game we aptly named The Globe. The rules were simple. Close your eyes and spin the thing. Wherever your finger landed was where you were ordered to eke out the rest of your life. Usually I'd be left languishing in the Atlantic Ocean clinging to a life raft, forced to catch fish with hand-crafted spears, hoping against hope that an ocean liner would soon rescue me from my dwindling supplies. I've read Life of Pi so that may be regurgitated jabber, but rest assured, I've retained my love of The Globe (the game and all it entails). As a kid, my older brother had a bit of an anger management problem and once attacked the poor sphere with a pencil. My family lovingly refers to this spot as the Russian Crater. Never mind Chernobyl, we had our own human-induced disasters in the former USSR to deal with. Maybe we adored our game so much because we never had cable, let alone were allowed to watch television after dinner. What else were quasi-Amish children going to do with their time other than spend it hovering around a beat-up old globe?

Now that I'm older (and I still don't have cable - someday, MTV, someday I will understand what all the fuss is about), I've done an infinitesimal amount of traversing the earth. I've graduated from closing my eyes and letting my fingers find a place to inhabit for the rest of my days to spending countless afternoons daydreaming about those days in various locales. And there is a fantastic website that's aided me in spending innumerable hours doing just that:

Lonely Planet World Guide

As any travel-minded individual knows, Lonely Planet has built quite an empire out of books geared towards relatively cheap excursions around our fair planet. I use 'relatively' only in the sense that yes, there are some amazingly inexpensive places to go to. It's the getting there that gets you (and your bank account). This website is one of my favorites, and so simply and lusciously titled: Explore the World. You can do it all from the seat of your pants! At your desk! Amazing, this new-fangled internet. The website lets you explore any continent, any country, any hemisphere you'd like and has great tidbits of knowledge about every place they visit. To learn where I spent the better part of a year of my life, feel free to explore Sweden. If the Vikings don't lure you, the meatballs surely will, mark my words.

Click away. Close your eyes if you want to channel your eight-year-old self. Be bold and find a new place to dream away your day.




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Citation: Lonely Planet World Guide. lonely planet 2005. Retrieved on January 8, 2005. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide.