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Of the making of lists
Oct. 19th, 2010 11:29 amIt's list time over at the Guardian. I don't intend to engage with their 'Best Films of All Time', which looks like the usual exercise in getting the readers to write the paper for you, by putting together a series of lists with which they will inevitably disagree. Actually, the lists so far seem to be playing it safe. There's more to be said about what's missing (the 25 most romantic films of all time do not include Les Enfants du Paradis, Annie Hall is rated not only Woody Allen's funniest, but the funniest film of all time, The Philadelphia Story doesn't make it onto either list, and don't even ask me about the crime list - crime is so much not my genre that I would probably have included Bill Forsyth's That Sinking Feeling or The Sting - oh, and L'homme du train, and Cible émouvante). Anyway, no, not going there.
Meanwhile, over in the Travel section, there's the list of the Travel Awards 2010 winners, compiled from readers' answers to questionnaires. I found it full of surprises, which tells you, I suppose, something about the sort of people who fill in questionnaires in the Guardian's Travel section, and rather more about my assumptions - not to mention the preconceptions inherent in the exercise. Take the list of favourite overseas cities, for example. Number one is Tokyo - and I'm still mildly surprised that enough of the respondents have been to Tokyo for it to be in the running at all. Yes, I know: I'm ridiculously old-fashioned, and really haven't got my head round the extent to which not only is long-haul travel an affordable option, but it's actually cheaper and easier to fly into some impossibly exotic location and holiday there than to reach some remote European destination (is this why all the favourite cities are big cities, or is it just the numbers which squeeze out the smaller, less obvious gems?). Or take our favourite European country: it's Austria, apparently. Followed by Switzerland, Sweden, Croatia and Italy (and, in the paper but not on the web site, by Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark and Poland). I have nothing against Austria, and the accompanying article makes a good case for it - but it was unexpected. Even allowing for my francophile bias, I'd have expected our nearest neighbour to have been somewhere in the top ten...
What are we to make of the fact that the top four UK tourist attractions are museums (London museums, inevitably) but that once overseas we don't go to museums, but to waterfalls, national parks, ruins and of course Disneyland? Or that our favourite hotel in the UK is a one-off London hotel (The Hoxton), followed by a list of hotel chains and, at number eight, the YHA? (A bit of well-placed campaigning for this last, perhaps?) It's all intriguing stuff, but it has no connection with any holiday plans I might make.
Last week's article, about the South Tyrol (including Red Roosrer accommodation on farms) looks more like something we might actually want to do...
Meanwhile, over in the Travel section, there's the list of the Travel Awards 2010 winners, compiled from readers' answers to questionnaires. I found it full of surprises, which tells you, I suppose, something about the sort of people who fill in questionnaires in the Guardian's Travel section, and rather more about my assumptions - not to mention the preconceptions inherent in the exercise. Take the list of favourite overseas cities, for example. Number one is Tokyo - and I'm still mildly surprised that enough of the respondents have been to Tokyo for it to be in the running at all. Yes, I know: I'm ridiculously old-fashioned, and really haven't got my head round the extent to which not only is long-haul travel an affordable option, but it's actually cheaper and easier to fly into some impossibly exotic location and holiday there than to reach some remote European destination (is this why all the favourite cities are big cities, or is it just the numbers which squeeze out the smaller, less obvious gems?). Or take our favourite European country: it's Austria, apparently. Followed by Switzerland, Sweden, Croatia and Italy (and, in the paper but not on the web site, by Germany, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark and Poland). I have nothing against Austria, and the accompanying article makes a good case for it - but it was unexpected. Even allowing for my francophile bias, I'd have expected our nearest neighbour to have been somewhere in the top ten...
What are we to make of the fact that the top four UK tourist attractions are museums (London museums, inevitably) but that once overseas we don't go to museums, but to waterfalls, national parks, ruins and of course Disneyland? Or that our favourite hotel in the UK is a one-off London hotel (The Hoxton), followed by a list of hotel chains and, at number eight, the YHA? (A bit of well-placed campaigning for this last, perhaps?) It's all intriguing stuff, but it has no connection with any holiday plans I might make.
Last week's article, about the South Tyrol (including Red Roosrer accommodation on farms) looks more like something we might actually want to do...
