Thought Provoking

Travel Insurance

Thought Provoking, Travel

From the Undercover Economist

My girlfriend and I were planning to fly to Frankfurt on a budget airline. We were offered travel insurance, which I didn’t think was worth the £4.95. Still, my girlfriend insisted on both of us taking the insurance. Assuming the chance of surviving a plane crash is negligible, you do not get to enjoy the benefits of the insurance should a disaster happen. Most likely your family will get paid for your death. So the worst-case scenario is that you’re £4.95 poorer and dead; or at best, alive, but still £4.95 poorer. What is the rationality of taking out the insurance?

Great answer, especially the final line of the answer.

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Airports

Thought Provoking, Travel

From Crooked Timber

Here are the things most people would happily pay for at an international transit airport: – a shower – clean underwear (for those of us who habitually forget to pack it) – daylight – an exercise facility to help with the jetlag and minimise DVT – nutritious but not too heavy food – a nap, lying flat, somewhere quiet.

And here’s what is generally available: – Gucci – Chanel – l’Occitane – Bodyshop – Lacoste – Nike – a few plastic seats – McDonalds, dougnuts, and the local variety of fried, sugary dross to add a sugar hangover to your jetlag.

Hermit returns from exile after mistakenly believing he had HIV

Thought Provoking

The intriguing story of an Italian man who became a hermit in the woods after thinking that he was diagnosed with HIV.

Alberto Zabbialini dropped into an internet cafe on Sunday and did what millions do at their computers every day, idly keying his name into a search engine. But the 28-year-old mechanic had more reason than most to be curious after he had fled his home three months earlier in a suicidal mood to carve out a hermit’s life on berries and river water in the Ligurian woods, driven by the belief he had contracted HIV

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Munich is the world’s most liveable city.

Thought Provoking

According to an article in the International Herald Tribune Munich is, in the opinion of the magazine Monocle, the world’s most liveable city. It cites

“There’s a certain Italian ambience here,” says Uschi Schnitzer, a 35-year-old event manager, putting down her book on a sunny afternoon in a café in Schwabing, one of the city’s liveliest areas. “In winter you’ve got the mountains and in summer the cafés, beer gardens and lakes. What else do you need?”

Indeed.