5 incredible and unusual city tours, from Prague to Tokyo
1: Hidden city tours by the homeless, Prague
Founded by four students in 2012, after they were awarded a €1,500 social entrepreneurship grant, Pragulic is only one of a handful of homeless tour organisers worldwide. The guides, who include a former male prostitute and an ex-police officer, will show you the underbelly of the Czech capital through their own personal stories. This is not your usual sightseeing affair as you hear about beatings, squatters, drugs, and even murder.
The impact of the tour is two-fold: the tourists learn about a world usually kept at a distance the guides regain a sense of dignity and earn a living. Pragulic also offers the experience of what it’s like to be homeless for 24 hours. At the start you get clothes like those typically worn by homeless people. Then you have to leave your mobile phones and other items behind and venture out onto the streets with one of the nine guides the company is currently employing. With around 25,000 customers to date, Pragulic has provided a blueprint for similar projects in two other Czech cities, České Budějovice and Olomouc.
2: The Worst Tours, Porto
The three architects who created these walks ask you to lower your expectations as these might be The Worst Tours … or at least in Porto, the second largest city in Portugal. The guides aren’t professionally trained and the route differs every time. If you want to see the best of everything, book something else. Rival tours may focus on the city’s historical highlights, but the truth is there are an estimated 70,000 derelict buildings and 2,000 businesses have closed in the city over the past two years alone.
The tours cover underdeveloped neighbourhoods, decrepit homes and places fallen off maps that help tell the story of urbanism, austerity and living conditions in the city. Also on the itinerary are empty stores whose owners have long gone bankrupt and dozens of houses with boarded windows and doors, even at the upper end of the Porto’s main shopping thoroughfare Santa Catarina street. “There should be no 'places-not-for-tourists’”, is the company’s point of view, much to the disdain of the local tourist office.
3: Berlin by Night, Berlin
Since Berlin Agenten was founded more than ten years ago, they made headlines with shocking American Pie Starlet Tara Reid with a visit to notorious KitKat club, showing Madonna´s daughter Lourdes the underground scene, introducing actor Shidô Nakamura (Letters from Iwo Jima) to the historical Berlin, initiating Kelly Rowland and Katy Perry among others to German capital’s nightlife scene and taking singer Adele on the river Spree.
They offer a number of tours but if you’re nocturnal by nature, then Berlin by Night is just the tour for you. Dive into the fabled club scene of Europe’s party capital for a night to remember. A private guide will take you to the city’s trendiest areas while you bar-hop around the most stylish cocktail bars. Learn about the birth of techno and the evolving night scene before entering Berlin’s secrets club with full VIP rock star treatment and queue jumping. Dance the night away in abandoned factories, old power stations and rooftop clubs. Berlin doesn’t do closing times. Just don’t blame them for your hangover!
4: Hush Hip Hop Tours, New York
“The “City that never sleeps” offers all kinds of tours and sightseeing, yet there was a void in the industry that I felt needed to be filled. Hip Hop has no boundaries and people from any culture, religion, and race, are able to come together as one in the name of hip hop”, says founder Debra Harris of Hush Tours. Come prepared to learn hip-hop steps and bust a move on the streets of New York during the Birthplace of Hip Hop Tour.
Original hip-hop pioneers, including Kurtis Blow, Rahiem (Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five), Roxanne Shante, and DJ Kool Herc, will take you on a bus ride through Harlem and the Boogie Down Bronx. Get transported back to the early days of hip-hop with personal stories and classic soundtracks while passing iconic Hip Hop landmarks like the Graffiti Wall of Fame, the Yankee Stadium, the site of the first ever Hip Hop party, plus secret battle sites, historic clubs and famous music video and movie locations.
5: Context Travel, Tokyo
Context is a network of scholars and specialists in cities across Europe, as well asAsia and America. If you consider yourself an “intellectually curious traveller”, then get ready for some in-depth conversations with academics, who by the way all have a day job, in fields like archaeology, history, and classics.
After taking unconventional and quirky tours like the Manga and Anime walk through Tokyo’s Akihabara neighbourhood, the hub for otaku, one of Japan’s most misunderstood subcultures, you’ll come away with a deeper knowledge about places and cultures that often remain out of sight. The highlight of the tour is visiting a maid café, where waitresses dressed in costume treat customers as master of the house, drawing on fantasy characters and interactions from manga, anime and computer games popular in Akihabara.
Article Source: http://www.msn.com/en-ph/travel/tripideas/5-incredible-and-unusual-city-tours-from-prague-to-tokyo/ar-AAoEjw1?li=BBr91nr&ocid=iehp
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VOCABULARY WORDS:
1. Underbelly (n.) ~ a hidden unpleasant or criminal part of society
2. Regain (v.) ~ obtain possession or use of (something) again after losing it
3. Derelict (adj.) ~ in a very poor condition as a result of disuse and neglect
4. Decrepit (adj.) ~ worn out or ruined because of age or neglect
5. Disdain (n.) ~ the feeling that someone or something is unworthy of one's consideration or respect contempt
6. Nocturnal (adj.) ~ done, occurring, or active at night
7. Hub (n.) ~ the effective center of an activity, region, or network
8. Quirky (adj.) ~ characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION:
1. Briefly describe the 5 tours mentioned in the article.
2. Which of them appeal to you? Why?
3. If you can organize an unconventional tour in your city/ ｃountry, which aspect would you highlight. Explain your answer.
