Vacation

The Sunday opinion section, Currents, will take a break this weekend. It returns Sept. 12.

This website helps expand your idea of a vacation. Have you considered milking sheep and making bread with a family in a Turkish village? Or observing polar bears and walrus in the Arctic Ocean's Svalbard archipelago? Name: Pocket Village ( www.pocketvillage.com ) What it does: For the traveler, it inspires global adventures for all types of budgets, lengths of vacation, or levels of exertion. For the online travel geek, it's a new tours and activities meta-search engine.

DID YOU already take your vacation this summer? I have some critical advice if you haven't yet. I just got back from 10 days in British Columbia. Big mistake. It was gorgeous and loads of fun out there. Alpine mountains, pristine lakes, endless evergreens. We hiked, kayaked, biked, rock-climbed and hot-springed it. What's the problem? When you get home from a trip like that, somehow your crowded concrete neighborhood, sticky with humid pollution, and deathly insipid job just don't seem all that wonderful anymore.

Many people return to the same vacation destination over and over again. What's your sacred vacation spot, and what draws you back each year? Send essays of 250 words by July 19 to Community Voices/Vacation, The Inquirer, Box 41705, Philadelphia 19101. Send e-mail to inquirer.letters@phillynews.com or fax 215-854-4483. Questions? Call Cynthia Henry, assistant editor, at 215-854-2959.

Bored with taking that same old vacation year after year at the shore? Looking for something new, something a little different, a little daring to spice up your life? Consider emulating the novel leisure-time activity pursued by Jurgen Hergert. Yesterday he spent his 96th day in a row sitting inside a glass enclosure filled with 24 poisonous snakes in Gulf Breeze, Fla. Mr. Hergert, who fancies himself the "King of Snakes," thinks this is a good way to show that snakes are not aggressive and therefore should not be killed.

In the best of times, presidential vacations are closely watched getaways. These are not the best of times, and President Bush's hectic respite on the Maine coast reflects it. The White House goes with presidents, and they can conduct business at home or away. Nonetheless, Bush's whereabouts have become grist for national public opinion polls. Three national surveys published recently show that opinion is closely divided on whether Bush should have stayed in Washington because of the Persian Gulf crisis instead of going to his Kennebunkport vacation home.

When's the last time Mayor Goode - who works seven days a week, 12 to 15 hours a day - took a vacation? "That's a historical question," his press secretary, Karen Warrington, said yesterday. Said chief of staff Shirley Hamilton: "I keep his schedule, and I don't know when the last vacation was. I think it was 1985-86, when he took a vacation with Mrs. Goode. He hasn't taken even a long weekend since I've known him. " Members of the Goode administration said he routinely outlasts his co- workers, arriving about 7 a.m. after exercising at home, and often working until 10 p.m. He usually has lunch and dinner delivered to the office and eats alone, when he's not at public engagements at mealtimes, Hamilton said.

Question: We booked a ticket from Washington to the Bahamas recently through Expedia. It was a code-share flight Bahamasair (www.bahamasair.com) operated by US Airways. At the US Airways check-in counter we, and about 50 other travelers, were told by US Airways ticket agents that Bahamasair had not transferred the ticket information to the US Airways system and so none of us could board. After four hours of pleading, arguing, and begging with US Airways and Expedia, we gave up and went home.

We're closing in on summer. A vacation-bound drive down the yellow brick interstate may not be too far away. So, for the welfare of you and your family, it's time to think about the kinds of vehicle safety checks that should be made by you or your technician before you head out. The fact is, the failure of worn or damaged automotive components can be dangerous or, at least, inconvenient. You don't want to be heading down I-95 at 70 miles an hour with your spouse and kids in the car and have a tire blow.

DEAR ABBY: "Darrel" and I have been married 28 years. I thought we had an easy, comfortable relationship. We have no children; it's just the two of us with a large family of furry animals. We don't take vacations together because one of us has to be home to care for the animals. Last year Darrel took four trips to Las Vegas - two for business and two for special sporting events. I'm beginning to get little nagging signals that he may not have been on these trips alone. He shuts his phone off for hours at a time and changed the password on his computer after I had to get on it for a security update.

BERN, Switzerland - Who turns down a long vacation? Known for their work ethic, Swiss citizens appear to be leading the way on European austerity, rejecting a minimum six weeks' paid holiday a year. Switzerland counted ballots Sunday for five national referendums, including one pushed by a union to raise the minimum holiday from four weeks to the standard used in Germany, Italy, Russia, and other European nations. The Swiss heeded warnings from government and business that more vacation would raise labor costs and put the economy at risk.

One night last week, Steve Barsh, a famously upbeat, can-do serial entrepreneur, was delivering a merciless pounding. His victim was a 200-pound heavy bag hanging in a Narberth gym, where Barsh and five of his employees spent an hour punching, kicking, and otherwise aggressively acting out. None of it, Barsh insisted, was to be taken as a sign that his latest start-up is in trouble. Just the opposite, he said, explaining the Wednesday night sweat session at Uppercut Gym as productive team building for a young company of seven employees on a mission to make a big impact in the vacation industry.

NOBODY CALLS David Shulick's wife a "honky" and gets away with it - at least not without having to spend the next year fighting a federal lawsuit. Shulick, the Center City lawyer who threatened to sue the Daily News for reporting on Wednesday's FBI raid at his office as part of the investigation of U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah's son, recently lost a lawsuit accusing airline employees of negligence and racism after the 2010 blizzard disrupted his family's two-part vacation. The Shulicks, of Lower Merion, said that they were forced to slum it at Denver's Four Seasons Hotel and Orlando's Ritz-Carlton because the storm made flying into Philadelphia impossible.

A former City Council staffer, a businessman, and a lawyer had their convictions in a 2009 Philadelphia corruption trial vacated Wednesday by a federal appeals court. Now, U.S. Attorney Zane David Memeger will have to decide whether to retry the men or resolve the case through a plea bargain. The defendants, including Christopher G. Wright, 47, who was chief of staff to former City Councilman Jack Kelly, were convicted in U.S. District Court of honest-services fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy.

Our readers love to travel. As promised at the end of the Summer Vacation Photos contest, it's time to get out the camera again. We want to see where you are going this holiday season and what you do on your winter vacation. And we'll pay $25 each for the best 10 photos taken from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day. We want to see sunrises and sunsets, skiers and sunbathers. Scenic and action shots are great; the family posing, not so much. E-mail your photo (one per person)

Our readers love to travel. As promised at the end of the Summer Vacation Photos contest, it's time to get out the camera again. We want to see where you are going this holiday season and what you do on your winter vacation. And we'll pay $25 each for the best 10 photos taken from Thanksgiving Day to New Year's Day. We want to see sunrises and sunsets, skiers and sunbathers. Scenic and action shots are great; the family posing, not so much. E-mail your photo (one per person)