A Searchable Calendar of Global Events: Whatsonwhen.com
Resource of the Week
by Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
Personally, I can't ever seem to get very far away from the computer, but maybe you're the kind of person who actually has a life. And the time, money, and sense of adventure to plan a really neat vacation. If you're looking for ideas, we've got an excellent site for you this week.
Events--Database
Source: Whatsonwhen Limited Whatsonwhen.com
Here we have the mother of all travel and entertainment calendars, brought to you by a UK company that specializes in content services for the T&E industry. There are so many ways to search and browse this thing that you can lose yourself for hours. Let's take a closer look.
On the home page, you've got three columns. In the center, you'll find links to highlighted events, a "Video of the Week" (Rio Carnival, anyone?), a business event, a couple of specialized guides, and some location-based features. You'll find links to all available guides in the lefthand column, about halfway down:
+ Leisure Events Guide (a low graphicsversion is available)
+ Business Events Guide in calendar format. Mouse over any event and read all about it at the top of the page.
+ Video Guides. See such things as the Pamplona Bull Run, the Bogota (Columbia) Film Festival and Castrillo de Murcia'ss annual baby jumping festival. (Says here that no babies are actually harmed.) There are also a few location-based video guides, for Jordan, London and New York City.
+ A Globetrotter Guide takes you on a year-long trip around the world, stopping at different events appropriate to the calendar. (We should all be so lucky.)
The search and browse tools are in the righthand column of the home page. At the top is a small interactive map. Click on a continent and browse events by calendar date, interest (e.g., arts, family, music, sports...) or country. Scroll down to the middle of the column and you'll see a Featured Destinations form that allows you to browse by continents, countries, regions or cities; choose via the dropdown menus. After this, you'll find the main search tool. Choose a theme/country from the dropdown menus, and/or type a location/keyword into the text boxes. If you've already blocked out a couple of weeks on your own calender, you can also limit your search by date range.
We especially enjoyed browsing events via the Themes menu at the bottom of the right-hand column. If you're anything like us, you clicked on Bizarre right off the bat. Maybe we'll catch you at the Summer Redneck Games in East Dublin (GA) on July 9, or the Sauna Bathing World Championships, in Heinola, Finland, on August 2013. Looks like we're already too late to make plans for the Kirkpinar Oiled Wrestling Festival, slated for June 24-30 in Edirne, Turkey.
If you like, you can register here (free) and make a personalized home page, compile a scrapbook of events and/or set up a search links page that allows you to monitor the database for certain types of events. You can also choose to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter. (Scroll down to the bottom of the left-hand column.) You can even submit an event to the database -- also free -- although the folks who run the site are the final arbiters of what gets included.
If, in spite of all this, you feel a need for additional events calendars, take a look at these:
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