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f e b r u a r y P R I M E t r a v e l l e r
Andrei Dellos
These days, the number of differ-
ent ways you can travel is endless,
but for me, travel without a sense
of magic isn’t very appealing.
Because there are some countries
that are magical, France and Italy
most of all, of course, and there are
some countries that you can really
love, but they have zeromagic …
America, for instance. What makes
a place magical? Many centuries
of history and art that preserve the
mysteries and living breath of the
past. And the more you love and
know about this, the more new
discoveries youmake during these
“travels in time.”
To take France as an example,
one place that I findmagical in all
respects is Fontainebleau. First of
all, it’s the only castle in the world
where a country’s rulers lived con-
tinuously for 800 years; it’s obvious
that this place was always unique.
Secondly, the legendary Fontaineb-
leau forest is to this day a wonder of
nature, incomparable to anything
else in terms of its size or the pres-
ervation of some sort of prehistoric
beauty (the Fontainebleau district
with its nature preserve is equal
in size to Paris). If you approach it
from the best side, through the vil-
lage of Barbizon (which, by the way,
also gave the world a school of great
advancements in painting in the
19th century), you start to under-
stand why Fontainebleau attracted
the most exceptional personalities,
who created the history of France
here in the forest shade. This place
hypnotizes you with some sort of
planetary power that always makes
me shiver...
— Continued on page 68
Zaha Hadid
Where do you go on holiday?
Years ago, to switch off, I’d go to
Hawaii or Thailand or Bali. In
those days there were no mobile
phones or televisions in the room.
Today, because I work all over the
world and like to stay in touch, my
holidays are mostly city breaks.
Which cities in particular?
I love Rio; it has great views, great
beaches and a lot going on. And
Beirut, where I went to university
and have family. Lebanon’s so
small you can cross it in about
three hours. As a student, we’d
go to the Bekaa Valley, go skiing
at The Cedars and be clubbing in
Beirut that night.
Other favourite destinations?
Istanbul. It has the best of all
worlds: Ottoman architecture,
islands and water, incredible
food, an exciting music scene, a
fascinating bazaar and wonderful
people. I went there first as a kid,
then to lecture in 1994, and have
been back nearly every year since.
I first met the Queen at the Istan-
bul Modern contemporary art
gallery five years ago, and I went
to an incredible party afterwards
in an aircraft hangar. The city has
the same intense energy that New
York used to have.
Where do you stay?
The Kempinski. It’s on the Bos-
phorus and I enjoy sitting by the
pool and watching the boats go by.
Anything you don’t like there?
The traffic; it can take hours to get
anywhere.
Your idea of a perfect day on
holiday?
Waking up early, discovering it’s
sunny, and being bothered by no
one.
— Continued on page 76
Judith Ripka
When we met with you in your
headquarters onMadison Av-
enue in New York, you promised
to come to Russia, toMoscow,
in the near future, but you only
kept your word five years later …
You’re right, it took me five years
to get here, and of course before
that I had been thinking about
it for a long time—should I go to
Russia, or is it not worth it? It’s
the homeland of my ancestors,
but my parents left there in 1922.
And now I regret that I didn’t
make the trip earlier. Everywhere
we’ve been given a royal welcome,
fed incredibly delicious food, I
even like the taste of bread here;
in America it’s totally different.
Of course, our partners from
Mercury are probably taking us to
the best places, but the Baccarat
and Pushkin restaurants were
really amazing from a gastro-
nomical point of view, and I even
drank a little bit of vodka, which I
never do at home. I haven’t seen
that much, besides the Kremlin,
where we were in the Diamond
Fund. A totally unbelievable col-
lection! But I’ve enjoyed just
looking out the windows of the
car.
What do you know about your
roots, about your family’s past?
You know, our family really didn’t
talk about that. It’s a common
emigrant story; you don’t leave
a good life behind in your home
country, so they preferred to live
in the present. My parents never
sat us down and told us about
their past in Russia.
— Continued on page 86
Alexander Rodniansky
What to you is Los Angeles?
As banal as it might sound, it’s the
capital of the global film industry,
a “place of power” that brings to-
gether young and attractive actors
and actresses, talented (and untal-
ented) screenwriters, ambitious
directors and producers from the
whole world. Even though the
industry itself is tiny in terms of
numbers—only 7,000 people are
making the main decisions—Los
Angeles in one way or another
revolves around Hollywood. It’s
a city where every other waiter is
going to castings and dreaming of
becoming an actor, and doctors,
lawyers and businessmen write
scripts in their spare time.
Why should someone travel
there?
For entertainment industry
professionals the answer is obvi-
ous, and for everyone else Los
Angeles is a sun-filled city on the
shore of the ocean. Cinematogra-
phers didn’t choose LA as their
home base by accident, since the
sun shines 350 days a year here.
Moreover, California is famous
for its unique nature: the ocean,
mountains, canyons and fantastic
plant life are all here.
— Continued on page 100
P R I M E T R A V E L L E R / I S S U E 1 / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 4
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