Move over Krampus, 10 days visa-free in China, Frontier’s route-cuts, and the search for MH370 (Saturday Selection)

It’s time for Krampus to move over for another strange Alpine tradition, China extends its visa-free transit allowance to 10 days, Frontier cuts 40 routes, and the search for MH370 continues a decade later.

Krampus Has Come and Gone. Next Up, the Perchten

I love a good local festival. “Krampuslauf” or the “Krampus Run” in Austria and the surrounding regions comes to mind, of course, with the bizarre horned goblin-man who punishes bad kids as St. Nicholas blesses the good. But apparently there’s another goblin-esque parade in Austria that’s getting a bit of a revival and occurs after Krampus’ time in the sun is over for the season (today actually – the 21st of December.)

The “Perchtenpass”, which dates back as far as the 12th century in Austria, is a parade of strange goblin-ish creatures who parade alongside the spooky “Perchta”, a character split in two with a devil’s persona on the front and a beautiful woman on the back. In her bizarre troop of quirky characters there’s a little bit of everything like a melting pot of children’s fables, including a sort of Krampus-like fellow named Kasperl who cracks a whip like Krampus and has a band of hairy brutes who make a ruckus like Krampus as well. Then there’s also a big goat character named “Habergoass” who’s…well…just a giant bumbling goat.

With lots of rabble-rousing characters, it all reminds me of the “Ogoh Ogoh” parade I got to attend back in 2014 in Bali where, similarly, a troop of scary looking goblins are paraded around making an intentional ruckus to drive away evil spirits. (I’ll write more on that in a future article some day.) This particular Atlas Obscura article highlights the version of this Perchten parade which has recently been revived in the little Alpen town of Grossarl, Austria.

Americans can now visit China for up to 10 days without visas

During the Million Mile Madness challenge, Nick was able to take advantage of his 10-year visa to China and spend more time there than his competitors. Something which would have come in handy for Greg and Stephen during that challenge – this past week China announced that the 72 hour visa-free allowance for certain Chinese destinations is getting extended to 10 days (or 240 hours)! While this is great news, there’s even better news for a handful of other countries (like Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, and Japan) who will now be able to stay in China visa-free for up to 30 days. Still, 10 days is plenty of time for an actual visit and would have given our Million Mile Madness travelers a little more flexibility!

Frontier Airlines Suspends Over 40 Routes Indefinitely

Frontier Airlines is indefinitely suspending over 40 routes. This news comes not long after the addition of 16 new routes. This could just be a sort of re-shuffling of things, but my long history with basic math tells me that 16 is less than 40. As someone who finds myself using frontier semi-frequently to connect random rural spots, this is a bummer. RDU (Raleigh/Durham) for example – which is one of the sort of close-ish major airports to me – is losing 9 routes. So why this change? This article sites possible challenges with off-peak travel in particular.

Malaysia to resume hunt for Flight MH370, 10 years after it vanished

I used to joke that when Drew and I were in our full-time travel days, I never knew about the local news where I was unless my mom texted me about it from Ohio. For example on March 8, 2014, having just flown from Hong Kong to Jakarta the day befpre, I got a text from my mom saying “You didn’t fly Malaysia Airlines today did you?” I’d just flown Malaysia Airlines…but a day earlier. “Why do you ask?” Of course that’s when the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing. 10 years after that confounding disappearance, Malaysia has decided to resume the search for the wreckage. 10 years is like a lifetime in technological terms, so I’ll be very interested to see what will come of this investigation, a decade later.

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