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Following Tintin's Travels: Which locations shown in the books have you visited?

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kirthiboy
Member
#1 · Posted: 16 Oct 2004 22:37
Hello Tintinologists!

See this: Link no longer working - 13/10/2014
It has very good information on some of the locations that appeared in Tintin albums, like the château at Cheverny which inspired Hergé when designing Marlinspike, the Cornavin Hotel where Calculus stays while in Geneva.

Some of the paragraphs I found really interesting, e.g.:

For a Tintinophile, the Hotel Cornavin is Professor Calculus' hotel. Marc explains that the professor's room, No: 122, existed for more than 40 years, only in Hergé's imagination.
Two years ago this hotel was renovated, and Room 122 was added to satisfy the Tintinophiles. Asked if this room has a portrait of Calculus or some such Tintin artifact, Marc Fassbind answers in the negative: "This room has nothing special. We refuse to add any portrait for fear that some customers may unscrew them and steal them.


And:

One pushes a door and finds oneself in the crypt where Tintin was locked up. The clock that helped him escape still works, beside the brick wall (smashed from behind), where sits (presumably), the vault with the treasure, and where an overturned 'music box' plays its pleasant notes. On the walls, as in all the rooms, are cupboards which could be opened to discover the files and certain symbolic objects concerning Marlispike: the model of the Unicorn, the famous manuscripts leading to the treasure, the pack of cigarettes from 'The Calculus Affair'... we pass on then to a show that reenacts the drama of the 'The Calculus Affair': the thunder and lightning are in full display, the windows and the mirror are broken, and the telephone sounds. If you pick up the receiver, the caller asks for Cutts, the butcher.

Has anyone visited the Château de Cheverny? Does anyone have any photos?

An which other places have you been that Hergé used in the books?
chevet
Belgium Correspondent
#2 · Posted: 16 Oct 2004 23:10
Here is the internet site of Cheverny:
http://www.chateau-cheverny.com/ It is in French but also in English, Spanish, Italian and German.
Jyrki21
Member
#3 · Posted: 17 Oct 2004 01:40
I lived for a year in Geneva, about a two-minute walk from Cornavin Station. Needless to say, I was already long familiar with both the station and the hotel (as well as Nyon, about 40 minutes away) because of the Calculus Affair.

One of my first visits upon arrival in Geneva was, sure enough, to the front of the hotel. (I never did feel compelled to go in... I should have seen if the reception looked anything like the drawing). Right next to the revolving door is a large stand-up display of Tintin and Snowy... the hotel knows its business. :)
yamilah
Member
#4 · Posted: 1 Jun 2005 14:12
I was around Geneva, Switzerland, the other day and I passed by the lakeside at Versoix, where about fifty years ago a taxi jumped into the lake of Geneva with Tintin and Haddock aboard, in the Calculus Affair. Rapidly rescued, they had to hitch-hike 8 miles to get to Nyon, where they arrived after half an hour -which sounds rather odd as there where no speed limits and very little traffic in the 50's...
On top of it, despite Tintin claimed they were in a emergency case, the local driver was strangely not very accomodating, as they still had to walk uphill to get to Topolino's cottage -this 1 mile's walk could have been fatal, because of the Bordurian agents in the Citroen car...


Our friends spend six pages' time in this Route de St-Cergue cottage (No 113 in real life), till they were rescued by the Nyon fire brigade after the explosion provoked by the same Bordurian... (By the way, some fan firemen still own and maintain the red jeep which inspired Herge!)

As one can expect, the building has been repaired (without major modification except the left-side chimney, now single and bigger); the tenants have changed and aren't specialists in ultrasonics anymore...

Nowadays, the entrance gate is no more used because there is no pavement on that side of the road to reach it on foot, and even a car couldn't go through it, as the new road is now about 1 ft higher than its threshold (the entrance is now via a small back road)...

Across the gate you can admire plenty of flowers these days, mostly roses. The right gate pillar still bears the same vase as it is in the book, but it's empty now, whereas the left pillar and vase are totally covered with a lot of green...

You can see the house here Original link was broken, so replaced by Moderator with Google Maps link 13/10/2014
Jyrki21
Member
#5 · Posted: 5 Jul 2005 22:37
Some locations in the series are disguised (such as Château Cheverny) while others are represented as what they actually are (such as the pyramids of Egypt). Which Tintin locations have you been to?

For me, the list includes:

Hôtel Cornavin and Cornavin Station in Geneva, down the street from where I used to live

Cointrin Airport in suburban Geneva

The road to Nyon, where Tintin was run off the road (I was in a train though), and I've passed through both Nyon and Rolle

The cliffside castles of Petra, Jordan (represented as Ben Kalish Ezab's hideout in Red Sea Sharks)

The wharfs in Haifa, Israel, as shown in the 1949 edition of Land of Black Gold

The Eiffel Tower (which only gets a cameo in Prisoners of the Sun, but all the same)

The streets of Chicago and Brussels (shown in America and all the time, respectively)

Anyone?
Danagasta
Member
#6 · Posted: 6 Jul 2005 00:40
None. We don't travel much at all, and if we do it's generally family-oriented.

Courtney
yamilah
Member
#7 · Posted: 6 Jul 2005 14:40
Jyrki21
Some locations (...) are represented as what they actually are

To be precise, Petra, Jordan, is not really represented in Red Sea Sharks (Herge actually offers us kind of a partial duplication)...

Please see
http://membres.lycos.fr/wings2/tintin/coke/petra.html and scroll half-way up to see Herge's drawing and a real picture of this location.

PS: I haven't been there, nor to Kremlin, nor to Yucatan...
aliamerjee
Member
#8 · Posted: 12 Jul 2005 16:22
Since I reside in India I have visited Dehli & Patna,the palces Tintin visited on his way to Kathmandu.I have also seen Nepal but heaven knows where Syldavia & Borduria are!
dreamgirl
Member
#9 · Posted: 7 Jul 2012 09:29
Jakarta ?
Thats the only Tintin location i've been going to...
Im Indonesian .. As Sondonesian in Flight 714 ( i just doesnt get it , why Hergé change the name ? )
Balthazar
Moderator
#10 · Posted: 7 Jul 2012 12:35
dreamgirl:
Im Indonesian .. As Sondonesian in Flight 714 ( i just doesnt get it , why Hergé change the name ? )

I don't think he does. Hergé's fictional Sondanesia isn't meant to be a direct stand-in for Indonesia. When Tintin and co are in Jakarta airport, they're in real life Indonesia, and the various Indonesian places name-checked in the radio messages between the plane and the control tower are also real-life Indonesia and meant to be read as such. I think I read somewhere that one of the titles Hergé was considering for the book when planning it was Tintin in Indonesia.

So I'm pretty sure that Sondonesia isn't meant as a fictional stand-in for Indonesia, and that the Sondonesians' independence struggle (which Rastapopoulos is pretending to help them with) isn't meant to be a direct fictional stand-in for Indonesia's independence struggle against European colonial rule. Although Hergé is deliberately vague about the matter, I think we're meant to see Sondonesia as either a separate fictional country of islands neighbouring real-life Indonesia and fighting for independence from some unspecified colonial ruler, or as a disputed part of real-life Indonesia that's seeking to break free from Indonesia, similar to real-life East Timor, or Papua, for example.

Either way, presumably the fictional island in the book is either part of the Sondonesian area, or is near to it and being used as a base by exiled Sondonesians.

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