Since 2007, Monocle has reported from around the world – in print, on radio and online. Over the past 19 years, our editors and correspondents have assembled a sizeable global address book showcasing the very best in hospitality, retail, culture and more.

Travel content has always been a fundamental pillar of Monocle’s offerings. Our City Guides are full of insider recommendations of where to stay, where to dine and what to see when visiting a new city. To date, we’ve checked into a London hotel spread across three Georgian townhouses; slurped thin buckwheat noodles in one of Kyoto’s most revered soba spots; sought out bespoke tailoring in Singapore; and spent a few weekends in Athens’s buzziest neighbourhoods. Our guides not only dig below the surface to show you the places favoured by locals but they are also updated frequently to reflect the changing nature of the destinations covered. Here we provide a rundown of how these guides are produced. 

Who writes our guides and why you should trust us
When compiling our City Guides, we draw upon our extensive network of bureaux staff and trusty correspondents. Though our list of destinations is varied, stretching from New York to Sydney, each one is made to reveal their true inner workings. To this end, we only use writers and editors who have known a particular city for an extensive period of time and fully understand what makes it distinct. 

Our editor in chief, Andrew Tuck, has taken care of Palma, his home away from home for quite some time. Our editor, Josh Fehnert, has transported readers around London, through the old charms of Bloomsbury to Monocle’s neighbourhood of Marylebone and beyond. Inzamam Rashid, our Gulf correspondent, has written about Dubai; staffers in our Zürich and Paris bureaux have overseen coverage of their plots; and the very best of Ginza, Tomigaya and other Tokyo neighbourhoods has been put into being by our senior Asia editor, Fiona Wilson.

Monocle has a rich history of creating travel guides. Notably, we produced The Monocle Travel Guide Series, a collection of books instantly recognisable for their black covers and playful artwork. They helped travellers to feel like a local wherever they found themselves, informing them about everything from cafés and music venues to late-night bars and museums. Today we are polishing off Thailand: The Monocle Handbook, the sixth installment in our handbook series, due for release in late spring 2026.

How we decide which cities to spotlight
There is no strict formula but we began by paying attention to the destinations that we’ve had close connections with. London and Zürich are home to our two headquarters, while bureaux in Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo expand our global presence. 

From there, we’ve branched out to cover the essentials – Barcelona, New York and Rome – as well as places that we find ourselves frequently returning to: Copenhagen for 3 Days of Design; Milan for its fashion weeks; and Dubai (our guide to Abu Dhabi is currently in the works). We’re also proud to have published reports from Istanbul, Jakarta, Singapore and Mexico City.

With plans to grow our offerings, we aim to paint portraits of even more capitals, including Seoul and Amsterdam, in addition to quieter destinations that are often overlooked by the headlines.

How we pick which hotels, restaurants, shops and other venues to include
The aim of every City Guide is to go beyond the usual tourist beats. We avoid sending you to destinations filled with camera-toting visitors. Instead, we suggest insider favourites that you won’t find in most guidebooks. Each directory also has a downloadable map that lists our recommendations, so you can easily navigate your way around whichever neighbourhood you’re in.

Our hotel selection often features grand dames but we place equal emphasis on boutique stays that champion good design and generous hospitality. We’ll help you to navigate the maze of drinking and dining options, pointing you towards the hard-to-find tables frequented by locals – perhaps a canteen-like spot in Istanbul where you’ll experience first-rate Anatolian cuisine or a Madrid tavern that has been in operation since 1854. To help you make the most of an afternoon, we’ll steer you toward architectural marvels, cultural hubs championing homegrown talent and, for good measure, a few vibrant enclaves that fully showcase a city’s inner life.

Both former vice-president Kamala Harris and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Harris’s presidential failure and AOC’s blunders in Bavaria last weekend are all the more meaningful as the two women generate 2028 hype, even being touted as a potential joint ticket. There has been some speculation that Harris will yet again vie for the presidency and AOC, currently 36 years old, will run as her VP. It’s a match made in progressive heaven – but one that many Washington watchers suggest is doomed to fail. And for good reason. 
 
This past weekend, AOC made her first major international appearance at the Munich Security Conference. In a speech heavily critical of the Trump administration’s muscular foreign policy, AOC demonstrated “a complete lack of chops about international issues”, according to New York Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. AOC’s gaffes included mistakenly positioning Venezuela below the equator and failing to answer convincingly about how the US might respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The four-term representative from Queens had hoped that her Zohran Mamdani-esque focus on affordability and other working-class concerns would gain traction with the world’s leading decision-makers. Instead, AOC merely confirmed, claims Sheinkopf, that “she’s not ready for prime time on the international stage”. 

AOC’s showing in Germany comes just as Harris – also criticised for her lack of foreign-policy experience – begins to reposition herself on the US political stage. This month, Harris relaunched her dormant social-media accounts as “an online organising project for next-generation campaigning”. The rebrand was a welcome dose of good-ish news for Harris, who was lambasted in January as she crisscrossed the American South promoting her 2024 campaign memoir, 107 Days, while courting African-American supporters. Though black people – her most crucial voting block – continue to display loyalty, influential Democratic donors insist (albeit anonymously), “Kamala hasn’t accepted [that] she’s not running yet.”
 
Both women are dependent on a declining popularity base to boost their credibility, meaning that they could actually weaken rather than aid one another. Donald Trump gained ballots across traditional Democratic demographics, such as Latinos, women, young people and African-Americans when he stood against Harris in 2024. These are the exact same cohorts that AOC has relied on for her own congressional support. Also worrisome is that AOC’s Munich moment was rife with the type of infelicities that have long plagued Harris – her infamous penchant for “word salad” – making it another potentially disastrous double whammy for the duo. The Democrats’ history of recycling failing candidates (think Hillary Clinton) has to be abandoned. 
 
So who, then, might make more sense for the Dems in 2028? Though wins by socialist-leaning Democratic mayoral candidates in New York and Seattle last year suggest that the party’s fringe is flying, the US has traditionally opted for moderates. California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, initially comes to mind and he too was in Munich over the weekend to promote his internationalist bona fides. 
 
But having “run” for the presidency now for almost a decade, Newsom already feels stale and past his expiration date. He might have taken on Trump on the immigration front and reversed his views around culture-war flashpoints but despite his classic good looks, Newsom simply lacks sex appeal. His prostrating to Trump following the Los Angeles wildfires last year proved that he’s more mush than muscle, while his recent book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, barely caused a ripple among the media or party stalwarts.
 
A better bet would be a Pennsylvania double-punch pairing: Democratic governor Josh Shapiro and senator John Fetterman. Though their ticket would be complicated by their vocal support for Israel, each has demonstrated a level of verbal and moral clarity that voters now crave. True, both Shapiro and Fetterman are white men in a party consumed by optics and identity politics. But progressive politicking can only result in progress if its politicians actually get elected. Though the pair have famously been frosty to one another, Fetterman’s hardscrabble, working-class Pennsylvania roots complement Shapiro’s more urbane sophistication. Pennsylvania is also the type of must-win battleground state that Harris failed to capture. Fetterman and Shapiro will have to move on from their current frostiness but in a country that has elected Trump twice, the improbable feels increasingly probable.

David Kaufman is a New York-based journalist. 

For more coverage of US politics, read here:
– ‘Division and dissension’: US senator Murkowski on Trump’s disrespectful Arctic policy

– Budge up JD Vance, Marco Rubio is sitting second in command

– From pageants to politics: Erika Kirk’s rise as the new face of the Maga movement

The Olympic spirit runs deep in some families. This is especially true for Marco and Valentina Marchei, an Italian father and daughter who count four Games between them. The elder Marchei ran the marathon in the 1980 and 1984 Summer Games while the younger Marchei took to the ice in the 2014 and 2018 Winter Games. “You could breathe Olympic spirit in the house”, she told Monocle. But the family’s focus was on how sport opens doors to the world rather than achieving Olympic success at all costs.

In Marchei’s long skating career, those doors opened to opportunities of training around the globe, from Latvia to France and the US. She competed in numerous world and national competitions in singles skating before jumping to the Sochi Olympics. After those Games ended, she spun to a new discipline within the sport: pairs figure skating, which took her to the Pyeongchang Games. The shift gave her a new appreciation for teamwork. “People think of it as a compromise with the other person but it’s [actually] a compromise with yourself,” she says. It’s about “how much you let go” and trust the other person.

Marchei joined Monocle in Milan to discuss her skating career, what it was like to switch from singles to pairs skating and where she sees the sport heading. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

You competed in the 2014 and 2018 Olympic Games. What was it like to represent your country at the highest level?
It wasn’t easy for me to get to the Olympics. It took me eight years to qualify, so when I walked into the Olympic Village in Sochi I was like a kid in a candy shop. I dreamt about it many times. But [I also wanted to compete] because I come from an Olympic family. My dad [marathoner Marco Marchei] did two Olympics in Moscow and Los Angeles, so I always respected the Games. 

After the 2014 Olympics, you changed from singles to pairs figure skating. How was switching disciplines?
It’s extremely different but it’s not much harder. After 20 years of singles and four years of pairs, I consider myself a pairs skater. As a single [skater], you get used to motivating yourself and holding onto your dreams alone. You have a team but in that rink, you are alone. 

In pairs you share everything. People think of it as a compromise with the other person but it’s [actually] a compromise with yourself: how much you let go and how much you can [put the] team spirit into the performance. [Being a part of a pair has given me] the best lesson: you share emotions and the hard work. You know that when you put your hand out, you will always find a hand that holds yours and carries you towards your goal.

You mentioned your father was also a competitor. Did you think you were destined to become a top athlete?
You could breathe Olympic spirit in the house. But my dad wasn’t one of those dads that wanted me to be on top. He always taught me that sport is a school of life because you’re going to travel, meet other people and learn different languages. I travelled a lot. I have lived in Latvia, France and the US, and it allowed me to experience a different type of skating as well as different identities. I have lived many different lives. Without those experiences, I wouldn’t be the person that I am now. I had the opportunity to portray different characters on the ice and tell different stories with my movements – with my jumps, my spins and with everything that goes with skating.

With skaters like the ‘Quad God’ – the American Ilia Malinin – pushing the athleticism of the sport, how do you see figure skating evolving? 
It’s evolving in a way that is very technical, but at the same time, you’re seeing a lot of great performances; ice dance proved that. There are not just the jumps – of course, it’s crazy to see all these young men doing incredible [jumps] – but let’s not forget that figure skating is art and everything that goes into it is part of the performance. It’s not just about jumps and spins, it’s also the story you portray on the ice that makes a great performance.

Read more coverage from the Milano Cortina Games
– The Winter Olympics are a hit. Not even climate change can stop them

– Not ready for the Games to end? Here are the films to keep your Olympic flame burning

– Ski mountaineering is the Winter Olympics’ newest sport. It is also its noblest

It’s January 1964. The hosts of Austria’s first Winter Olympics are facing a dire prospect as the Alps surrounding Innsbruck lack their white winter coat. The culprit? A warm, dry Foehn wind, known in Alpine regions as a “snow eater”. So the organisers get to work, enlisting the Austrian army to carve 20,000 ice blocks from the highest peaks and cart them downslope to fashion bobsleigh and luge tracks. Soldiers truck 40,000 cubic metres of snow to shore up the ski racing venues – and another 20,000 cubic metres for reserves, just in case.

The Winter Games go on as planned, with a whopping 80,000 fans packing the grandstand to watch the ski jumping (pictured). The event is so successful that Innsbruck comes to the rescue in 1976 when Denver turns down the Games after winning its bid.

This piece of Olympic lore is illustrative because it serves as a rejoinder to the naysayers who are convinced that the Winter Games’ days are numbered. Every four years, the chorus grows louder that climate change has doomed the wintry edition of the world’s greatest sporting competition. Media coverage of Milano Cortina has been particularly fond of trotting out a 2024 study, sponsored by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which found that 52 of 93 past and potential Winter Olympic hosts could still reliably stage the Games by the 2050s. The figure dips to 46 by the 2080s.

The dwindling number of reliable venues is a sad reality but it hardly means that there will be nowhere to stage the Winter Games. The French Alps – one of only four places identified by the study that could still host with natural snow by the 2050s – are already on tap for the next Games, while preparations are well under way for the 2034 Olympics to make a return visit to Salt Lake City. Buoyed by the dispersed venue approach in Italy, itself a concession by the IOC to the new landscape of winter sport, the Swiss are front-runners for 2038. Peering two decades ahead, New York state and a joint Australia-New Zealand bid are already gunning for 2042.

Will these future sites be plagued by poor weather that threatens competition? Almost certainly. Indeed, the very same happened in 1928 at the St Moritz Olympics, when another Foehn wind pushed the mercury in the Engadin to a balmy 24C. After a warm spell in 2010, Canadian organisers trucked in snow, then dumped it by helicopter onto Vancouver’s freestyle venue. The opposite also happens: heavy snow played havoc with ski racing at Sapporo in 1972.

Winter-sport devotees know that fickle weather is part and parcel of our irrational passion. Sometimes our prayers for snow are answered. Sometimes, they aren’t. If Hokkaido’s capital had hosted the Games this year, as once envisioned before an aborted bid, there would have been hand-wringing about too much snow. Utah’s ski resorts are sweating through their worst winter since modern records began. Even as such variations become more frequent, private-sector innovation is helping winter-sports facilities adapt. See, for instance, the ever-more efficient snowmaking from Bolzano’s TechnoAlpin and pioneering Finnish snow-storage technology.

Milano Cortina’s spectacle on snow and ice has given us indelible moments, from South America’s first Winter Olympic medal won by Brazilian Lucas Pinheiro Braathen in the giant slalom and Norwegian cross-country skier Johannes Høsflot Klæbo cementing his greatest-of-all-time status to the sad end that befell US alpine skier Lindsey Vonn’s comeback bid. I have no doubt that there will be many more memorable moments in the quadrennial cycles to come, even if it takes an army. 

Gregory Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent. For more coverage of the Milano Cortina Games, check out: 

– Why the Winter Olympics are better than the Summer Games

– Skating’s solo act: Donovan Carrillo is the only Latino on the ice at the 2026 Winter Olympics

– Ski mountaineering is the Winter Olympics’ newest sport. It is also its noblest

Multi-hyphenates rarely achieve equal success across their different ventures. But not so for Verbal, a Tokyo-based rapper, music producer, saké promoter and fashion CEO who has worked with the likes of Nike, Off-White and Louis Vuitton and helped to disrupt Japanese pop music’s rigid conventions.  

To get a sense of his signature sound, listen to “Eko Eko”, a song released in June 2025 by his group, M-Flo. The track features Verbal and his groupmate, Taku Takahashi, alongside South Korean hip-hop artist Zico and Japanese vocalist Eill. They vocalise over a galloping beat, plaintive synths and guitar chords, switching between Japanese, Korean and English lyrics. 

The track – which features on the group’s 10th album, Superliminal – is typical of Verbal’s output. Genre-bending and language-crossing, it straddles cultures and musical styles. It is J-pop, K-pop, hip-hop, R&B and electronic dance music all in one. Verbal has been at it since 1999, when he and his M-Flo bandmates, Takahashi and singer Lisa, released “Been So Long”,  a song that fused R&B-style vocals, rap and electronic beats with Japanese and English lyrics. “In the late 1990s in Japan, hip-hop was hip-hop, R&B was R&B and rock was rock – you couldn’t leave your territory,” says Verbal. “We weren’t abiding by any of those rules. We didn’t even know that there were rules.” 

In addition to being a member of M-Flo, Verbal and other Japanese rappers and DJs formed the Teriyaki Boyz in the early 2000s, collaborating with talents such as Daft Punk, Pharrell Williams, Busta Rhymes and Kanye West. Even now, the hybrid sound that Verbal and his cohorts pioneered permeates the tunes of younger J-pop and K-pop musicians. And that’s only a fraction of Verbal’s recent creative output. 

When not in the studio, Verbal heads streetwear-inspired brand Ambush, which he co-founded with his partner, Yoon Ahn, the company’s creative director. What started in 2008 as a pop-art jewellery project has become a clothing, bag and accessories brand with five shops in Tokyo and Osaka. At the brand’s Shibuya office mood boards and racks of clothing samples crowd one room. Verbal shows us around, wearing a black Ambush MA-1 bomber jacket and matching turtleneck sweater with a prototype diamond-encrusted chainlink ring on his finger. He describes how he likes to obsess over details, whether it be for new Ambush releases or planning his upcoming music shows in Tokyo.   

Ambush took its first collection to Paris in 2015 and held its first runway show at Milan Fashion Week in 2022. It has collaborated with labels such as Nike, Uniqlo, Bulgari, Moët & Chandon and Undercover, and, in early 2020, it became part of the Milan-based New Guards Group, an early investor in Off-White. “We decided that we needed a global expansion partner that could help us with the retail and wholesale strategy,” says Verbal. 

Last year, amid restructurings at New Guards and its owner, Farfetch, Verbal and Ahn took back control of Ambush in a management buyout. Verbal describes the five years under New Guards as “a crash course in business, legal and finance”. He and Ahn also clarified their roles under the ownership, with Ahn serving as designer and Verbal in charge of the nuts and bolts. This includes looking at materials and liaising with factories and collaborators, while keeping an eye on trends. “As a brand, we feel so much stronger now,” he says. 

You would think that Verbal would be too busy to juggle more but in 2025 he launched Sōmatō, his small-batch saké brand. Verbal came across Takahashi Shuzo, a 141-year-old brewery in Misato, Akita prefecture, while helping an overseas fund look for distressed assets in Japan to invest in. After hearing from the brewery that it wanted to stay independent, he suggested the new saké brand, which it now produces for. “This is how you should talk to artisans around Japan: ‘We want to retain your legacy but also energise it,’” he says. “The mayor [of Misato] thanked us for bringing new life to the brewery.”

The saké project isn’t out of character for Verbal. A third-generation South Korean who was born and raised in Japan, he is a product of Tokyo’s international schools; he is fluent in English and Japanese, as well as in the musical language of US hip-hop and R&B. His ventures tend to draw on his unique status as an insider whose background means that he understands Japanese culture but isn’t constrained by it. “I think of myself as a cultural translator,” he says. 

Over the past two decades, Milan-based real estate giant Coima has been a driving force in the revitalisation of the Lombard capital. Its founder and CEO, Manfredi Catella, was the driving force behind Porta Nuova, one of Europe’s most groundbreaking urban-regeneration projects. By attracting major international investors, it is regarded as a key contributor in elevating Milan’s position as Italy’s financial and business centre. At this year’s Olympic Winter Games, Coima developed the Porta Romana Olympic Village, which houses athletes during the games before being converted into student accommodation.

Catella met with Monocle’s Europe editor at large, Ed Stocker, in Milan to discuss repurposing some of the city’s unused industrial areas into purpose-built spaces that connect neighbouring communities. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Coima is responsible for some of the biggest and most important projects that have changed the way Milan looks. How does that make you feel?
When you care about urban development, you care about the community because you will [have an] impact on its people for many years. It’s a great sensation and it’s a great responsibility.

Coima helped develop the Olympic Village in Porta Romana. Tell us about that project.
It has been a very intense 30 months developing [housing with] 1,700 beds for the athletes. But we also designed this campus to be used as a student-housing village after the Olympics. It has been quite amazing to listen to all the athletes arriving to the rooms and expressing themselves so nicely. This might be the most satisfying part of the work. 

How is the site going to continue to evolve after the Games? 
Compared to many European cities, Milan is at a great advantage because it’s late in developing. In our job we look at raw materials, such as the land or sites that you can develop. There are no other European cities with such a scale of brownfields, industrial sites, factories, military barracks and so on that can be repurposed. Many other cities in Europe have already experienced this transition. Porta Romana is a brownfield that reconnects two important parts of the city, [in this way it’s] similar to what we did in Porta Nuova. We’re just at the beginning but the process was accelerated thanks to the Olympics and a part of it is finished already. 

A lot gets made about how Milan changed after the World Expo [and the regeneration of Porta Nuova] in 2015. Was that a significant moment in Milan’s recent development?
Porta Nuova was an impossible urban redevelopment. The mindset of the people of Milan was that it was a bad area, despite it being a mere 1.5 kilometres from the cathedral. Our challenge was to reconnect Porta Nuova to the surrounding neighbourhoods. It took 10 years but the project reset a cultural benchmark for Milan and Italy. It was the start of a transition for the city, which is still ongoing. 

You’ve got plenty coming up. Give us an idea of some of Coima’s future projects. 
Milan must go through three scales of development. One is to develop the brownfields, such as Scalo Farini, Porta Romana and others. The second is the metropolitan area. For example, Milano Sesto, which was a very large, million-square-metre factory site that is 20 minutes from the cathedral by tube. The third dimension is to develop the surrounding cities that, thanks to the high-speed train, can be reached faster than ever. Torino is 40 minutes from Milan today; Bologna is less than an hour. A system of cities – that is what Italy can develop. 

With the Olympics on our doorstep, have you been watching? 
I have. But my focus has been on our next challenge behind the stage, which is making the Olympic Village the fastest repurposed temporary infrastructure ever. While the Olympic Games are going, we’re planning how to make this open to students by 1 September. 

You can listen to the full interview here. For more behind-the-scenes insights on the 2026 Olympic Winter Games, tune in to ‘Monocle in Milan’ on Monocle Radio.

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More coverage of the Games

• Ever wondered what goes into a live Olympics broadcast? Here’s how the event makes it to your screen
• Skating’s solo act: Donovan Carrillo is the only Latino on the ice at the 2026 Winter Olympics
• Marco Balich on organising the perfect Milano Cortina Olympic opening ceremony
• The Monocle guide to Milan

It should be mandatory for anyone born and raised in Sydney to leave the city for a few years. We Sydneysiders love to complain about this incredible place and leaving is the only cure that I have found for our penchant to gripe with “problems” the rest of the world dreams of having. For instance, there’s the ferry to work, which traverses the iconic harbour but can be late by a few minutes. The sloping hills, which make its landscape so interesting, are sometimes a bit annoying. Winters are warm enough that you only get to wear your big coat a handful of times a year. Imagine the horror. 

We’re blissfully unaware of how good we have it. The things that many of us consider normal, even a borderline birthright, such as good coffee, safe streets and passionate opinions about pilates studios, are very much a privilege. I once met a man who commuted into the city by kayak and he acted as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world. He clearly needed time away for some perspective on true mundanity. It also took me leaving for university to fall in love with Sydney.

In our defence, however, Sydney hasn’t been without issues. The rapturous reception to the 2000 Olympic Games should have been a boon for soft power, the economy and culture. But the opportunity was squandered. Instead, the Harbour City saw 20 years of sluggish development; legislative and regulatory overreach hobbled the local economy; and its coronavirus response was stifling. 

My first job out of university was as directory editor at Broadsheet, Australia’s leading city guide, where I covered dining spots and shops from Melbourne to Sydney. When I started in 2019, nearly every notable opening seemed to happen in the former. But by the time I left in 2021, it felt as though the opposite was the case. Sydney, freshly unleashed from its coronavirus-pandemic lockdowns and the worst of its notorious lockout laws, had the winds of change in its sails. It remembered that it had been, and could be again, the most important city in Australia.

That only continued when I moved back to Sydney and began writing for Monocle in 2022. There was always something new to cover: museums designed by renowned architects, vast public-transport overhauls and city-shaping infrastructure projects, not to mention a panoply of exciting new retail and hospitality operators. All of this was overlaid onto one of the world’s most idyllic urban landscapes. The nihilism of the 2000s was replaced by optimistic civic pride. 

The city is ready for its big moment again and it won’t waste it this time. Our Sydney guide celebrates the institutions that endured the fallow years, as well as the new places that have bloomed on the other side of them. The difficulty of winnowing the selection down to the absolute essentials was, to me, the best proof of the city’s renaissance. I hope that a scroll through the guide improves your visit and fills you with the intention of coming back – because Sydney gets better every time, especially after some distance apart.

Read Monocle’s guide to Sydney (and download our map) here

I’m in a European hotel during half-term. Naturally, something is off. I’m blindfolded and there’s a disconcerting scent of strawberry. Now, my Spanish is muy bad but my ability to tell a masseuse that I’m uncomfortable is worse. Well, I say “masseuse”; after 60 minutes in her company, I’m unconvinced that she is anything other than a woman who happened to be in the room when I walked in. 
 
An hour ago she told me that she liked my nail polish and asked me to lie down on a table that was too short. (At about 177cm, I’m surely far from the tallest person who she has ever massaged.) The process began with my feet hanging off the end of her cradle, immediately creating an unpleasant ache in my lower back. “Perhaps this is how it’s done here,” I thought. “Might this simply be her way?” She had asked me to take all of my clothes off while she opened various cupboards and ran a tap that she didn’t use. But who was I to question her technique?

“Acuéstese por favor!” When I laid my nude body face down on the tiny bed, she let out a large yawn. Various small towels were placed all over me, furthering my theory that I was, in fact, a giant. A normal-sized person – someone whose feet would not hang over the end of that bed – would only need to have one towel draped over them. Was she using flannels to mess with me?

She banged the cupboards once more before letting out a big “Ah, ha!” and tying what I assumed was some sort of scarf over my eyes, lifting my head up with it as though she was polishing a bowling ball. The next thing I knew, she had whipped one of the towels off my back to squeeze goo on it from a bottle. It was cold and I flinched but the air smelled of strawberries. Not a completely awful diversion from the usual lemongrass but an unusual, childlike scent for a massage parlour. The lady proceeded to rub it into my skin as you would with garlic herb butter on a chicken that you hated, while I tried to breathe, relax and pray that the strawberry gel wasn’t lube. An array of abnormal prodding and tugging and folding followed. There was plenty of sighing (hers) and wincing (mine). At one point, she moved my legs into positions that only a lover or a gynaecologist would dare. 
 
I’ve been on that table now for what feels like three (or even seven) hours and I find myself wondering what would take longer to learn: basic Spanish or basic massage? Is the real masseuse unconscious in a nearby cupboard? Would her relatives blame me for not sensing that something is up? Is this definitely not lube? 
 
As we near the final third of the session, she flips me onto my back and, for reasons that we’ll never know, continues to try to massage it. She then heads to the cupboard once more and, soon enough, a new goo is administered all over my face. Butter? It smells like butter. Is butter good for faces? I’ve lost all perspective. 

By the time the blindfold slides off and the nightmare is almost over, I am so desperate to leave that I do what any respectable tourist would: I blurt out a muchos gracias and give her a generous tip. I hobble back to my room, my lower back throbbing, hoping that my sticky face doesn’t attract a swarm of wasps. I make a mental note not to be stung again: never pick a hotel because of its kids’ club and proximity to the airport. 

Emily Bryce-Perkins is a London-based writer. In the UK capital and in need of a few suggestions? Be sure to consult Monocle’s City Guide. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe today.

Speaking from Allianz Tower in Milan, Oliver Bäte reflects on what it means for Allianz to be a worldwide Olympic partner in today’s political context. In conversation with Monocle’s chairman, Tyler Brûlé, the Allianz CEO shares his thoughts ranging from sport’s ability to unite and motivate to how he views society’s approach to work. The discussion offers a frank view on leadership, responsibility and the pressures facing governments and businesses alike.

Listen to the full conversation on The Chiefs from Monocle Radio. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

What does it mean for Allianz to support the Olympics at this moment?
The Olympic Movement represents so much. When there is such chaos in the world, finding two weeks to focus on something different is important. That’s the power of sport – people from all over the world vie to do the impossible and beat the best. It’s an enormous [source of motivation] for everyone watching, with more than a billion people expected to tune in. Finally, it is great encouragement for our customer base and employees. People are ecstatic about participating in the torch relays and volunteering at the Games. It’s a positive incentive for a world that needs it.

Is there a sense of rallying at Allianz because [employees] think, ‘I see my company’s name with the Olympic rings’?
There are only 11 companies that are allowed to carry the rings. Being in the inner circle, we see what we can add and how we can bolster European ingenuity. After all, we’re not just providing insurance. For example, we’re helping the bobsledding association to create safer bobsleds for athletes. It’s about being part of something exceptional, pushing the boundaries and innovating.

Looking ahead to the Munich Security Conference [this month], let’s talk about Brand Munich. Where are we? Does Brand Germany understand its power?
We have a very successful ecosystem in Munich with an amazing airport and great, technical universities. When people think about Germany and what’s good about the country, they often think of Bavaria. It remains a real innovation centre and functions extremely well. Brand Munich is very strong. Take the Security Conference: if you ask people what destination is having serious conversations about where the world is going, few say Davos – and more answer Munich. We have amazing assets but we need to use them.

Everyone says that Germany is coming back. What’s your take? 
We have been very fortunate at Allianz. The forecasts from the market are very good and we have something that gives me hope every day, which is the trust that customers have in the company. It has never been higher in our 136 years. In terms of Germany, there are good companies [that are] doing really well – just look at Siemens. It is overshadowed by the problems that we have in sectors that have not invested properly in the future or were mismanaged by European regulation. We still have debates on working less rather than more, even though we know that we cannot afford the [current] health care and the social systems. Europe has [about] 5 per cent of the global population but [approximately] 50 per cent of the social spending. It’s unaffordable. The problem is that politicians do not want to address this because they say that they will get booted out of office. People do not want to be told to work more – but someone has to do it.

How much of a role can the private sector have on influencing the state of Bavaria as much as Berlin? 
The problem is in the public. The vast majority of our publicised opinions [come from] special-interest people that dominate the debate. Rage [drives] the clicks and therefore a lot of my peers are very careful to go into the public. I don’t think it’s a sustainable model. We just need to call a spade a spade and say, ‘Guys, this is what we need.’

We’re talking about human capital – you still have to deliver customer service. 
Today, if you wanted to make a call to a person, you need to have a lot of contextual know-how to respond to a question [that a machine couldn’t provide]. In the next few years, we’ll have [machine] agents who not only talk agent to agent but can talk to humans in a highly professional way and make fewer errors than a human would. We are trying to free up the time of qualified humans with the help of machines that actually can answer the question that we never get to answering. 

Let’s take a look at the host of the Games. What is Allianz’s relationship to Italy?
After Germany, Italy is our second most important market. We have the strongest brand here, even stronger than the local ones. We see it trying to help the country. We also see the challenges. If you think more about distributing wealth than creating it, you end up in a problem eventually. Reputation and success were solidified in those beautiful years when everyone wanted to drive an Audi in Lombardy – there was a trust in Germany at that point.

Finally, what’s your favourite sport to watch during the Winter Games?
Bobsledding. I just did it last year. I now know what it means to go down something at 130km/h with three plus Gs on your neck. It’s quite stunning what these people have to do well.