Times gets lost in Africa

Elinor Burkett turns in one of those standard white woman goes to Africa pieces in today's issue of the always-backwards Times Travel section that's notable only for its fantastic photo, and this crazy sentence:

For decades until 1914, Namibia was a German colony, South West Africa, and even 94 years after Germany lost it as the spoils of defeat in World War I, the Teutonic imprint on Swakop, as locals call the city, remains unmistakable."

Wow--41 words delineated by 6 commas!

Not to mention such rhetorical flourishes as 'spoils of defeat' and 'Teutonic imprint'.

Burkett, who teaches journalism(!), follows immediately with another sentence nearly as claustrophobic:

The standard plats du jour are schnitzel and bratwurst; the architecture of the old prison, the train station, the jail and dozens of other structures is late 19th-century Munich; and the streets are so tidy that Kaiser Wilhelm, for whom the main avenue was named until the government changed it six years ago, would be proud.

The article's 2,089 words are chopped up into many similar sentences that have hopelessly lost their way--by my count, 134 commas, 11 emdashes and 6 semicolons are scattered in amongst just 64 sentences.

Elinor really needs to read Isak Dinesen.

Photo of tourists climbing one of the Sossusvlei dunes, which rise as high as 1,000 feet, by Evelyn Hockstein for the Times