april 24, 2005
stuff I like:
"Roads Not Taken," by Thomas Swick was written as a wake up call to travel writers and editors: big up yerself!
april 23, 2005
from the 'what the...?' file:
the best ghetto homage to a dead pope...ever:
April 22, 2005
jackpot:
Ever wonder what Croatia's second largest city looks like? If you guessed a big, red baby then you're right. I was searching for pics of Split on google's image directory and here's one of the first photos that came up: Split, Croatia. I am so going there....
April 21, 2005
article:
I like 'em fat and furry (which confuses a lot of people who know me--especially my wife): "Bearing It All"
from the 'you can be a travel writer too' file:
the curiously named Pology (I still haven't figured out if this is a print or web publication) and the Chicago-based print magazine The Great Escape want to hear all about what you did on your summer vacation. No, really, they're looking for travel stories--preferably edited stories with a point (ya hear that, R. W. Apple, jr.?! If that's your real name). In the words printed on the baseball cap of the redneck I sat next to on a Lafayette-to-Atlanta flight last week: Git-R-Done!
april 25, 2005
The new Prague?
in the May issue of Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel,writer and longtime Prague resident Peter S. Green ponders which Eastern European city deserves the title "The New Prague" (five pages before my brilliant piece on Belfast, by the way). Krakow, Kiev, Ljubljana, Bratislava, Belgrade, and Vilnius are all candidates. Such questions have been on the minds of travel writers and editors ever since the Czech capital ceased being cool (which was approximately two years before YOU were there). But I've found it. Steel yourself. Ladies and gentleman, wait for it...The New Prague.
april 27, 2005
air george:
George Hobica, aka The Travel Guy, has spent the last few years using his intimate knowledge of the aifare booking process to find those near-mythically cheap flights you sometimes hear about (when the sale is over). Now he's sharing it. Tune in to his blogs every day to see where you're going next: The New York Airfare Report and The National Airfare Report. Hey, for a few tenners and enduring the sombrero-wearing buskers on the subway ride to the airport, even Duluth or Des Moines might be cool.
april 29, 2005
from the 'you can be a travel writer too' file:
travel writing for fun and propaganda! A new Beijing-based magazine has recently risen up to publish stories about your travels. Phoenix Trip magazine is an offspring of Phoenix TV, the largest international TV station broadcast throughout China. Especially encouraged are your tales of the beauty and benefits of the Three Gorges Damn, a visit to the happy workers at the artificial flower factory, and how Chairman Mao's tomb inspired you. Best of all, you get paid in Chinese wages. I'm not kidding about this last part. See for yourself: Phoenix Trip.
may 3, 2005
trippin'
I leave today for a whirlwind tour of southern Europe: Genoa and the Italian Riviera, Rome, Croatia (Split, Dubrovnik, maybe an island or two), and Montengro, which in travel writer speak is "the next Croatia." So, in a serious homage to my southern California roots: I'm Audi 5000, dude.
may 20, 2005
dive Bar:
I recently spent a long afternoon schlepping around the southern Montenegrin town of Bar. Besides the ferry terminal which takes travelers to Bari, Italy, there are exactly zero reasons to come here. That is, unless you mistake the name on a map for a
place to get
some hooch. But
if you like your
towns in the
Socialist-
realist vein
(I do!), and you
especially love
being gawked at
by thick-necked,
blinged-up lugs
(I really do!),
then this town is for you. After all, there are few places in the world where you could eat a "Dork Chop" or a "Chicken Chest" (I recommend the latter) at the same restaurant.
While checking my email in Bar (I wanted to fit in, but the jewelry and gun shops were closed), I met a couple from San Francisco. Erika Tunick and Dave McMillan are riding a motorcycle from Paris to Sydney (and motoring through countries like Iran and Pakistan along the way). Jessie and I had just been trying to define the term "adventurous travel," when we met them (traveling around the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, we decided after meeting Erika and Dave, qualified as "mildly adventurous"). Anyway, you can track their progress here (and keep your fingers crossed they get through Persia and Pakistan before Dubya decides he needs some more oil).
may 22, 2005
so you want to be a travel writer? Los Angeles Times travel section contributor Susan Spano has finally answered the question I've been asking her for so many years (I actually had to stop asking after the restraining order): So...what does it take to be a travel writer? Service--getting addresses, opening and closing times, and admission prices correct--is first on her list, followed by the ability and desire to learn from your experiences and, lastly, reading...a lot. "Foraging through literature and history provides themes and details beyond those rehearsed by every guidebook on the shelf," she writes. "It suggests uncommon subjects for stories and magically makes your writing better." Ah ha...so that's it. In other news, I've also finally figured out who my daddy is.
may 28, 2005
newz:
remember all those cryptic ads in the mid-'90s that featured annoyingly happy people screaming about a highway and how it would be telling us some kind of information? They were right: our lives have been transformed to the point that we've become human puddles of flesh glued to these glowing boxes that sit on our laps (I'm positive my dog is thinking this about me right now). But it's not all that Orwellian--as much as the Bush Administration and Rupert Murdoch want to control the information we get, this glowing box has spurred an unprecedented amount of information exchange. And for we wanderlusters, the outcome has been largely positive. Case in point: Far Flung magazine, a flashy new online travel mag that mysteriously appeared in my inbox today, not only has a killer design, but killer writers too: Alain de Botton and Rory MacLean kick off the first issue (check out the pic of the guy trying to fish for elephants on the homepage--now that's adventurous).
