september 27, 2005
the good book: Travelers' Tales Prague is now on amazon.com! It's still months away from hitting bookshop shelves, but it's a gorgeous sight to see. Click here to see the listing.
september 25, 2005
i (don't) think, therefore i shop:
Dallas Morning News travel editor, Larry Bleiberg recently penned a column about shopping and traveling, in which he introduces Suzy Gershman, a professional travel shopper who has written several books on the topic. Shopping, according to some recent surveys, is the top reason to travel. And I don't doubt it. But it brings up the question I seem to be asking myself lately: why do we travel? The answer is obviously relative, but in an age of creeping (or sprinting) globalization, where the same shops selling the same products are lining streets from Beijing to Buenos Aires, why spend your time shopping? Ms. Gershwin apparently doesn't like this trend either, opting for unique products that reflect the place. But traveling, for me at least, is not just about seeing new places and new people and witnessing those people going on with their lives in a slightly or sometimes dramatically different way from my own culture. It's taking risks, challenging yourself to see the world differently, mustering up courage. Eating at a local place with no English menu (as opposed to going to an American chain restaurant) takes guts, but it's often those experiences you take home with you; it becomes your first anecdote when someone asks how your trip was. And if you're a travel writer, it could become the lead or even the angle of your story. "I was nervous at first, but I wandered into this old pub in a village in Serbia and I started talking to this really interesting guy who..."
September 20, 2005
awards dept.
I just saw an announcement (thanks to an email from my friend Chris) that my article "Natural Born Pig Killers" won a prestigious Lowell Thomas award. Hooray!
september 17, 2005
talkin' timbuktu:
I love a good first line of a travel story. And I was immediately taken with Cynthia Barnes' account of her time in Mali. "If one must arrive in an African capital under a barrage of gunfire, Bamako is surely the place to be," she writes, adding, "In a continent ravaged by carnage--besides Sudan and Somalia, a civil war rages right next door in Ivory Coast--Mali remains at peace, and the guns are fired only in celebration."
Later she writes:
"This is my first visit to Africa. As long as I'm making the trip, I plan to stay awhile. Normally, I'm the queen of the quickies. My professional specialty is swinging through somewhere like Shanghai and churning out facile features that suggest insider expertise but are actually the product of 48-hour press tours. I want, for once, to go slowly. To meet someone besides the local tourism authorities. To understand a tiny piece of one place. To have an adventure that's at least a little unscripted. My return flight is 10 weeks from now." Continue reading the article here....
September 5, 2005
trippin':
i'm off to Austria today, which,
despite popular belief among many
Americans, is not Australia. Once,
while hanging with a punk band (who
will remain nameless, but here's a
hint: they're from Santa Cruz) when
they came through Prague on tour,
I asked the bassist where they were
off to next.
"Austria," he said. "But I can't
remember the name of the town."
"If you're only going to one place in Austria, it's got to be Vienna," I said.
"No, no," he said, shaking his head. "Oh, wait, I remember now. It's...Wien."
august 31, 2005
iff ew kin wryt gud:
travel writing contest alert. Transitions Abroad wants to hear how traveling has changed your life. The focus should be on the experience abroad and not necessarily on your personal feelings (i.e. don't go on and on and on about what it meant to you--instead show the reader what you're talking about with scenes and examples). The deadline is November 1. For more details, click here.
august 30, 2005
my life as a hack:
after three and a half years in the freelance writing biz--really, I'm just an infant--I sometimes often yearn for that office gig: healthcare, stability, colleagues to annoy, free bottled water. While freelancing has its perks--I've become quite good and typing with one hand while holding a bottle of wine with the other, for example--a few recent booze-inducing experiences with editors have left me wondering what I'll be like when I'm fifty (not to mention with a wicked hangover). Ben Yagoda enlightens me here. See what's in store for you, future freelance writers. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!
august 27, 2005
quote:
"he not busy being born is busy dying."
bob dylan
august 21, 2005
trippies:
it's a mixture of frustration and satisfaction when a story pops up in a newspaper travel section or magazine that I had
thought up at one time(and dismissed). The latest is a feature in the Dallas Morning News on Bussana Vecchia, a town on the Italian Riviera that was
destroyed by an earthquake
in 1897, and turned into a
ghost town; that is, until
the '60s when hippies
started squatting there.
Today, it's a half-ghost
town/half-hippie commune.
In may I was just a few
miles from Bussana, opting
for the glitz of San Remo
instead of the granola
crunch of Bussana. Oddly
enough, there's another
town in Italy that has a near-identical history. It's pictured here. Anyone know what it is?
august 17, 2005
q&a:
K.C. Summers, The Washington Post's travel editor managed to snag an interview with everyone's favorite travel writer, Bill Bryson, who talks about wanting to get out of the travel writing biz (and how he never really wanted to get in to the travel writing biz). Read the interview here.
august 2, 2005
feeling restless:
new travel writing sites seem to be popping up almost as quickly as shopping magazines. Fortunately, the benefits of travel will always outweigh those of consuming new clothes and gadgets. The latest is restlessme, a nice looking website that features travel news, books reviews, and, according a recent ad on craigslist seeking submissions, "irreverent, unconventional travel stories." Have a look. Submit something. Tell them I sent you. No, really, don't. They'll probably put you on the junk mail list.
