New title, new design, same me

Some housekeeping. So you might have noticed something. Like this blog's new title and new design. Both now thirty-eight percent lighter and cheerier and lower cholesterol.

(If you're viewing this in Google Reader or some other RSS feed thing, you'll have to click through to see what I'm talking about.)

The new title--Europe on Five Wrong Turns a Day--reflects what I think, maybe, possibly (ask me later) is the final title of the actual book. It's more tangible, more accurate, more funny this way, yes? Yes. Good. I'm glad you agree. Oh, and, yes, I'm aware the that the domain name and the new title are different. Working on it--trying to get it so that all of the old links still work and such, before I transfer to a new domain name.

Content-wise, the blog will stay more or less the same: quips, rants, stories, and general commentary on travel topics, particularly those relating to:

1. unexpected angles and insights on tourism and the beaten path, because there's usually a hidden story behind the cliche; 
2. guidebooks and travel apps and how we get informed when we plan our journeys; and 
3. the history and evolution of tourism in the last generation. 

I may also start posting about other things more often. We'll see. Honestly, until the book comes out next year, posting is probably going to be pretty light. But if you want any posts about anything, by all means, holler (doug@douglasmack.net).

Wow, that's a lot of boring behind-the-scenes stuff. To bring us back on-topic, I leave you with the full version of the photo I used for the new header. It's from something I stumbled across in Paris when I was lost, the Parade for Sex and Beer. At least, I think that's what it was. I don't know. I couldn't figure it out and I rather enjoyed the mystery of the bizarre spectacle, so I didn't ask anyone.

This is why it's so awesome to be lost: you accidentally stumble upon this sort of thing.

Fodor: "The Spy Who Loved Travel"

I know a guidebook writer. He claims the gig isn't quite as glamorous as you'd think. I'm inclined to believe him since, hey, travel writing isn't all daiquiris on beaches and Mai Thais on mountaintops, either. But Eugene Fodor, it turns out, was every bit as dashing and bad-ass as the rest of us travel scribes only pretend to be. 

He was a spy. And he hired other spies to write for him. No joke. From the AP: 

According to Hunt, Fodor had worked as a spy in Austria when the Office of Strategic Services became the CIA and continued in intelligence for 12 to 15 years. Fodor tried to keep the lid on in late 1974 and early `75, fearing relatives of his Czech-born wife could be put in danger. But pressed by the paper's expose, he acknowledged his covert work _ and his hiring of many guidebook writers who were CIA spies during the Cold War.

"But I told them to make sure and send me real writers, not civil engineers. I wanted to get some writing out of them. And I did, too," Fodor told the Times in June 1975.

In unrelated guidebook-related news, I was kind of amused by this post on Esquire.com about "Great Moments in Italian Food History," specifically this line:

1960 — Arthur Frommer's book Europe on $5 a Day becomes a bestseller; tens of thousands of young Americans travel to Italy

Truth. And Chef Boyardee, among others, piggybacked on the new American fascination with this sauce-covered deliciousness. For more on that, step right this way, please.

Behind the scenes with Lee

Lee just posted some photos of the trip on his blog, with commentary. Actually, they're my photos; I'm just too much of a slacker to post photos aside from the Not-So-Flattering Views of Famous Places.

Anyway, consider this your opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes view of our oh-so-Grand Tour. He promises more photos in the coming weeks.

Goodbye, info overload; hello, willful ignorance

Willful ignorance: the new hot trend in travel? If so, I'd like to think I was on the cutting edge.

The January issue of Travel + Leisure features an excellent essay by Peter Jon Lindberg about the benefits and pitfalls of using social networking while traveling. There's lots to like, he notes, including the fact that we can find out pretty much anything we want to know--"With minimal effort, in the comfort of a hotel lobby, I can plot a route to a restaurant I’m considering, download tonight’s menu, translate it instantly from the Catalan, read 47 detailed customer reviews, call up TwitPics of the razor clams, even take some guy’s virtual tour of the dining room."

But Lindberg concludes, as many of us (travelers and otherwise) have, that maybe technology is robbing us of some of the joy, serendipity, and human interaction that are rather key, if intangible, components of a happy life.

Part of the thrill of travel is in the mystery it entails, the buzz that comes from trying to imagine what this strange new place will even look like. The gap between our expectations and harsh reality is diminishing, but so, too, I can’t help but think, is our excitement.

It’s true that information-age tools enable us to have easier, safer, more reliable vacations. But sometimes we have better vacations in spite of them. The danger is in using these conveniences simply because we can. Especially when we travel—which, after all, is supposed to entail stepping outside of ourselves and our little mobile cubicles. Take a look around you right now and count the number of people on the phone; I’ll bet they outnumber those who aren’t. The more we connect with the world above and beyond us, the harder it is to be present wherever we actually are.

I really don't think this point can be overstated. In fact, it's one of the main reasons for the nutty project documented in this blog. Using an outdated guidebook might be an extreme (perhaps even borderline ridiculous/stupid) reaction to information overload, but, well, that was the point: to be a bit extreme, to fight back and show that willful ignorance can have its benefits.

(And if you're new to this blog, this would be a great time to read the FAQs or to hop over to World Hum and watch the two-minute audio slideshow about my willfully-ignorant, information-underloaded experiences in Paris.)

Add to packing list: knee brace

Here's a tip: if you want to make your travels abroad really interesting, a great way to achieve that goal is to become hobbled unexpectedly. And a great way to achieve that is to go in-line skating two days before you depart and wipe out spectacularly. Take particular care to land hard on your knee so that it's nicely bloody and painful (also be sure to choose a pedestrian-filled area for your wipe-out, so that you have a large audience to whom you can demonstrate your commitment to making your travels interesting).

Ow.*

24 hours until departure. Am I all packed? Nope. Am I panicking? Astonishingly, not really. I was for the last week, but now, as the moment approaches, I feel oddly prepared.

(Of course, my whole point with this trip is to be willfully unprepared. The main challenge has not been planning so much as forcing myself, against my better judgment, natural tendency/preference, and lingering anxieties about this unwise methodology, to not plan anything.)

* I would just like to note, for the record, that I am an avid and more-than-able skater, and this is just the second time I have wiped out, ever.

Introduction to a Literary Sidekick

Hello! This is Lee, writer, traveler, and person who wishes he did more of both.

As you may know, Doug has invited me along on his European tour as official literary sidekick and has even allowed me to blog here occasionally about our adventures. I am honored to join him and to join the ranks of the great literary sidekicks along with...

Well uh..., there was that whole Gertrude Stein/Alex B Toklas thing, which I never did get the full scoop on. They're both women, apparently... and Ernie and F. Scott were definitely buds (though Ernie apparently thought F. Scott drank a bit too much and got distracted from his real work? Pot! Kettle!). More to the genre in which we find ourselves on this blog, Bill Bryson had the reluctant Stephen Katz in A Walk in the Woods. (Some people claim Bryson made Katz up, but they're probably just pissed because Bryson made the Appalachian Trail sound funny and they got there and found it was really just long). Tom Bissel, whose Chasing the Sea is about a disaster even bigger than the trip I am about to join, had his quixotic translator/sidekick Rustam, which reminds me of Jonathan Safran Froer's translator/sidekick in Everything Is Illuminated.

Of course now we're getting into fiction, where I'll happily follow along with Sancho Panza, Qeequay, and Sam Gamgee. Ender had his Bean and of course Solo his Chewbacca. Also, let's not forget Robin the boy wonder, and Watson (it's elementary!). Lest we downplay the sidekick, it might help to remember that Watson was a pistol-totting ex-army officer who'd survived India.

So far I've gotten most of the top 5, though even that list neglects to mention the sidekick so awesome he got his own book. That's right, let us not forget that Huck Finn started as Tom Sawyer's goofy pal.

Back in real life we have Jack Kerouac's, Neal Cassady, whose insanity as Dean Moriarty in On the Road the rest of us sidekicks can only hope to live up to. Honestly, though, now that I've begun this survey, stories of real-life literary sidekicks seem few. Clearly, as one of the founders of the role, I will have to work particularly hard to set the bar high.

FAQ (and frequently sarcastic answers)

Updated now and then. Got a question? E-mail me or ask in the comments.

1. Where are you going did you go?

I went to Florence, and Paris in 2008, then continued the Not-So-Grand Tour in 2009, visiting Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Venice, Rome, and Madrid.

2. Dude, that's such a lame list--so obvious and touristy.

Yeah. That's the point.

3. And you're using some old guidebook or something?

Right. I'm using a 1963 copy of Arthur Frommer's Europe on Five Dollars a Day, plus the 40-year-old letters of my mother, who was one of the original hippie backpackers, doing the Grand Tour for 10 weeks in 1967. She and my father--who was back home in Minneapolis--corresponded every few days and have kept every last letter and postcard. I'm trying to see how far I can get using these documents and nothing else.

4. What are the rules of the game? Like, you're only staying in places that were open in the 1960s and you're wearing vintage clothes and you're not using the internet and you can't even use words like "internet" because it didn't exist back then?

Er, not quite. This is not a reenactment. As evidenced by the presence of this blog and my web site, I'm not actually trying to be 100 percent old-fashioned. For starters, that would be impossible: I couldn't, for example, adhere to a five-dollars-a-day budget today (unless I were sleeping in ditches and eating only scraps from dumpsters ... but Arthur Frommer doesn't give any tips for that). So, yeah, if you want to be a stickler, I guess I'm cheating and not taking the idea as far as it could go. Apologies.

I'm trying to get around using my old guidebook and my mother's letters as much as possible, with other, modern info--e.g. current train timetables--acting as a supplement when necessary. But no modern guidebooks. No internet research. None of the meticulous planning that I usually undertake before even walking across the street. I'm keeping myself willfully ignorant--if I see an article about a city I'll be visiting, I don't read it. If you have tips about where to go, I don't want them.

5. Why?

Well, why not? You've heard of information overload? This is my attempt to get away from it for once. Willful ignorance can lead to some problems, obviously, but it also reintroduces surprise, wonder, and serendipity--three things that get lost all too often in the modern travel experience. If you've planned your journey down to nanosecond, down to the vista (and scoured Flickr to find the precise angles that make that vista look the prettiest), and you've read all the reviews on TripAdvisor, and you've left nothing to chance ... then why travel at all?

In short, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone (usually I'm kind of a control freak), and this seemed like an interesting way to do it.

I also wanted to connect the dots between my mother's era of travel and my own, and to see if there were, in fact, any stories left to tell on that all-too-beaten path.

For a further explanation, watch my audio slide show. Two minutes--short!

6.  Sounds like an obnoxiously zany stunt. Why didn't you just spend a year in a Mediterranean village or do something truly adventurous like skateboarding across the Sahara ... like all the other, normal travel writers?

Well, I didn't want to be like all the other travel writers.  I'd noticed that there hasn't been a lot written about the beaten path--many people seem to think that there's nothing interesting to see or do there, that it's only for the tacky, unenlightened tourists, that there are no stories left to tell. I wanted to find out if this was true. And I wanted to document a travel experience that covered territory that is familiar to the broader population--more familiar than the epic treks and year-in-remote-village tales that populate the travel lit canon--but did so in a unique way.

Using the 1963 guidebook, along with my mother's letters, seemed like an interesting way to gain insight into how the travel experience has changed in the last generation--how the beaten path got so beaten. I wanted to use my own (mis)adventures as a lens into what it means to be a traveler today.