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My Sweet Taskmaster Inbox

Now that I’m home again, people keep asking me, “Where’s your next trip?” I honestly don’t know. After four months of the last five in Europe, it’s simply good to be done traveling for a while. (I hope you enjoyed traveling with Cameron via this blog the last couple of weeks as much as I did. Thanks, Cameron, for packing us along.)

I’m overdue for a blog entry. Why the delay? I’ll blame my email taskmaster. As my friends and family know, if you want me to do something, give it to me in an email. My inbox is my taskmaster. For example, here’s a few of the tasks that fill my inbox and assure me I’ll have something to do tomorrow morning at work:

1. My radio and Web staff sent me the list of audio files deconstructed from our radio show archive, which we’ll design into our vision of “tour guide radio.” We’ll offer the various interviews from our radio programs in country-by-country “playlists” for listeners’ enjoyment on the road. I need to write the file titles and descriptions.

2. We’re producing a new public television pledge special. Its working title: “Mediterranean Hopscotch.” (I like the name because it sounds fun and we’ll hopscotch from Barcelona to Istanbul, but some of my staff thinks it sounds too much like Scotland.)

3. The production cost from our presenting station seems high, and we need to haggle a bit on that.

4. I’m giving a talk next month in Fort Smith, Arkansas. My travel agent assures me a 50-minute connection in Dallas between here and there is safe. (I’m nervous, but you have to rely on the airlines, and they have yet to let me down — thank Wilbur, Orville, and God).

5. I have a newspaper article due in two days (a weekly chore) and my staff has submitted the raw material from my recent Frankfurt trip with past writing on the city from which to distill the 750 word piece.

6. I’m giving a talk about “community in Europe” for a fundraiser breakfast supporting the adult day care program. A script for the Elder Health video that I’ll read is ready to review.

7. Alison of the ACLU, who met with Obama’s drug czar (former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske) and our congressman (Jay Inslee), shares the letter the ACLU gave them explaining why they believe we should treat drug abuse more as a medical problem and less as a criminal one.

8. I’m giving a talk at our state legislature in Olympia in a couple of days sharing with our legislators how European drug policy compares with America’s. The ACLU sent me some PowerPoint slides referring to the law being discussed in Washington State to incorporate into my presentation.

9. I want to have a single DVD packed with general budget travel material in a simple cardboard package that we can spread around liberally. An email explains the extra cost for a four-hour disk rather than a standard three-hour one.

10. Ab Walet, my favorite guide in Amsterdam, has confirmed that he’ll meet some friends rain or shine for a city tour (by bike if they like) at their downtown Amsterdam apartment. They’re taking our Spain/Portugal tour next month and overnighting in Amsterdam for a crazy finale. It’s their first time there — and I want to be sure they max out on the experience given their limited time. So no museums…just Ab, bikes, and four hours exploring the city capped by a big Indonesian dinner.

11. Sayed, our guide from Iran, emailed me saying, “I hope some better days come up so you can bring tours to Iran.”

12. Class sign-ups for our teach-a-thon this weekend at the Edmonds Theater are looking good. I always push to overbook by about a third, which makes my events director nervous. But we almost always have no-shows, causing empty seats. My new classes: a general “What’s New Review After 2009 Travels,” and much-improved shows on Spain and Scandinavia after the fun I had there this year.

13. Another email gives me the files for class handouts listing all the places covered in the talks, which need to be updated accordingly.

It’s a lot of work. But I’m so endlessly entertained by it all. That’s why I have such a cozy relationship with my sweet Taskmaster Inbox.

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Polish Booby Prize

This is the final of four reports that my Eastern Europe guidebook co-author Cameron Hewitt sent me from his travels:

In Poland, the big news is that several Polish cities are hosting matches for the 2012 Euro Cup soccer championships — which in Europe is only a small step down from hosting the Olympics. Everything’s under construction. They’re building new high-speed rail lines like crazy, which will be good news in a few years, but is bad news now since most journeys are substantially delayed. The Gdansk-Warsaw trip, usually about four hours, took closer to six.

Warsaw’s Central Station — my vote for most depressing and confusing rail station in Europe — is slated for a desperately needed overhaul soon. It can’t happen fast enough. In the five-minute walk from the ticket office to my platform, I ran into three different American couples who were toting my guidebook and hopelessly baffled about what to do next. Pointing them in the right direction, I felt pretty good-Samaritan about myself…until I realized that they were just the tip of the confused-tourist iceberg. Normally I’d take their confusion as a sign that the book needs improvement; in this case, I think it’s the station that needs improvement. (But I’m revamping the “Arrival” section anyway, just in case.)

There’s always something new in fast-developing Poland. Every time I go back to certain towns (like Gdansk), I discover that several good hotels and restaurants have opened. Occasionally I’ve had to list a hotel (with ample “last resort”-type caveats) that I know isn’t that great, just because there are no acceptable alternatives. It’s so satisfying to visit a few new hotels or restaurants, discover that they’re better than the old standbys, and delete the duds from my book. (There’s even a good sushi restaurant now in Gdansk — so long, “Pierogi Restaurant Under the Boar.”) In a few cases, if you compare my hotel or restaurant listings from five years ago to today’s, you’ll find only a couple of overlaps. That’s not the case in most books, but in Poland it just shows how things are steadily improving.

A couple of Poles bragged to me that Poland is one of the only countries in Europe that’s not suffering so badly from the financial crisis. It’s actually had positive economic growth last year. But it’s sort of a booby prize. When pressed for reasons, they acknowledged that it’s probably because the Polish economy is a bit backwards and not as well-integrated into the global scene, making it less prone to worldwide fluctuations.

I usually have total tunnel vision about my work, but this trip I’ve been trying to chat more with people I meet. This has reminded me how rewarding it can be to strike up a conversation — whether with a couple from Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire, or a woman from Friday Harbor who’s about to embark on an epic journey that will take her to the Baltics, the “-Stans” of central Asia, and the prettiest stretch of the Camino de Santiago. Most fascinating was the pair of young Scottish women who quit their jobs and were traveling all around Europe for four months — sleeping in their car, cooking on a camp stove, showering once a week (“10 days was the longest”), and making a go of it on a budget of €50 a day, most of which went toward gas and experiences.

But, as always, my favorites have been interactions with Polish people. It’s amazing the connections you discover with people you’d think you have nothing in common with. On the long train ride from Gdansk to Warsaw, I shared a compartment with a woman whose husband is a cognitive psychologist/memory researcher. It turns out he’s familiar with the work of the professor I was a research assistant for in college.

And just now, as I write this on the train from Warsaw to Krakow, I’ve been chatting with Monika. She told me she was going to a very remote little village northeast of Krakow to visit her father. I prodded her for more details, and it turns out she grew up in a small town (Szczurowa) that’s just a 20-minute drive from the villages where my great-grandparents were born. I’ve been in her middle-of-nowhere town twice in the last few years. She knows several people with the same surname as my ancestors. And I have to assume that she’s probably a distant cousin of some sort.

A few minutes later, “Cousin Monika” became my guardian angel when my computer crashed after I spritzed a little water on the keyboard. She called her brother-in-law, who’s a tech support guy, and got some tips. Now my computer is humming away on my lap again.

When traveling, we focus so much on the museums, the cuisine, and the scenery. But it’s often these strange, funny, serendipitous little interactions that we remember the most fondly.

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Making Friends with Mr. GPS in Switzerland

This is the third of four reports guidebook researcher/writer Cameron Hewitt sent me just this week from his travels in Switzerland and beyond:

One highlight of my time updating our Switzerland guidebook was making friends with the computer voice of my rental car’s GPS system.

When I picked up my car, the rental agent said, “Sorry, I don’t have the size of car you requested, so I have to give you something a little bigger.” It turned out to be a Skoda Superb (made by my favorite up-and-coming Czech automaker) and was literally at least double the size of the car I’d reserved. You could fit our Norwegian rental car in the backseat, and have room left for a Smart Car in the trunk. While it was nice to have essentially a luxury sedan for the trip, it was sometimes challenging to nudge my tank through narrow mountain roads and tight city parking garages.

The car came with a GPS system that spoke in a buttoned-down British voice. I developed a real love-hate relationship with the GPS guy, who occasionally saved me tons of time and stress, but more than once steered me very wrong. Like an over-earnest navigator desperate to make a good impression, Mr. GPS periodically suggested bizarre and impractical routings. On our first day together, he sent me up narrow mountain roads (in some cases, ones I wasn’t sure I was legally allowed to drive), where I dodged cows and looked longingly down at the big, fast highway in the valley just below. (I’m guessing my GPS wanted to treat me to the “scenic” route. Yeah, thanks.)

On another occasion, I drove halfway across the country (from Gruyeres to Appenzell) at rush hour, hitting big traffic jams around Bern and Zürich. In order to “help” me avoid traffic on the Bern outerbelt, my GPS directed me to an exit to take surface roads through the city. Little did I know that he planned to send me straight through the heart of downtown. He was as confused as I was… “Turn left in 100 meters. Turn left now. No! Wait! Please make a U-turn if possible.” As I found myself doing a three-point turn right in front of the Bern train station, trying to ignore the bewildered stares of rush-hour commuters, I decided that Mr. GPS was on thin ice.

My increasing wariness proved useful a few days later, when — on the way from St. Moritz to Lugano via Italy’s Lake Como — I realized Mr. GPS had just directed me right past the Lugano turnoff. Hitting the brakes and checking the map, I figured out he was aiming to send me on the freeway, then on a ferry across the lake. I stuck with the slower roads on the correct side of the lake, and got in an hour earlier. (It reminded me of a recent news item, in which a Swedish couple touring Italy mistyped “Capri” as “Carpi” — and wound up several hundred miles from their intended destination.) The lesson: GPS is only useful in conjunction with a good map and some common sense.

The GPS guy would talk right over any music I was listening to. This created some odd duets. One time, listening to Janis Joplin on the radio, I heard, “Come on, take another little piece of my heart, now, baby… Please make a U-turn if possible.”

Pondering why I’m so fixated on my GPS experiences, I realize it’s probably because Mr. GPS was my main company for a few days. Now that he’s pestering some other driver, I kind of miss him.

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Fringe Switzerland and Stinky Cheese

This is the second of four reports that editor/writer/researcher Cameron Hewitt sent me from his travels in Norway, Switzerland, and Poland as he’s updating our guidebooks. — Rick

Only when coming from Norway does Switzerland seem reasonably priced. Dropping $20 or $25 on a decent Swiss dinner felt like a big relief. (Later, when I was in Poland, I could eat like royalty for $20. In Warsaw I had lunch for $2…banana, egg-salad sandwich, and a bottle of water. But, as the stray hair I found in the sandwich attested, sometimes you get what you pay for.)

In the past I’ve usually focused on the Germanic core of Switzerland, so I forgot how diverse this little country is. This time, I zipped around the Romance language-speaking fringe — Lausanne and Gruyeres (French), Appenzell (OK, that’s still German), St. Moritz area (Romansh), and Lugano (Italian). Every day or two, I switched languages. Though I never crossed a border (aside from a 30-minute detour into Liechtenstein), there was as much culture shock from place to place as if I’d traveled from Paris to Munich to Rome. By the time I got to the Romansh area — where they speak an obscure Latin dialect that’s completely unfamiliar to me — I was so confused, I found myself grunting to my waiter in Croatian.

It’s not just language — the people in each part of Switzerland have their own quirks. For example, in France, people have a distinct formality, with protocol that visitors are expected to follow. The Swiss are known to be a bit aloof, with a focus on orderliness. And, while I actually appreciate those qualities when I’m in those respective countries, when they’re stacked together in French-speaking Switzerland, it feels overly uptight. It often seemed like I could do no right.

Meanwhile, Italian Switzerland — while certainly tamer than Italy proper — also has a dollop of Italian chaos. Usually, super-organized Switzerland is a dream for updating a guidebook. But Lugano kept me on my toes. Rushing around on Saturday night to check out some restaurants (which I knew would be closed on Sunday), I was told by two different restaurateurs, “It’s busy now. Can you come back tomorrow?” When I reminded them they were closed the next day, they’d wink sheepishly and answer my questions. And three separate times, Italian Swiss locals who I was using to update my information brushed aside my questions with, “Well, if it’s in that book, I’m sure it’s correct.” While I appreciate their faith in our book, how do they think it gets to be correct?

Fortunately, some things never change, no matter which language the people speak. Rivella, my favorite Swiss soft drink — which is made from milk serum, tastes like chewable vitamins, and comes in four different flavors — is available nationwide. Over a week, the front seat of my car filled up with (I hate to think of how many) Rivella empties.

It’s always interesting to hear observations from the local tourist industry. Middle Eastern travelers flock to Switzerland. A ticket seller at the boat dock in Lugano said that he had tons of Mideast tourists until a couple of weeks ago. Then Ramadan started…and he’s only seen one Middle Eastern family since (Christians from Egypt). Since Ramadan starts even earlier next year, Swiss hoteliers are predicting a short but very intense spike in demand early in the season.

I had one particularly cow-heavy stretch that combined Switzerland’s best cheeses and milk chocolates. One day I woke up in the town of Gruyeres (famous for its Gruyere cheese), toured two different cheesemaking facilities (with free samples), visited the Broc chocolate factory (more samples), then drove to Appenzell — another town famous for its stinky but delicious cheese. I like to do as the locals do — tea and a big English breakfast in Britain, croissants in France, borscht in Poland — but after a couple of days eating my way through Switzerland’s two cheese capitals, I needed dairy detox.

One highlight was arriving in the cutesy Germanic town of Appenzell on what happened to be one of the two or three days a year that the cows come down from mountain pastures. I made sure to be on main street when the farmer proudly paraded his several dozen cows through the village.

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Norway’s Lofoten Islands: Cod Only Knows Their Beauty

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I just got a great report from Cameron Hewitt, lead editor/writer and guidebook co-author at ETBD, sharing his take on Norway, Switzerland, and Poland. As Cameron often does, he toured the fringe areas that I don’t get to as often as I’d like, and he’s made some great observations I’d like to share with you. To collaborate with travel writers of this caliber is one of the great joys in my work. Here’s the first of four blog entries by Cameron — reporting on an amazing bit of Norway I’ve yet to see.

I almost always enjoy the places that I travel to for work. But only a few special destinations thrill me enough to lure me back on my own dime. Norway’s one of them. After a week driving around southern Norway’s mountains and fjords to update our Scandinavia book a couple of years back, this summer I brought my wife with me to venture to an almost mythical pinnacle at the end of the earth: The Lofoten Islands.

The Lofoten are a chain of spiky islands way up at the northern end of Norway, well above the Arctic Circle…comparable to the northern reaches of Alaska. Why make the effort to travel so far? For years I’ve drooled at photos of astonishing scenery, like fjords on steroids cast away in the sea. In reality, it was even more astonishingly beautiful…the most breathtaking scenery we’d ever laid eyes on.

To reach the islands, we went to Oslo (already at Alaskan latitudes), then flew due north for about an hour and a half. For the final hop to the islands, we loaded onto a tiny propeller plane, making a brief stopover to pick up two passengers at a practically uninhabited hunk of rock halfway across the sea. The tiny plane had to jam on its brakes the second its wheels hit the tiny runway.

Even here in the northernmost point I’ve ever visited, the warm Gulf Stream keeps the climate mild. We had great luck with the weather: After a rainy first day, we enjoyed perfect sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-60s the rest of the week. While we were a bit late for the midnight sun, the sky glowed until well after midnight.

Things are casual in the Lofoten. When we picked up our cheapo rental car at the airport and asked about dropping it off before our return flight, the rental agent said, “You can yoost leave the keys above the visor with the door unlocked. Or give them to that guy,” pointing at the security agent. (Sure enough, a week later, “that guy” happily took our keys.)

We spent our first two nights in a charming little fishing village called Henningsvær, with a smattering of galleries and cafés. From there, we side-tripped into the main town of the Lofoten, Svolvær, where we took an RIB (rigid inflatable boat, a.k.a. Zodiac) high-speed boat tour bouncing across the waves to the surrounding inlets, fjords, and islands, at speeds approaching 50 knots. It was a thrill ride punctuated with incredible views.

Everywhere we went, we stayed in rorbuer, which are little fishermen’s cabins that stand on stilts above the water. These have been rehabbed to varying degrees to house tourists, and come with modern bathrooms and kitchens. The rorbuer were perfect for relaxing in a rustic environment, enjoying the scenery, and tuning into the pace of village Norwegian life.

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Our favorite stop was the town of Reine, in the middle of a fjord immersed in the most spectacular stretch of Lofoten scenery. Our rorbu there was meticulously renovated, perfectly combining rustic charm and modern comfort (www.reinerorbuer.no). We checked in, stepped in the door to our cabin, and immediately said, “Let’s stay here longer.” (Within minutes, we’d made arrangements to extend our stay.) We never got tired of staring out at the billion-dollar views from our rorbu. Basing in Reine, we took a fjord cruise, rented sea kayaks for a tranquil paddle, and went on intoxicating lakeside and fjordside hikes. It was just a 15-minute drive to the remote fishing village called Å (the last letter in the Norwegian alphabet, and the last town in the Lofoten), where we toured its humble museum and gagged down a taste of cod liver oil. And we strolled along also some fantastic, broad, white-sand beaches. While we saw a few brave swimmers go in the water (mostly kids), even in August we found it too cold to go deeper than our ankles.

The Lofoten feels impossibly remote. It’s improbable that this chain of islands is even populated. But those warm Gulf Stream waters flush schools of cod way up here in the winter, making local fishermen very happy. Rickety-looking wooden cod-drying racks are everywhere.

It’s clear that these days, tourism has eclipsed fishing as the main industry. Even this distant corner of Norway feels civilized — we paid for most everything with our credit card, and everyone we met spoke perfect English. And yet, amenities are sparse. Each village seems to have a catch-all store that combines the bare minimum necessities: convenience store, grocery, gas station, and post office. After stumbling onto a good latte on the first day of our trip, we never found one again. Missing were all the little trappings of a resort area…no ice-cream parlors, tacky trinket shops, Internet cafés, and so on. While this sounds idyllic, we were surprised to find ourselves wishing for some of those comforting little subconscious signposts that we were on vacation. One night, after wandering through a desolate village searching for an after-dinner ice-cream cone, we finally settled for an ice-cream sandwich from the convenience store’s freezer.

The few restaurants we splurged on ranged from excellent (a melt-in-your-mouth Arctic char) to…memorable. We were determined to try bacalao, the dried-and-salted cod dish that’s a local staple. Even dressed up in a flavorful stew, it was tough to swallow. Another night, one of the cheapest items on the menu was whale steak. Feeling adventurous — and despite the server’s description (“quite gamey, similar to elk or reindeer”) and the animal-rights controversy that the menu acknowledged — I went for it. It came out bleeding-rare and reeking of game…which I suddenly remembered makes me gag. In general, food is not the big attraction here. (When we got back to Oslo, we gratefully wolfed down a cheap Indian meal.) And food prices, like all other prices, are almost comically high. When a candy bar or a can of pop costs $5, you really have to do some soul-searching with each purchase: OK, do I really need this?

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Even though it was the last week of August, and despite the perfect weather, the extremely short tourist season was already grinding to a halt. On several occasions, we were told that something had just closed “yesterday.” One evening, after having confirmed that the village’s lone tavern would be open for dinner, we showed up only to find they had just one dish available: fish soup with cracker bread. (We drove to the next town for something more appetizing.) We did run into several fellow intrepid travelers gasping at the scenery. However, in a full week in the Lofoten, we never once encountered a single other American.