“I like sugar in my coffee, not in my career advice.” Tim Leffel, author, Travel Writing 2.0, via Twitter
Confession: I am a sucker. Many years ago, when I first declared to myself that I wanted to be a travel writer, I signed up for a travel writing “program.” This “program” didn’t actually offer me any solid advice, not in the least, what it did was give me some specious downloadable “credentials” that I could present to various hotel managers or PR agents convincing them that I was associated with a “legitimate” publication.… continued…
I was saddened to read about the death of ‘Masa’ Murakami in yesterday’s Seattle Times. The Murakami family ran the Higo general store on Jackson Street in the neighborhood that used to be called Nihonmachi, or Japan Town. Before Higo became the design conscious place it is today, it was a complete hodge podge of a place, selling flip flops and kitchen ware — there were hat mannequins that looked to be from the 40s on high shelves on the west wall.… continued…
Several years ago at a book sale in a small and pretty town in Austria, I bought a stack of Baedeker’s red guidebooks. I have four of these fragile, red cloth bound little volumes. I also bought a Flaxman Hand-Book of English and German Conversation. The Flaxman’s is from 1907, the Baedeker’s are also from the early 1900s. I think they all belonged to the same person, a Doktor Ernst Fuschig of Scharding am Inn, a town near the current border between Austria and Germany — the Doktor’s name is rubber stamped in slightly smeared ink inside the cover of each book save the phrase book — that appears to have spent a bit of time at an antique book store in Vienna, Franz Malota on the Wiednerhaupstrasse in the fourth district.… continued…
I’m super impatient with expat memoirs. And I have a deep dislike for the kind of travel writing that’s all introspection and metaphysical. When I agreed to read and review Café Tempest: Adventures On a Small Greek Island
There’s a funny little saying I learned early on in my time in Austria: “It’s sausage to me.” It means, essentially, “Whatever, I don’t care.” It’s not in Jag Bhalla’s wacky collection of regionalisms, I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World , but lots of other
As something of a self-professed language nerd, it’s been endlessly amusing to crack open this little book to, oh, the romance section to learn that in France you can call your darling a hen’s egg or that in Japan, having a thick belly means you are brave.… continued…
