Category: Travails of a Guidebook Author

Reader, I went to the hospital for you!

Today, in the name of research, I went to the hospital.

I guess I could’ve waited till Monday–or just not gone at all–but I really was curious what a tourist is supposed to do in a non-emergency medical situation. (My situation: constant sensation of vague rocking, and a pain in my ear. Every house I’m in feels like a houseboat.) Funny, the previous editions of the guide don’t mention this in any concrete way. But the truth is, when you’re writing a guide, these details are in the back, the last thing you get to, and you dig up the addresses of a few hospitals and call it done.

Turns out there’s this nifty phone line here in Amsterdam that you can call before going to the hospital–they’ll tell you which place is closest to your house, and put your name in a file so the staff is waiting for you when you get there. Actually, I didn’t really know this last part, so there was a bit more of a wait at the hospital than there probably should’ve been, while the staff finished eating their dinner. “Can it wait till morning?” one woman said, not grumpily, between bites of her sandwich. I said I’d prefer not to, she shrugged, and I went to sit in the waiting room. Everything was pretty and pleasant, and the hospital was handily located on one of the main canals.

Just a bit later, after the sandwich woman saw my name was in the system, she apologized, and took me into the doctor’s office. The doc shook my hand, looked in my ear and throat and pronounced it viral. Nothing to be done but wait a few days. As someone said later, if this had been the US, they would’ve given me a prescription for something, just to placate me.

I felt a bit like a hypochondriac, and was tempted to tell her about my job, but figured that would look just as bad, in terms of interrupting everyone’s dinner.

Oddly, the way I got on the right path to the hospital was a Google search that dropped me at a blog called Dutch Word of the Day. In a post about watje (a cotton wad) was the following aside:

Note that the emergency ward was previously called “Eerste Hulp” (“First Aid”). The name was changed to “spoedeisende hulp” (lit.: speed demanding help) . Since the Dutch health system includes general practitioners (“huisartsen”), people should only go to the “spoedeisende hulp” when there is an emergency. If not, they should visit their general practitioner. Many hospitals have a general practitioner’s ward (“huisartsenpost”) and a emergency ward (“spoedeisende hulp post”) to prevent people with non-emergency complaints to get in the way of patients that need emergency aid.)

From there, more Googling (while mentally commending the Dutch for their genius system, and saying the word spoedeisende several times, to really test its silliness) got me a whole site about the huisartsenpost system, and a number to call. Brilliant.

I came out of the hospital 80 euros (80 expensable euros!) poorer, but so enriched in terms of knowledge. Score for the guidebook!

Who Says the Dutch Aren’t Friendly?

I may’ve mentioned before, the Dutch never seem excited to meet me in other countries–even if, or maybe especially when, Peter or I try to speak Dutch to them. Also, they tend to barrel right into you in crowds on the tram; the Dutch word for “excuse me” is “sorry,” etymological evidence it’s a foreign concept to be considerate of people around you. And, to further perpetuate stereotypes, a lot of them are quite tall, and it feels sometimes like I can’t even see their eyes.

As a result, I often bike around this city thinking Dutch people are just not happy to see me.

But last night, Peter and I were staring into someone’s apartment admiring the handsome, handsome cats that were perched on the also handsome furniture. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly a friendly gesture to not put curtains in your windows, but it’s at least superficially welcoming, and it certainly makes the city a nice place to walk around at night.

So Peter and I are gawking, and maybe even pointing at the fatter cat, when an older, sharp-dressed woman down the sidewalk says, “That’s my place! Do you like it?” (I guess only tourists actually stop and look in people’s curtainless windows, so she said this in English.) So busted! We told her we’d been admiring her cats, she told us she had four of them, and we–including her friend who’d been down at the cafe with her, probably also enjoying a glass of sweet white wine–all laughed merrily. “If that’s a model for being a crazy cat lady,” I told Peter, “it’s not so bad at all.”

Bundle this episode up with the flat-out cheerful and lovely waitresses at Eetcafe Loetje, who never turned surly despite the presence of two young children, spilled milk and a broken champagne glass, and who even squirted whipped cream directly in one of our mouths. (Awk construct, but just wanted to make it clear it was someone at our table, not some regular at the joint with a long-standing whipped-cream relationship with the ladies.) Throw in all the people who’ve offered assistance to my friends (maybe having two kids helps). Mix with a smidge of incidents I can’t exactly remember now. Sure, the Netherlands is no Syria–but what ever will be, on the kindness scale?–and basically I’m feeling a bit more wanted in this city.

Guidebook research continues apace. Having friends visiting with kids has been illuminating. I realized the previous guide has plenty of recommendations of stuff to do with kids (hell, I even wrote a magazine article on the topic a few years ago), but zero recommendations for restaurants where they’ll be tolerated. Having friends visiting who don’t ride bikes has also been illuminating. I realized I’m a terrible judge of how long it takes to walk anywhere. Normal NYC walking speed does not apply, what with bumpy brick streets, crowds of stoned people to navigate around and through, and of course lots of windows to stop and peer into. And I don’t know shit about taking the tram anywhere but my house.

These are pretty obvious holes in my research that I’ve fortunately been able to correct. Ah, blessings in disguise. I think I might go reward my genius research strategies with a chocolate croissant…

Developing Freebie Calluses: Suggested Training for New Travel Writers

When the Macedonian was stalking me, we talked a little about that endless knotty issue that travel writers deal with: freebies. And I had a small brainstorm.

As I’ve said before, I’m marginally pro-freebie, in that often it’s the only practical way to find out if a hotel is any good. But just as often a free hotel stay is more trouble than it’s worth, if you have PR breathing down your neck, your schedule is tight, the place turns out to suck and so on.

But that’s jaded me talking. What about someone who just got hired as a travel guide writer, and is a little excited about the prospect of being lavished with free crap? It can be pretty exciting, I admit, being treated like you have a real legit job where you might do someone some favors. Fruit baskets! Meetings! Free drinks!

Here’s what I think Lonely Planet–and any other guidebook publisher who’s concerned about its writers being unduly swayed by free crap–should do:

As part of “training” (which, to my knowledge, only LP does anything remotely like), newbie writers should get sent on press trips. Not press trips to the countries they’ll be covering, because that could get messy, but to anywhere else in the world–whatever random press trips that get offered up by PR people calling the publisher’s offices.

Only by going on a press trip will a writer realize what a pain in the ass these things can actually be. Your hours are all fully accounted for. Your luggage gets jammed with useless press kits. You have to smile nicely and make conversation with people you might not really click with, all while thinking, How is this relevant to the people I’ll be writing for? (To be honest, I’ve never even been on a multiday press trip–I’m only extrapolating from hotel stays and tours up the wazoo.)

At the same time, press trips can be very practical training grounds for newbie writers to evaluate luxury hotels and services. I don’t know about you, but until pretty recently, my idea of a fancy hotel was the Albuquerque Marriott, where my parents would occasionally escape for the weekend. Or we’d go to the cafe there for roast-beef croissant sandwiches–oh, the 80s-cuisine decadence!

So send those new writers off on their PR-sponsored trips with checklists for what a luxury hotel should and shouldn’t do. That’s the homework: Is there dust behind the toilet? Does every staff member greet you? Did you get turndown every night? You really have to stay in only a few luxury hotels to notice the subtleties. Pretty quickly, these writers will know the difference between business-class pretenders and the real luxe deal.

Then, in return for the press junket, the newbie writers will comment to the larger LP/other publisher community: They will dump their impressions into a file labeled with the country name, and post that file somewhere accessible to other authors, so they can refer to it when they’re preparing for their own research trips. This satisfies PR demands that the experience gleaned on the press trip goes toward a larger project.

More important, though, it gives the writer the experience of commenting critically and honestly without repercussion–something they’ve surely been doing for friends or they wouldn’t have gotten this job. But when you suddenly do it for a larger public, there’s a subtle shift in dynamic.

Looking back on some of my hotel and restaurant reviews from my first trip to the Yucatan, I was reminded a little of the process of writing record reviews for my college radio station. The first few albums that got thrown my way, I was very excited: “My opinion is valuable–I will express myself in great detail and with a generally positive attitude!” Also present was this thought: “And I don’t want to say anything too negative, because what if it turns out I just didn’t have the knowledge to appreciate a work of genius?” I wrote some fatuous crap on those first few albums, and even stuck some in the high-rotation section, because I didn’t quite have the experience to accurately compare what I was listening to with better stuff. And I tended to give things the benefit of the doubt when they didn’t deserve it.

By writing their impressions of their trip in a private forum, though, newbie writers can better replicate the process of making recommendations to a friend–no reprisals from PR people, no mentally making allowances for some random person who might like this experience. They can write as much or as little as they want–this doesn’t have to be a succinct, punchy 30-word review. In the process, they’ll learn better what it feels like to write an honest review that really reflects their opinion. What was genuinely good on a press trip will come out, just as what was genuinely hideous and a waste of time.

And, finally, the thrilling bonus: The writer gets a free trip! I’m not even being sarcastic. There’s something a little dispiriting about this job, in which every time someone finds out what I do, they say, “Cool! So that means you get to stay in all these awesome places for free?!” And I say, “Well, actually, not really.” And then the other person looks both crestfallen and pitying–like I’ve disillusioned them and revealed what a loser I am for not somehow getting in on all the corporate waste going around.

So…what do you think?

(That’s rhetorical–I know my comments are still broken. Yahoo, you suck. In fact, I would probably compromise all my ethics and guarantee positive coverage to anyone who will take charge of moving my blog and website to a new host. I don’t have time because I’m busy writing travel guides.)

I’m being followed!

OK, so there’s this running gag that I’m a CIA operative. Hilarious–unless you get me started on the idiocy of the CIA and its failure to hire Arabic speakers. Otherwise, though, it turns out double-agent entendre is almost as easy to pull off as sexual innuendo. I kind of enjoy accidentally sounding like I’m spending a month undercover here in Amsterdam, meeting some contacts, doing a little research in the Oost (where all the Muslims live–of course!).

What’s adding to the intrigue is that I actually am meeting with strangers–or one, anyway–and spending a lot of time traipsing around with her. She’s Macedonian, and if that doesn’t sound suspect in a totally imprecise way, I don’t know what does.

In fact, though, this woman is a grad student who’s writing her dissertation about the production and consumption of guidebooks. She’s following me around for a few days to see how I do my job.

Well, that’s embarrassing.

Now she knows that I “do my job” by spending an inordinate amount of time shopping for underwear at Hema. That I cannot hold onto a pen for more than a day. That I actually hate talking to strangers. That I prefer to spend at least half the day not talking to anyone. That I spend a lot of time pulling U-turns–much easier on foot than on my clunky Dutch bike, which is too tall for me to reach the ground with my feet when I stop. It would be nice if people weren’t looking at me when I have to mount and dismount. In fact, these all read suspiciously like disqualifications for my job.

Also, after I show off my totally rad notebook, which I’ve bragged about here several times before but I’ll describe again briefly in parens (behold: hand-size single-sided reprint of old guide, spiral bound with two pockets made out of manila folders, colored post-it tabs to flip between sections and an elastic band to hold it all together), there’s really not much else to tell someone about how I do my job.

How do I know whether I want to include a shop? Well, it just looks cool. How do I know whether I’ll include a bar? If it’s cool, I suppose. The only revelation I had on further questioning was that a bar with multicolor glass votive holders (rather than clear ones) is tacky, and will not even be investigated. I didn’t know I had this prejudice, but there you go. You have to draw the line somewhere–much the same way I will never even enter a hotel in Mexico that’s painted baby-shit brown. It helps narrow the immense field just a little.

I also realized I need to recalibrate my restaurant radar (ooops! Someone has that trademarked, and I’m not supposed to use the phrase–well, I took the caps off, so that had better damn well cover it) for Amsterdam. A few years ago, I realized that I had to adjust my image of restaurants in Mexico, when an Italian place where the waiters wore togas actually turned out to be good.

Here in Amsterdam, my aperture for restaurants is currently too wide. I’m a sucker for a place with candles on the table.

But guess what? Every restaurant in Amsterdam has candles on the table! It’s actually a huge part of restaurant reviews when a place doesn’t have them.

So obviously I need to build up some critical calluses. Last night, I got a little tough love from a budget restaurant that looked great–all historic outside, all whitewashed and airy inside, little tealights on the table, a menu that had basic Dutch stuff and a little Greek and Asian-what-have-you.

But I’d forgotten about Dutch service! In fact, my restaurant experiences here have never been all that bad, and I dismiss most comments about bad service as bougie American whining. It was sort of a bad sign that we had to light our candle ourselves. And then my Macedonian fellow-agent and I had perhaps one of the most miserable servers in the whole Western Hemisphere, who sent great daggers of irritation from her eyes (when she could be bothered to look at us), and actually said “No, you’ve had enough” when we asked for another glass of water. Now that’s comedy!

It’s also a gen-u-ine cultural experience, and the place is wholeheartedly going in the guidebook. Fine, whatever, with a warning about the service. But the place made me feel like I was in a different country, and I appreciated that every bit as much as my 8.50 euro three-course set menu, the main dish of which involved two big round scoops of mashed potatoes-and-veg and a big round meatball. Soothing and nourishing, those orbs of food.

I’ve got one more day of information-sharing with the Macedonian, and then it’s on to solo investigation. [Leer.]

In Amsterdam

Arrived in Amsterdam today for the last guidebook gig in a while–I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or I could if I weren’t so exhausted. I am too old to still be flying economy, especially in a seat that doesn’t recline all the way because it’s mashed against a pointless section divider.

I’ll spare you the litany of other small travel indignities I suffered, but I will mention they involved having to depart from a different airport (JFK, not convenient LGA), on a different airline (without the comfy seats my “status” entitles me to), and with the world’s longest layover in Frankfurt, with a departure at the world’s farthest gate…oh, but wait, no, they changed to the gate to one on the complete other end of the terminal! So even though I had five hours to kill (and killed part of them in the McCafe, what will be McD’s totally failed attempt to compete with Starbucks, at least based on witnessed inefficiency at a single outlet–lady! Gimme that stupid whipped-cream can, so at least I can do whippets while you’re taking _so_damn_long_ with my coffee!), I still had to run for my flight.

Oops. Whined anyway. Done. I swear.

I was so shattered when I arrived in Amsterdam that I derived zero joy from being in Europe. Normally, my heart thrills to the tiny odd details–Dutch accents! Goofy public art! The dividers in the bathroom stalls go all the way down to the floor…and up to the ceiling! And what nice, utilitarian rolls of toilet paper!–but today I just sneered, groused, grumbled.

It’s so stupid and clean here, I thought, on my endless walk to the baggage claim. So organized, blah blah blah. Except for that clusterfuck at the McCafe. They think they’ve got it together, but they don’t. And why is everyone so damn tall?

Only now, after a nap, do I realize: My attitude, I think, comes from having spent an awful lot of time in Mexico recently.

Travel-Guide Trauma

I’d call it PTSD, but I’m not out of the woods yet. Two books yet to finish before the end of July.

Meantime, I’m having the following nightmares:

*I get a call from my editor at Rough Guides, asking if I can make another trip to Mexico soon. I say yes, because I know I have a week free coming up. As soon as I hang up, I realize I’m a sucker–there’s no reason I need to go back down there now. Then I realize I actually already have a trip booked for June 2 through June 9–a trip I’d completely forgotten about. The rest of the dream is me involved in various other activities, but knowing I need to get to a phone to tell my RG people I can’t possibly do the MX thing, and where do they get off asking, anyway? I wake up shaken, and run immediately to my calendar. Phew–June 2 through June 9 is still free.

*I’m in Cairo, and a friend convinces me to go to Iran with her. Awesome–always wanted to go. The tickets to Tehran are bought, it’s a couple hours before the flight, and it dawns on me that I must need a visa. The dream devolves into my more general travel-anxiety dream: packing in slow-motion, with endless distractions, plus here the bonus of not knowing how to sort out my visa issue.

Nothing a long vacation can’t fix. Preferably a vacation to a visa-less country…

A Great Day on the Job

Huh. I wrote this in a frenzy last week, and never posted it. Sad how the glory of pit-roasting wears off after just a few days back at the city grind. But right now I’m working at the building down at the WTC site, which is so beautiful, and the people in the office are so friendly, and the kitchen is so stocked with free cans of seltzer, that I’m getting a little giddy all over again…

********

Last night, while sitting at the prime table on the balcony at the restaurant at a super-prime resort in the prime tourist zone of the Riviera Maya, about to enjoy a seven-course tasting dinner, I began to experience a strange and novel feeling.

I’m pretty sure it was a sense of cheer brought on by loving my job.

And I’m not just saying that because I was being comped at this particular resort–though that certainly didn’t hurt–and not because I happened to be wallowing in luxury at that moment.

In fact, I wasn’t pleased precisely with that moment, though it was beautiful, but because I was wallowing in the afterglow of a kick-ass afternoon.

I’m drawing this out because even as I’m typing this, I’m having a hard time keeping my feet on the ground, keeping myself from jumping up in the middle of the Miami airport and clapping my hands together with glee.

Dude: Yesterday I got to cook something in a pib–a genuine Maya-style barbecue pit, with the freakin’ hot lava rocks and everything!!!!!

I should be more jaded–I mean, I started this blog back in 2004 with a post about roasting a whole lamb and a pig on Tamara’s balcony in Queens.

But there is something amazingly kick-ass about being led through a grove of palm trees to a little Maya-style hut, and then being led into the hut to find that it is 400 degrees inside, and there is a fire going in there, and it’s been burning since 8.30am, and pretty soon, we’re going to put something in there ourselves!

Never mind that this was on the grounds of a crazy-swanky resort, so it’s hard to call this an “authentic” experience.

Never mind that all we’d be putting in that giant pit was a wee little fish, because I was the only one in the cooking class.

Somehow, the fact that I was put directly to work chopping things on a wobbly table, under the bright midday sun, cut through the pampered setting. My knife was a little dull, and the handle–it was one of those all-metal Globals–was scorching from the sun. Behind me was a portable burner set in a bamboo rigging and fueled with a bottle of propane. This was rigged-up outdoor cooking in a way I could get behind.

So we prepped the fish–well, Chef Cupertino did, with that awesome take-the-bones-out-while-leaving-the-tail-intact fancy move–and covered it with crazy-red achiote sauce (magic ingredient: cloves! I had no idea) and my chopped-up vegetables. Then we stuck the whole thing in the ground! I’m about to jump up with glee again.

I cannot tell you how delighted this made me–I mean, hilarious that there was enormous fire and elaborate setup for…a teensy little sea bream. I can only imagine I would’ve fainted if we’d been sticking actual whole pigs in the ground.

The fish was crazy delicious, I got schooled on the difference between a lima and a limon (which I knew, but somehow never made the connection with sopa de lima–duh) and I got to talk shop with Chef Cupertino over lunch and yummy Mexican wine, all while sitting outdoors in what felt like the middle of nowhere. And then we tramped around in his herb garden and looked at the habanero plant that seemed to have gotten all eaten up–I never want to meet the bug that’s strong enough to eat a habanero , even if it’s just the leaves.

If I were a more helpful blogger, I’d tell you the specifics of what I learned–maybe I’ll get to that–but for now I’m still just basking in the idea that for once, on one of my research trips, I really got to do something. Usually I’m just racing around with my notebook, saying, “That looks fun–how much does it cost? And how many people in the boat? kthxbye, maybe next time…” And since I’m very familiar with my various turfs now, I rarely get to learn something new.

But throwing a fish in a roasting pit–that makes up for years of stagnation! And it was simply great to talk shop with someone about things I really cared about: cooking, what the Yucatan is like compared with the rest of Mexico, more cooking. Usually, I spend most of my days in the Riviera Maya hearing gossip about the latest condo developments.

Basically, I got a glimpse of what it would be like to write about only the things I’m really, really interested in. And then get served some amazing food on the side. Thanks, Chef Cupertino!

Correction in The Age

Nicely, The Age of Melbourne printed my indignant letter re: the earlier LP-was-our-idol-now-let’s-destroy-it story.

Whenever Peter and I talk about the complaint letters we’re planning to write, we just mime typing and say, “Mrah-mrah-mrah mrah-mraaaaah” in a cranky voice. It’s a rare moment I was actually able to say something more articulate, and it’s also good they published it.

It is weird, though, that they never told me they were publishing it, or even acknowledged they’d received it. Mrah.

Hopefully that’s the end of that whole media frenzy.

But Here’s a Better Article…

I’m so busy criticizing, I didn’t get around to posting something fairly well done: Michael Shapiro’s story for the Washington Post last week, Can You Trust Your Travel Guidebook?

I spoke to the reporter (or, really, emailed with), and he didn’t seem to have an agenda going into it, unlike Peter Munro. I think the story’s good mostly because it doesn’t seem bent on tearing down Lonely Planet. And he actually spoke to Thomas Kohnstamm. The really interesting part, though, was a sidebar: Six Guidebook Publishers and Their Policies on Freebies. No heavy-handed analysis, and quotes from execs at each house. This is decent reporting that says, Readers, you’re smart–you can make up your own minds.

Weak Journalism Plagues the Kohnstamm Affair

First, it was reporters who couldn’t even spell Colombia right, or bother to check the name of LP exec Judy Slatyer. Now it’s another scandal-loving story about Thomas Kohnstamm and Lonely Planet in Melbourne’s Sunday Age: A Guide Delusion Makes It Lonely at the Top.

I had a sinking feeling after my phone interview with Peter Munro. It was a good twenty minutes of him fishing for me to say Lonely Planet was hypocritical. There was also some back-and-forth about whether the only way to properly review a hotel is to stay in the hotel (with questions actually starting with, “So would you say that…?”). The latter I can almost agree with, but of course a flat statement like that is not really accurate. The former, though, I just cannot say.

I spent a lot of time in my phone interview saying, in fact, that I thought LP generally has great intentions, and maybe it had written its freebie policy without a loophole in mind. And executives have been very responsive to my comments on the freebies issue, which is more than I can say for any other employer I’ve ever had.

But because I was uncooperative and my rational response doesn’t make a great story, Munro just resorted to quoting my statements on this blog–without even attributing them, so Age readers can’t come here and read my full comments. Worse, it’s in a larger context that makes it sound like I have taken freebies while on the job with LP, which is completely untrue.

Tacky, lazy journalism.

I may work in an industry that has its share of ethical issues, but I feel pretty good about the work I do. Especially when I consider that I’m not an ax-grinding newspaper reporter.