Killing Batteries

Mission Control, Space Cadet First Class Pettersen here kindly informing you that at exactly noon Eastern European Time on Thursday August 31st, I will permanently abandon my post here in Iasi, Romania, merrily leaving this accursed, gasping laptop behind to drag someone else’s potential productivity to a crawl. Seven days after I depart Iasi, I will exit Romania by land, into Hungary and continue to make my way to Minneapolis, via San Francisco. That’s right Control, I’ve got one foot through the airlock and one half of my brain dedicated to mushroom Swiss burger acquisition. Productivity-wise, I’m a goner until mid-September.

I have sworn to not return to Romania for a minimum of nine (9) months. This is a conservative estimate, invented solely for the benefit of the few people here that I’ve grown to like, so they don’t get all weepy on me. In reality, it could be much, much longer.

Since June of 2004, I have lived in Romania for a cumulative 16 months, the past 13 months consecutively. This most recent stint was meant to be much shorter. I had firm plans to spend last winter in a non-snow, borderline beach-going environment, but the appeal of a poorly timed guidebook writing job kept me here all bloody, dark, god forsaken winter. And spring. And summer.

For a homeless, short attention span travel writer, bent on absorbing new experiences and languages, 13 consecutive months in one single locale is about eight months too long, even in a place that’s easy to like. In a place that defiantly challenges you to like it, on an hourly basis sometimes, it’s 12 months too long.

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That’s right suckers, I’m calling dibs on this one right now.  Chuckle if you want, but I guaran-effing-tee you that space tourism geared for the average schmuck will happen in our lifetime, thus the need for a space guidebook written with flair and authority. 

I’ll go out on a limb and say it’ll happen in the next 10 years, after they haul up the Guest Quarters Capsule (A.K.A. the ‘John Glenn Wing’) for the International Space Station and the Russian Space Agency finally hits rock bottom and starts firing up Soyuz capsules, loaded with space tourists for three-day package trips (all meals included, plus launch pad transfer) for $999 a head.

Those tourists are going to need some direction about how things run up there; the best places to tether themselves while they suck roast beef, green beans and mashed potatoes out of a tube, the candid truth about the space toilet, where to score the best weed… 

This is where ‘Lonely Planet International Space Station’ comes in.  Someone is going to have to suit up and research that bad boy and I believe I’m the best candidate in the known universe.  Here’s why:

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I consider myself to be a reasonably funny guy. I’ve gone to pains for much of my adult life to be ‘the entertainer’ whether it be on stage, in writing, at funerals (yes, really), whatever the occasion. Unfortunately, I’ve been in Romania for over a year now, where the language barrier and the local preference for, erm, ‘non-cognitive humor’ has transformed me from ‘the entertainer’ into the ‘odd foreigner who works on Sundays and asks too many questions’.

Many has been the time when I’ve laid down some killer ad libbing riffs on these thankless Romanians, only to be met with crickets-in-the-background silence and occasionally my audience taking a few measured steps back.

There was this one time soon after I arrived in Romania when a nice girl at a pastry shop was counting out my change – I had already been there a few times, so she knew I was the chocolate-eating American guy – and when she counted out my change, in an effort to be hospitable I suppose, she counted it out in English. One, two three… But you see, she did it with this Romanian accent that for some reason made me flash on The Count from Sesame Street – the Count, vampires, Romania, get it? – and so I jumped right into my best Count impersonation, throwing my head back, “Von! Thoo! Thr-r-r-reee!!! Ah ah ah ah ahhhhh!! [thunder sound effects, flailing my arms to mimic lightning]”

Needless to say she didn’t get it. Neither did the five people in line behind me, who suddenly defied their cultural instincts and gave me all the personal space in the world. Even the little old lady that had just spent five determined minutes trying to line jump me, retreated across the room, reciting a prayer for my troubled soul.

This is what I’m talking about. For one solid year, my award winning humor and razor sharp flair for improv have completely gone to waste. Where I come from (Minnesota) that Count bit would have been first-rate material! Well, at least it wouldn’t have been worthy of total ostracism. I haven’t been able to go back to that pastry shop since.
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Guidebook authors can’t brag about much.  When you’re on the road, it’s a solitary, sub-budget, exhausting existence.  When you’re not on the road it’s a solitary, sub-budget, tedious existence.

Broadly, the main perks of this career path can be narrowed down to three categories;

1) The freedom and giddying uniqueness of the job
2) Being the standout novelty at parties (when Marilyn Manson doesn’t show up)
3) Having the power to appropriately make or break the livelihoods of people in the tourism industry, accompanied by frequent crazed, evil god laughing seizures during write-up

This last detail is actually a serious and semi-constant point of debate, at least in Lonely Planet circles.  Appearing (or not appearing) in LP can potential have a huge impact on an individual, business or even an entire town.  But, hey!, no pressure!

The primary concern is the ‘Lonely Planet Trail’ effect, where travelers dangerously loyal to their LP books move from featured hostel, to restaurant, to Internet café, forming a veritable conga line, piously following every word of the book’s recommendations and never venturing out on their own.

From what I understand, LP has tried a number of good intentioned, but often ineffective ways to damped the phenomenon of the LP Trail over the years, not only to spread the wealth to other establishments that are equally deserving of tourism business, but for whatever reason (*cough* word count! *cough*) could not be included in the book, but also to keep the ones featured in the book honest. 
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If you’re just joining us, you might be interested to know that I’m long-winded and I don’t care. 

That is, I didn’t care until I decided to ‘moonlight’ in guidebook writing.  Up to that point, I had managed to consistently find (or be found by) gigs where word count limits were completely nonexistent or just a nudge-nudge suggestion.  I loafed in this enabling environment for about a year, happily babbling away, sometimes in excess of 1,000 words over the suggested (but not really, you big lug!) word count limits.

Enter Lonely Planet, where if you submit a manuscript even one stinking word over the word count limit you are slapped on the back of the hand (via email) and sent to the corner to think about your impertinence and write (ironically) one thousand times ‘I will not exceed my word count, no matter how critically important or brilliantly witty the text in question may be’.

Here’s my back-story; I spent several cumulative days in February trapped here in Iasi by successive snow storms and inefficient snow removal systems when I should have been out doing road research.  I literally couldn’t leave the city.  Armed Federales said so.  In the throes of a premature deadline freak-out, I decided to use this time wisely and write all the new text that had been requested from me in my brief.

A ‘brief’ is exactly what it sounds like; information and ‘suggestions’ direct from editors about what they’d like to see in your manuscript when you turn it in.  Being fresh-faced and falling over myself to please them (I’m still sorta like this actually, which may be why I’m being flown to San Francisco in September, while other authors are just getting t-shirts and foam beer-can holders), I didn’t understand how to decode and prioritize the brief into the bits that they’d like to see in the manuscript, or else, and the bits that I could blow off if time, space and the elements prevented me from including them.
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