In Italy “five minutes” means an hour. [See the full “What I’ve Learned” list here. Start at the bottom and read up.]

Take care in Romania when you try to use your Spanish language skills to compensate for your lack of Romanian. The very common word “muy” means “very” in Spanish. In Romanian, “mui” is the infinitive of “to give a blowjob.” [See the full “What I’ve Learned” list here. Start at…

My presumably much loved, but rarely commented on series “A Keyhole into Burma” is entering its second week over at Gadling.com. Even the hate mail has been pretty light. If you’re unimpressed, pretend otherwise and leave profound/reverent comments. Grazie.

Amsterdam prostitutes do not like to have their pictures taken. [See the full “What I’ve Learned” list here. Start at the bottom and read up.]

I discussed it here intermittently all summer and any poor bastard/bastardess that crossed my path in the terrene world couldn’t get me to shut up about it. I was suffering from writer burnout. I didn’t want to write about Italy. I didn’t want to write about Spain. I didn’t want…

Immigration officials at Heathrow Airport do not like to hear the words “Well, technically I’m homeless.” [See the full “What I’ve Learned” list here. Start at the bottom and read up.]

In 2003 I started to keep a list on my travelogue of the accumulated, hard-won kernels of knowledge that I’d collected while on the road. I abandoned the list in 2004 for reasons that I don’t immediately recall, but it probably had something to do with girls. I’ve decided to…

The first post of my series entitled ‘A Keyhole into Burma’ went up this morning over at Gadling.com. There’ll be one vignette every weekday for the next three weeks, plus a huge, wicked awesome picture gallery. Here’s the RSS feed for the series. That should get me on the Burma…

OK, I’m still a little pissed off about Italy’s “new” registration regulations for US tourist (and possibly other nationalities) staying more than eight business days. Part of the reason I’m in a tizzy is that I still can’t find a definitive answer. The US Consular Information Sheet for Italy (dated…

As some of you have already read, after nearly four and a half years of balls-out, homeless, clueless, godless travel writing, I have decided to move back to my home town of Minneapolis. Several people have misinterpreted this development. Though it’s true that I am closer to financial ruin than…