My hostel roommate the other night, an Aussie on a round-the-world tour, informed me that he’d run across ‘several of your lot’, meaning guidebook writers, in the mere two months he’d been traveling so far. Indeed, if you’ve ever spent serious time on the road in spring or summer you…

Tomorrow I fly back to Romania for the second time in three months like a jet-setting badass to complete my LP guidebook research, wallow in the fame of being a travel writing all-star, beat off amorous groupies with my medical burro riding crop and sleep soundly every night with the…