A few months ago I promised to put together a slide show tease of Romania and Moldova from my trips this summer and my vast collection of photos. Done and done. Background music by Zdob şi Zdub.

As with my Tuscany lists, I’m doing a random (yet totally definitive and quote-worthy) best/worst overview of this summer’s research trips to Romania and Moldova. One all-encompassing word of warning to start, do not travel here in July or August. Romania has already begun to mirror Western Europe in that…

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…

Love mail is great and all, especially when it goes into exquisite detail about all the ways that you rule, but hate mail can sometimes be even better. If you receive hate mail on a regular basis, you’ve truly made it. Over the past few years, I’ve become a household…

I’m a disaster of aches, pains and ominous symptoms lately. I’ve always been a passionate hypochondriac, but this is starting to get ridiculous. And it all started almost overnight. Well, over-month, but still a relatively short period of time. As of the time of writing, I’ve got two painful teeth…

I just wanted to remind everyone that I own that book title for all eternity, even if the universe collapses in on itself and I never get a deal for my memoirs, so don’t even try to lift it. And yes, “Lamborghinis and Blowjobs” is too close. I was thinking…

Though my Romania research is only a little more than half completed (I return July 9th for three more weeks on the road), I’m long overdue for a positive post about this country just to pacify those of you that are undoubtedly wondering why I keep coming here. Lists are…

The dwindling elbow room on my shit list got a lot tighter last week when about a dozen members of Romania’s so-called “news media” pissed me off so much that I didn’t even need Novocain when they drilled out my cavity later that day. I had no idea what a…

Just north of Chisinau, on the road to the Cricova winery, there’s a devious little speed trap in a 300 meter long, little buttfuck settlement, barely large enough to be named and nowhere near large enough to appear on any maps. The two cops in this almost-town have absolutely nothing…