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I went to a college that I often compared to a boarding school, but boarding school graduates compared it to summer camp.  We were coddled, gently incubated to adulthood in a single-path Ohio village.  Our dining hall had a “continuous feed” policy.  Our health center offered support groups for socially isolated students.  Our professors regularly granted extensions for existential crises.  It was a place apart, with the remote location, Gothic architecture, and demographically limited population you’d expect in a period piece, a horror movie, or a combination of the two.

Given that my college experience combined the odd and the infantilizing so frequently, when my study-abroad materials raised the possibility of “culture shock,” I considered it an overstated concern and a welcome diversion.  Junior year was the perfect time to go abroad – I had just begun to internalize the limitations of my campus, to reduce my worldview to a population excessively concerned with the social capital of obscure indie rock bands, or their ability to express the inherent inadequacy of language in a fourteen-line poem.

To prepare myself intellectually for my abroad experience, I took a course on 18^th century travel narratives.  We covered the requisite Boswell, Johnson, and Smollet, but also the landscape-mirroring-emotion letters of Mary Wollstonecraft.  In retrospect, I wish I’d devoted more attention to descriptions of more dramatic culture clashes – Passage to India, Wide Sargasso Sea—or the science-fiction narratives on my brother’s bookshelf.

Psychologists, literary scholars, and international studies counselors throw around the terms “defamiliarisation,” intercultural awareness,” and “negotiation phase,” but they are all talking about the newcomer’s confrontation with a novel environment.  The first shock of a “foreign” sensory experience – the dense scent of Bombay’s airport, the preemptory “sorry” in a crowded Dublin street, the first mouthful of French headcheese – has the makings of a vivid, and entirely individualized, description.  The writer’s vocabulary is drawn from the language and experience of the host culture.  Here’s an illustrative passage from Fred D’Aguiar’s “A Son in Shadow,” where a Guyanan bride encounters English weather:

The first morning I opened the door that autumn and shouted “Fire!” when I saw all the smoke, thinking the whole street was on fire, all the streets, London burning, and slammed the door and ran into his arms and his laughter, and he took me out into it in my nightdress, he in his pajamas, and all the time I followed him, not ashamed to be seen outside in my thin, flimsy nylon (if anyone could see through that blanket) because he was in his pajamas, the blue, striped ones, and his voice, his sweet drone, told me it was fine, this smoke without fire was fine, “This is fog.”

Travel literature produces these salient encounters – Sloane Crosley’s description of an encounter with Portuguese circus clowns in her latest essay collection is the first that comes to mind.  Specificity is not a handicap, either — Bill Bryson has made a career of highlighting the finer points of contrast between England and the United States.  Still, given the globalization of culture, the increased accessibility of international travel, and the propensity of memoirists to dash abroad, I am concerned that, just as expatriate communities live in their native tongue, just as the Grand Tour followed an itinerary, so today’s traveler/readers are losing their ability to cast off established frames of reference.  In other words, I fear that the contemporary writer has been limited to seeking food in Italy, prayer in India, and love in Indonesia.

If our planet has become overly familiar, then science fiction is an ideal platform, a means of approaching our world as alien.  The man-from-Mars trope is classic, but the graphic novel Black Hole, and, sigh, yes, even the Twilight series, lends a sparkle of originality to the well-worn terrain of lust in the American Northwest.

Of course, I may be underestimating today’s authors, just as I underestimated the unmooring I felt during my second month in Ireland.  Plenty of writers – Tolstoy foremost among them – have made the familiar strange without resorting to science fiction, surrealism, or writer-seeks-self narratives.  If you’re interested in estrangement of familiar, I recommend Cortazar’s Autonauts of the Cosmoroute, Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, or a viewing of PBS’s “Culture Shock” segment on Huckleberry Finn.

Do you enjoy reading descriptions of culture shock?  Do you think that a glut of travel narratives compromises a writer’s ability to be original?  What was your most shocking moment abroad?  I’ll be writing more on this next week, so let me know.

Since 1985 and the up rise of Thailand’s economy, Thailand has become a newly industrialized country.  Thailand is the 50^th largest country in the world. They export approximately $105 billion a year and aid in economic support to neighboring countries.

Thailand is now a popular tourist attraction, renowned for its beauty, architecture and rapid development. I have found an unbeatable deal via Travelzoo for your travels this week: an 11-night package in Thailand for only $1299. This deal will include a roundtrip ticket from Los Angeles, ground transportation, visits to Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok, Sukhothal, Lampang, Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai.  Breakfast sleeping accommodations, sightseeing tours and transfers are all included, as is an English speaking tour guide.

If you do not know much about Thailand or what you might do during your free time, I suggest you start exploring now!   This is the best way to learn about a country and its culture.  If you are into meditation, I recommend going to a temple (they are very prominent in Thailand) and breathing in the Thai air.  Or check out the amazing coastline at sunset.  Thailand is the largest rice exporter, so you might enjoy visiting some rice fields.

Whatever you choose to do, I hope you enjoy the vast difference between the advancing landscapes.  Breath in that Thai air and quiet your mind.

Times, they are a-changin’.  At least, things are changing pretty rapidly for the characters of Mad Men, AMC’s hit drama about advertising executives. For those not in the know, the show, follows Don Draper and his lovely but seriously repressed wife (now ex-wife) Betty as they struggle to figure out where they belong in the ever-changing world of 1960s America.

Here at Literary Traveler we have quite a few Mad Men fans, and we suspect our readers have been similarly captivated by the critically-acclaimed series, which is on its fourth season.  The newest season begins on Sunday July 25th, at 10/9 central and I, for one, know exactly where I will be that night when ten p.m. rolls around.

It might seem strange that a blog devoted to literature and travel is covering a television series, but Mad Men is so rich with literary allusions – and is set in a time of such social and political turmoil – that we would be remiss to completely ignore it (plus, have I mentioned we’re fans?)  Last season, we saw Don leave Sterling Cooper to start his own firm, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the beginnings of Betty’s new marriage.  We also watched as the characters confronted the Civil Rights Movement and several began to experiment with drugs and the counterculture movement that has come to define our view of the 1960s. It was, in a word, epic.

To get ready for Mad Men season four, please be sure to check out our series by author Paul Millward.  First, read Flower Children of the 60′s & Ken Kesey, Father of LSD and Hippies before heading to Mad Men, Creating a Perfect World on the Avenue of Dreams. Both are essential reading for any true Mad Men fan.

And don’t forget to tune in Sunday to see where the Mad Men new season takes us!

I had no quarrel with my roommates during our cross-country drive to Montana.  It was all novelty – blues bars in Chicago, the world’s largest hockey stick in Minnesota, fields of sunflowers turning their faces to the West in North Dakota, a Rastafarian family at a natural hot springs in Oregon, pitching a tent in the parking lot of a senior citizen’s center.  But when we finally arrived to our rented house, it occurred to me that they were doing everything wrong, especially in the kitchen.  Bowls go on the shelf below plates.  Cups go to the left cabinet.  Bread belongs in the refrigerator – the cupboard is for snacks!  But Dan wanted the bowls ON the plates, the garbage can beside hallway, canned goods in the cup cabinet.   We gaped at each other’s fundamental lack of understanding and, despite our conscious compromises, absentmindedly placed our kitchen supplies in the kitchens of our childhoods.

My subconscious refusal to shelve cups alongside plates is not just passive-aggressive behavior – it’s a reflection of my cognitive map. According to Melissa Holbrook Pierson’s The Place You Love Is Gone, your brain forms a cognitive map when you first view a place, and, given the novelty and sensory intensity of a child’s early experiences, memories from your first six years of “home” have a fundamental impact on your inner map.  Pierson cites the Oliver-Sacks-esque case of A. Kirschman, a native of Germany’s Oberstein an der Nahe who was distressed by his perception that, in every place outside of his hometown, the sun set in the east, rather than the west.

Pierson beautifully reiterates the persistence and logistical impossibility of the human desire to rebuild our idyllic past; she also has a great deal to say about the psychological and biological basis of our bonds to a hometown, and the problematic notions of “wilderness” and “progress” in the American landscape.  But her book is rooted in the past, as she insists all individuals are, fundamentally.

I don’t deny my roots, nor my compulsive reiteration of my inner geography.  And, though I’m working on getting an interview with BU’s Center for Memory and the Brain, I don’t know enough about neuroscience to make this statement.  But metaphorically, at least, I insist on the brain’s ability to form integrated, adaptable maps through travel.  You know where I’m going with this.  Travel reintroduces novel experience, expands our sense of possibility, etc., etc.  Our sense of physical orientation, of the feng shui of home, is probably already set, but our sense of how the world can, should, or does work can always be modified.

Each time I leave my latest “home,” I expand my sense of possibility.  Some possibilities are ugly.  It is possible for a father to pimp out his twelve year old daughter for rent.  It is possible to speak five languages and still be mocked for your ignorance.  But it is also possible to base a career on German stick-fighting, to actively protect rainforest habitats, to dip one’s fries in peanut butter.  (Not to scale, admittedly, but a revelation, nonetheless). Two underpaid Irish metal workers I met in Amsterdam managed to budget an international excursion every two months; mummified corpses and a perpetuity tax in Guanajuato revealed a new face in the business of death; a former Israeli soldier wore high heels on our hike through Patagonia.  The world is strange.

Childhood is a time when it is easy to believe in the world’s raw potential, that anything is possible.  As a species, we are running out of physical frontiers –even Antarctica comes equipped with a gift shop – but psychological exploration, our ability to draw new cognitive maps, is infinite.  Adulthood is the time to make that potential kinetic, to broaden your knowledge of what is, what can be made.

The answer may not lie in physical wilderness.  Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately; as Pierson notes, “the woods” are shrinking, and even back-to-the-land literary movement is overpopulated.  So ignore the woods, ignore the example of Huckleberry Finn, who “lights out for the territory” that his creator knows will be “civ’lized” soon after he arrives.  You can’t go home again, so venture to the neighbor’s place instead.  Rezone your interior map.  You can bring a snack from your past – made the right way, of course – but, by all means, leave the kitchen.

I’ve always thought that one of the most wonderful things about traveling is how it pushes us to new experiences, to try things we never could have predicted we would do.  As cliche as it may sound, travel does broaden one’s horizons; it opens the mind to new traditions, new cultures, new people.

In our newest feature article, author Kelly Jean Egan journeys to South America, where she does something she had never done before: ayahuasca.  Ayahuasca (which literally means “rope of the dead” or “vine of the soul”) is a drug popular with writers and thrill-seekers.  Traditionally, it is taken to clear the mind and purge the body.  Peru has become the center of ayahuasca tourism – in which people from other cultures take part in the ritual ingestion of the plant-based drug – and this is where Egan goes to try the trip.

Though you will have to read our article to find out how it all ends for Egan, the idea of drug tourism is actually a rather interesting one.  Here in the United States, drugs are something of a fascination – yet they are depicted in movies and books as at once both dangerous and glamorous (think Scarface).  However, in many cultures, drugs play an important part in religious rituals.  For some, smoking peyote or ingesting ayahuasca is not a rebellious act – it’s a spiritual one.  We’re not going to claim that drugs are good, but to engage in an ancient ritual, and to expand one’s horizons while traveling – well that can be good, even if it is through means illegal in our home countries.

And on a far lesser note, I was speaking yesterday with my brother, who had just returned from a trip to Sweden.  While all of his stories were interesting, I was particularly surprised to hear this: “I had the best rum of my life.  It was illegal.”  Curious as to why one type of liquor would be illegal, I pursued the topic a little.  It turns out that U.S. citizens are currently barred from drinking Cuban liquor – even while abroad in countries where trade embargo does not apply.  My baby brother had broken the law!  And according to his account, he loved it.

As demonstrated by my sibling’s experience and by Kelly Jean Egan’s trip, travel can sometimes lead us into unexpected places, both within the outer world and within.  It can take us into jungles and up to the top of the world, but it can also help us delve into the innermost parts of our own minds.  To learn more about ayahuasca tourism, please check out Egan’s piece: Peruvian Amazon Ayahuasca’s Influence on Great Writers.

As I drove to work the other day, I was attracted to a story on National Public Radio (NPR) about a man who runs with bulls.

I listened to this story and pondered, does this man actually run with bulls? Who would do such a thing? After my shift ended and I found myself still contemplating the insanity of this concept, I Googled ‘running with bulls’. To my surprise I came across an array of Google results, and more specifically, came across the location where this story was set.

Running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain is a highly popular event that is part of the San Fermin festival, the most renowned festival in Spain, which honors Saint Fermin, the co-patron of Navarre. This festival occurs every year beginning July 7^th – 14^th.

In this event, players run with 6 bulls and 9 steer. The bovine competitors run from their “off-site corrals” to the bullring where they will be slaughtered. Side streets are blocked off and barricades are used to make a direct route for the bulls. Many injuries occur but from the description I heard on NPR,  the event can also be euphoric, exciting – a real once-in-a-lifetime experience.

With this being said, I thought what an interesting idea for this week’s travel blog. Do you need a little, or a lot of excitement in your life? Do you do outlandish and outrageous events similar to this one and feel like this would be an amazing experience? If so, I have found a reasonably priced ticket to Spain through Expedia, this flight is around $1600, but please hurry because the festival ends on the 14^th and you may miss your chance to run with the bulls in Pamplona.

If you are looking for a hotel deal, I found a great deal at a beautiful, modern facility: Suites Mirasierra Pamplona. This hotel looks beautiful and clean and offers is close to the city’s center. I found the deal through hotelscombined.com for about $116/night.

Happy 4th of July. I hope everyone is enjoying their Independence Day. Stay tuned for next week’s ‘Travel Deals to Satisfy Your Wandering Mind.’

“It is not a bad symbol of that long wandering, I thought again – the human hand that has been fin and scaly reptile foot and furry paw.  If a stone should fall (I cocked an eye at the leaning shelf above my head and waited, fatalistically) let the bones lie here with my message, for those who might decipher it, if they come down late among us from the stars.

Perhaps there is no meaning at all, the thought went inside me, save that of the journey itself, so far as man can see.  It has altered with the chances of life, and the chances brought us here; but it was a good journey – long, perhaps – but a good journey under a pleasant sun.  Do not look for the purpose.  Think of the way we came and be a little proud.  Think of this hand – the utter pain of its first venture on the pebbly shore.

Or consider its later wanderings.”

An excerpt from anthropologist/essayist Loren Eiseley’s “The Slit” in The Immense Journey.

Eiseley’s statement is a long way from the motivational poster’s “Success is a journey, not a destination,” but I hear a similar optimism for those of us who are still not “there,” there being wherever we thought we ought to be, socially, financially, intellectually – whatever criteria we choose to measure own inadequacies.  Eiseley had the advantage of a thousand years’ perspective, and, if I may, a tenure-track teaching position, which is a comfortable place from which to pontificate, but that does not exempt him from the anxiety of eventual death – he “waited, fatalistically”—nor the consideration that “perhaps there is no meaning at all.”

The last time I felt that way, I freaked out and moved to Mexico.  I was twenty at the time, and I was just beginning to face the possibility that my emotional reactions to the “utter pain” of my undergraduate existence had less to do with teenage angst and more to do with duller, broader words like “anxiety” or “dysthymia.”  In an effort to get away from some recriminating self-talk – “Why didn’t you get that internship?”  “What did you do to drive him away?”  “When will you pull yourself together?” – I got out of my country, and, more importantly, my language.

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Today, in honor the holiday and the long weekend, I’ve decided to forgo Friday links and instead focus on one of my favorite American authors: Mark Twain.

For a lot of people, “summer reading” means one of two things. Either they’re referring to the mandatory “great books” assigned by High school English teachers or they’re talking about the light, “trashy,” less-than-literary novels commonly termed “beach reads.”  But when I hear the term “summer books,” I think about something else entirely.

For me, a summer book is one that I return to over and over, one that breathes heat out of its pages and soothes with its particular brand of fantasy.  These books feel carefree – reading a summer classic is about as satisfying as climbing a tree, or diving into a swimming hole.

My all-time favorite summer book is The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, though Huck Finn comes in at a close second.  These novels perfectly capture the mischievousness of childhood, the excitement and the continual yearning for freedom.  They speak to a part of me that still sometimes secretly longs to run away from home and join a circus, or a band of traveling musicians, or just float lazily down a river, ignoring all of my other responsibilities.  With his sharp wit and ability to capture the local color perfectly, Twain transports me back to a different time, one that only appears simpler at first glance.

Another reason I love Twain has less to do with his characters and more to do with the setting.  Twain is an American Author.  He is quite possibly the quintessential American Author.  Not only does he write in that hilarious, rambling, biting-yet-kind voice that feels so American, he also manages to inject each of his novels all the beauty of our country while remaining authentic.  He does not sugar-coat his books; childhood is not a perfect place, free of tension.  Tom and Huck may not be aware of the great injustices of the world at the beginning of their journeys, but as they grow and progress, they come to see our world for what it really is.

This July 4th, do America proud and pick up a book by one of our many great authors.  If Twain isn’t your cup of tea, how about some Faulkner?  Or Melville?  (May I suggest Benito Cereno?)  Or, if you don’t have that much time, check out one of our articles on Mark Twain, which include A Revealing Interview with Terrell Dempsy, Author of Searching for Jim: Slavery in Sam Clemens’s World, Mark Twain in Unionville, Nevada, and Finding Mark Twain’s Hannibal.   You can also search for other American authors at LiteraryTraveler.com.

Happy reading!

Israel holds a very special place in the American cultural consciousness.  For many, it is a holy land, a promised place where they will finally be accepted.  It is a place for pilgrimages and coming-of-age visits.  This idea is perhaps best encapsulated in the program “Birth Right,” which provides funds for young Jewish-Americans to visit the Middle Eastern country.  This Israel is somewhat of a utopia, made even more dream-like and perfect by its distance, by our infrequent visits.

However, there is another Israel.  This Israel is real; it is the stuff of politics and war, battlegrounds both actual and ideological.  The beauty of the country is made no less by its contentious political position, but, as Dorit Sasson points out in our newest feature article, there is a schism between the various visions of the country.

In a sense, this schism can be traced down to Israel’s rich past.  This is a country seeped with tradition and history.  It is a place of poetry and song.  In order to understand her view of Israel more fully, Sasson returns to a poem of her childhood, “V’Ulai” by Rachel Blaustein.  For her, the gentle poem speaks to the different versions of Israel, the Utopian image, the longing for a dream that never has been, and the reality of a place unfinished, imperfect.

Though I have never been to Israel, reading Sasson’s article, I am reminded of another great poet of Israel: Yehuda Amichai.  Amichai was born in Germany, but he spent most of his life living in Israel (both the real country and the dream-land).  Like Blaustein, much of his poetry is about his relationship to the relatively-new motherland, but in contrast to Rachel, Yehuda’s poetry is often not fit for children.  Indeed, his poetry for Jerusalem often reads like love poetry, words written by a man to a woman.  While I cannot speak for Israel, I will always remember Amichai’s words about Jerusalem:

But he who loves Jerusalem
By the tourist book or the prayer book
is like one who loves a woman
By a manual of sex positions.

Join us in nostalgia and melancholy this week by checking out Rachel Blaustein’s Kinneret, A Child’s Poem of Israel.