Eating My Way Across Three Continents (Mutton, Glorious Mutton)

More Mileage, More Wisdom (?)

Three Hams and a Burger in Prague

Ah, the end of an old year and the beginning of a new (yes, I know its March, but I’m lazy and am just getting around to writing this). A time to take stock of the previous 12 months’ activities; a time to thoughtfully consider lessons learned (what a hackneyed phrase). 2012 saw me put more than a few miles on the old travel-o-meter. For Spring Break the family and I took a great American road trip from Wisconsin to Idaho and Utah via North Dakota (first time we’d ever been there) and Theodore Roosevelt National Park (http://www.nps.gov/thro/index.htm). In the summer we visited all the Lincoln-related sights in Springfield, Illinois (http://www.nps.gov/liho/index.htm), and traipsed the length and breadth of Door County Wisconsin, that picturesque, lighthouse-studded peninsula that juts out into Lake Michigan (http://www.doorcounty.com/). While driving a ridiculously oversized U-Haul of our accumulated junk back to Maryland, we managed to see the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio (arriving quite unintentionally on the summer solstice…along with a multitude of hippies, New Agers, users of hemp for multiple purposes, faux American Indians, unremarkable looking middle age folks who suddenly produced dowsing rods…) and admire a statue of Wm. Henry Harrison in the humid dusk at the Tippecanoe Battlefield Park near Prophetstown, Indiana (http://www.greatserpentmound.com/, http://www.tcha.mus.in.us/battlefield.htm).

In August, the old lady and I made our first trip to Canada, and were pleasantly surprised to find such a cosmopolitan, fascinating county just north of our own. Who knew? (I’m kidding Canucks, we always knew you were there, but we just figured you had sent all your funny people down to live with us). In September I spent two weeks tramping ‘round central and western Mongolia (with a short lay-over in South Korea), and in November the family and I burnt a fortnight familiarizing ourselves with the old Hapsburg lands in Central Europe.

Having written this all down, I am led to marvel at the fairly preposterous amount of time and treasure I spent traveling last year. But, mainly, it makes me ponder what I can distill, or SHOULD be able to distill, from using strange bathrooms across three continents. The first thing that comes to mind is the importance of food in the travel experience (don’t ask why bathroom=food in my stream of consciousness if you don’t really want to know).

Foodies Need Not Apply

I am not a foodie. Foodies are, often, pretentious people who describe the stuff they eat with adjectives like “decadent” and “esoteric” (if you’re not describing a mystery cult in the last days of the Roman Empire, please don’t use those words). Foodies will also travel to the ends of the earth solely to eat something there—oh yeah, and they like to brag about having eaten it there as well. Don’t get me wrong, I think eating with locals will do more to broaden a traveler’s perspective than most any other activity. In fact, “food ways”—which is fancy anthropologist-talk for what and how different people eat—is an actual field of study, as food reveals so many vital clues about a given culture. That said, you will never catch me adding a detour to my itinerary just so I can sample a rarely-served piece of an animal’s anatomy. Well, maybe not “never.” At any rate, you’ll never hear of me trying to track down ‘authentic’ food.

The Fallacy of ‘Authentic’ Cuisine

Just like Börte Used to Make it?

Trying to find authentic food is like trying to put a phantom in a half-nelson. We live in a globalized, cosmopolitan world, which makes it darn near impossible to get pure Chinese, Mexican (…fill in the blank) cuisine that has not been influenced by outside food (by the way China and Mexico are just two countries whose food has many, many regional variations, so what in the world would ‘authentic’ Chinese/Mexican look like in the first place?). Some of the best stuff actually comes out of this cultural cross-pollination, like chicken tikka masala, which was invented by Indians living in London. And, don’t forget, before Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” there were no tomatoes in Italian cooking and the Irish had never eaten a potato!!! Does that mean that you can’t find a place serving a more traditional variant of the local cuisine, i.e. one that doesn’t use McDonald’s ketchup packets as a primary ingredient? Heck no, and you should make such establishments part of your itinerary. But, at the same time, you shouldn’t turn up your nose at global trends that have broken into the local market. In Ulaanbaatar (UB) I saw more than a few ‘Mongolian BBQs.’ Mongolian BBQ was invented in Taiwan and doesn’t have a whole lot to do with traditional Mongolian food, but that doesn’t stop Mongolians from eating in these joints. I could learn just as much about contemporary Mongolian culture by stopping into one of these goofy places, as by eating horse out on the steppe.

When in Prague or UB...

The Mongolian Burger that Conquered the Known World

When you’re on the road the best food-related question you can ask is, “what do people eat around here?” The answer might be surprising. For example, in Prague’s Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) there was a whole mess of people eating at stalls near the Old Town Hall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Town_Square_(Prague)). Being naturally curious folk, the family and I moseyed over and saw that smoked ham, spiral cut potatoes and hamburgers were on offer. I opted for the ham, though my son wanted a hamburger. However, I didn’t argue and say, “Hey! We’re in Prague, Czechs don’t eat hamburgers!” After all, it was a Czech hamburger, cooked with oil and garnished with cabbage and other unusual, for an American, condiments (my son still demolished his hamburger and then proceeded to fight me for the ham). One of the best things I ate in Mongolia was an enormous cheeseburger. True, I had just spent two weeks subsisting on a diet of fried, stewed, minced, etc., mutton, cow tongue and horse dumplings, but this was a genuinely good “‘burg.” But, it didn’t taste like an American burger; it was fit for Chinggis Khan! UB has Mexican, Chinese (as you might well imagine), Indian, even an Irish pub! I had plenty of traditional Mongolian dishes, but I would have missed out had I not tried the international scene as well. Don’t be afraid/embarrassed to eat a foreign burger!

The Cheapskate Gourmet

I would have to say that my favorite places to eat while traveling are grocery stores. Yep, you heard me right. I think it’s a blast to wander the aisles and try to figure out what stuff is from the packaging. Not only are grocery stores the best places to get cheap eats, they also allow you to rub shoulders with the locals and buy the kind of stuff they buy (presumably it wouldn’t be in stock if nobody ever bought it). In Slovakia I went to a supermarket and bought rolls with cheese and thick-cut chunks of bacon baked onto them. How could you go wrong with that? I tried several brands of paprika flavored potato chips in Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary (some, much better than others) and ketchup chips in Toronto (I suppose I could buy these in the U.S. as well). I got hooked on spreadable cheese outside Vienna (the kind that comes in paprika and ham flavors) and bags of chocolate milk in Budapest (I don’t understand the receptacle, but oh man, that chocolaty goodness!). I realize this is all junk food, but that is not a concept that Americans have a monopoly on. I’d like to think I understand the average Central European better, having eaten his/her high-calorie, non-nutritious but delicious goodies. But, before you lose faith in me, I will turn toward more traditional patterns of travel eating.

What’s the Special Tonight?

The Kid Just doesn't Understand How Good Polish Food is!

While I’m not a foodie, I do prepare information on eating options before I head out the door. It certainly doesn’t hurt to know what the good local places are near the sights on your itinerary. For example, my wife planned our meals around two great, local dishes in Springfield, Illinois—the “loose-meat sandwich” and the “horseshoe sandwich”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_sandwich, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maid-Rite_Sandwich_Shop_(Springfield,_Illinois)). If you’ve never had either, then get in the car and go! In Budapest, we ate homestyle Magyar cuisine at the Vásárcsarnok, a market full of sausage, spices and pickled vegetables (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274887-d276128-Reviews-Central_Market_Hall_Nagy_Vasarcsarnok-Budapest_Central_Hungary.html). In Krakow, we had dinner in Kazimierz (traditional home of the city’s Jews) where I ate a mound of caramelized onions and a massive pork neck while the accordion, guitar and violin of a klezmer band swirled through its set (I’m a gentile, so the pork thing is OK…why it was being served in this place on the other hand…) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimierz). All these were great meals, but I don’t know that they were any more important in informing my understanding of these area’s cultures, than the stuff I bought at corner shops. For me, it’s all one big, tasty experience!  

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Gathering Travel Information—The Toughest Job You’ll Ever…Eventually Come to Appreciate

Avoiding the East Slavic Jinx

In Need of "Cool, Clear Water," Northeast Arizona

Among the East Slavs there is an old superstition that says you shouldn’t return home for a forgotten item if you have already begun your journey. Hence, before setting out on a long trip, Russian travelers sit quietly for a moment—still inside their front door—which, among other things, gives them time to ponder if they have everything they need. If you do come back after having left, you have to look in a mirror (and stick out your tongue or smile according to Ukrainians) to break the jinx, or you might not complete your journey! I’m not sure about the whole jinx thing, but I’m all for making sure I have everything I need before I head out the front door on a trip. The most important, essential, crucial, vital, critical, central, decisive, key, fundamental, necessary, imperative, non-trivial thing you NEED to take with you is…well, money, because without it you can’t eat, which process keeps your body functioning, sustains your life, etc. BUT, after money, you MUST take sufficient information!

Information, Information, Infor…mation?

If you read my first two posts (and let’s be honest, why in the world wouldn’t you have?), you know that I have an incurable addiction to travel information. Indeed, it could be said that I ‘fetishize’ travel info (I can’t keep writing “information,” my fingers will get sore from all the extra typing), or that I’m always ‘jonesing’ for it. I hope my previous posts have made clear why, because I now want to talk about that holy grail of travel planning—where to get the best travel info.

Last post I talked about travel goals, and how they can help you construct an itinerary. Frankly, that is the easy part: Q:“Where do you want to go?” A: “India.” Simplicity itself, ain’t it? Ah, but besides having seen the part in Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom where they eat “chilled monkey brains,” or having heard that the Beatles studied transcendental meditation at an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas, what do you know about it (sadly, I’m speaking about my own experience here)? Maybe more than you think. After all, something in the destination stirred you imagination. Maybe you saw pictures of it in National Geographic or watched a documentary about it on PBS. Those are both great, cheap starting points for gathering travel info.

Saddle-up for the Travel Info Round-up, Buckaroos!

Great Kiva, Casa Rinconada, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

If you’ve decide you might want to go somewhere then start rounding-up some info on the place. You probably shouldn’t begin with guidebooks, as those tend to be geared to certain regions and have narrow focuses (more on that below). At first, utilize all the FREE info you have access to at home. You may have some moldy encyclopedias sitting around that could tell you what the key sights in Delhi are, for example. You may also have a treasure trove of old issues of National Geographic piled up in the basement. These have great visual representations of travel destinations, and cover pretty much the whole world. Also, don’t forget that great thing that is somehow magically attached to your computer—you know, the thing you are using right now?—the internet!

You can watch travel videos on YOUTUBE, check out travel documentaries on Netflix, read traveler’s blogs (some are better than others…obviously), see re-runs of PBS travel shows on HULU and the PBS website, visit a country’s ministry of tourism website, visit city, state and national park websites (for U.S. travel) and request free info packages. In fact, if you email a travel destination and ask for info, you will probably be surprised at how much stuff they send your way. In the U.S. this might include state maps, travel brochures, restaurant and hotel guides, etc. These entities, whether domestic or international, are in the business of getting people to come and visit and spend their hard-earned dough. Others provide info to foster global understanding of unique local sights, like the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which maintains a World Heritage portal that gives information on the 936 places (like the pyramids at Giza or the Grand Canyon) it has deemed to be of significant importance to the cultural or natural inheritance of mankind. Finally, never underestimate the amount of info you can pull off of Wikipedia (don’t forget to look at the “external links” section!).

Once you’ve accomplished what you can do at home, it’s time to widen the scope of your search. The first, and most important stop, should be your public library. Even the most anemic library usually has a travel section, though, depending on the places the library patrons in your area like to go, you may not find exactly what you’re looking for. In any case, you should be able to get your hands on some info through interlibrary loans.  Public libraries are a great source for travel documentaries, guidebooks, and sometimes, maps.  The great thing is that they often update their travel guidebook selection every year, so you don’t have to rely on last year’s book. However, even if you can only get last year’s book, you can always use it for planning and then go online to figure out the current prices, hours of operation, etc. of various sights and hotels. I won’t say that you should NEVER buy a guide book. If you are willing to drop $15-$20 on each one (you can also pick these up used on Amazon, ABEbooks, etc.), then no problem. But, I will say that several travel guides, maps and language reference books from my local library have made many long journeys in my company, and I guarantee that I’m not the first patron to have thought of this idea.

Guidebook Bingo

Guidebooks…they’re great, but which one should you use? In my experience, a selection of guidebooks is better than one. Guidebook writers tend to focus on certain issues that they feel are important for travelers, while giving less attention to others. For example, Rick Steves’ books are great all-around guides, but their best feature is the detailed descriptions, including walking tours, they give of top 10 sights (i.e. places like St. Paul’s cathedral or the Residenz in Munich). His books are also good at letting you know where to find a cozy bed and breakfast. However, if you want a more comprehensive rundown of eateries and hotels, and more info about towns outside of his European “back doors,” or those off the well-worn tourist path—the spa town of Bad Ischl in Austria, for example—then you should refer to a Fodor’s guide.

When it comes to guidebooks there is also the issue (mentioned above), of choosing the right one for the region you are visiting. In Western Europe I’ve used Rick Steves (both city and country guides, i.e. Vienna and Austria guide, as they offer different levels of detail), Fodor’s (city and country), Top 10 guides (these are thin, compact, have great pictures of the sights and a handy fold-up city map—e.g. London, Munich, Moscow—stored in a pocket under the back cover), and, for road trips, Michelin Travel Guides. In Eastern Europe, I’ve used Lonely Planet (good all-around guides more geared toward destinations not usually found on the grand-tour, i.e. Romania, Africa, and the Middle East) and Let’s Go Europe (written by a bunch of young Harvard punks focusing on budget travel). For Central Asia I like Lonely Planet, supplemented by a Bradt Travel Guide (these are highly detailed and even more boutique than Lonely Planet) and an Odyssey Illustrated Guide (the boutiquest of the boutiquest but containing excellent historical and cultural info). In the US of A I’ve found Fodor’s, Mobil Travel Guides (for road trips), and Insight Guides useful. Eyewitness Guides are visually stunning and informative, but usually thick as a brick and, thus, not journey friendly.

Pancho Villa and Portabello Road

Torreon, Lincoln, New Mexico

Finally, you should always look into your favorite movies, TV series, novels, etc. for travel ideas. Many of the cities/towns/sights I end up visiting are not featured prominently in travel guides, but are places I’ve read about in history books (it’s my nerdy thing). For example, I would’ve never visited Columbus, New Mexico if I had not been interested in the history of the Mexican Revolution and Pancho Villa’s raid into the US in 1916. I’m sure my wife could’ve done without that little jaunt, but I went with her to Portabello Road market in London, based almost exclusively on its image as portrayed in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It turns out that the street is slightly different in reality—there wasn’t a dancing cavalcade of subjects from the far-flung corners of the former British Empire—but we had a good time anyway.

Get on the internet, dig into those copies of National Geographic, and watch old James’ Bond movies for travel inspiration, and start making a list of your desired travel destinations. 

 

Travel Goals: The First Step to Constructing a Supercool/neat-o Itinerary

Traveling with Martin Kreese

The Goateed One in the Wilds of Tajikistan

When I travel I usually don’t consider it a vacation. I suppose if I define ‘vacation’ as being away from work, then, yes, traveling for me is a vacation. However, my travel philosophy is somewhere along the lines of Martin Kreese’s attitude toward karate: “strike first, strike hard, no mercy sir!” (for those of you who don’t know, Martin Kreese was the sensei of the Cobra Kai dojo in The Karate Kid). That doesn’t mean that I’m crane-kicking the locals in the places I’m traveling to, or that I don’t have fun at what I’m doing—after all, if you can’t enjoy yourself when you’re traveling then you’re really just wasting your time and money. What it means is that when I put aside the time and money to go somewhere, I want to soak every last experience out of the opportunity. I don’t know about you, but I only get two weeks a year vacation (my employer doesn’t buy the whole “I’m not on a vacation when I’m traveling” argument) and I certainly don’t have an unlimited reservoir of travel funds. That being the case, when it comes time to travel, I ask myself two very important questions, “where do I REALLY want to go?” and “what do I want to do when I get there?” Simple and obvious, right? Maybe, maybe not.

Priotities

I know plenty of people that want to go “everywhere.” Yes, “everywhere.” Does that mean Guatemala? Mongolia? The Philippines? Germany? Texas? Yes, all of the above. I’m not saying that I don’t want to go all these places. Traveling is my passion. Heck, if a genie appeared in my house with a never-ending sack of gold, I would phone in my resignation that instant, set out on a journey the next day and spend every other week in a new country. Unfortunately, the genie hasn’t put in an appearance yet. Hence, I have to decide what my travel priorities are. How do I do that? Well, it helps if you have studied up on places you might want to go to. In the travel game the three most important words are: information, information, information (In my last post I said I would be talking about this next...I lied). Suffice it to say, what getting all this information helps you do is make priorities, i.e. it helps you set travel goals.

The Travel Confessions of a Nerd

Vladimir Il'ich Rug, Bukhara, Uzbekistan

I just heard you snicker… “travel goals?” Yes, I have travel goals. There are certain places that I’ve decided are my priorities as far as time and money goes. If I happen to have either of those resources handy, or if the opportunity presents itself (through work, visiting a relative, etc.) then I’m going to fulfill one of these goals. One day I just opened a word document (your welcome for the plug Bill Gates) and started jotting down places I’d like to visit, organized by continent, country, region, town, sight, etc. A little lame I’ll admit, but I feel a great deal of satisfaction when I look back on my list and realize, “hey, I’ve been there,” and then I highlight the place in red font in my travel goal word doc (yeah, I know I’m a lame-o). You have other goals don’t you? Saving for the kids’ college/your retirement, buying a house, learning new skills? Then why not travel goals. Remember the old adage (or aphorism…something) about, “goals not written down…blah, blah…wont’ be achieved” (I paraphrase here). 

The Travel Wishes of a Nerd

For a little window into my travel wishes, I’ve listed some accomplished and yet to be accomplished travel goals for one of my favorite places to visit: Uzbekistan.

Asia

        Central Asia

                                Uzbekistan
                                                Bukhara
                                                                Poi Kalon Complex
                                                                Samani Mausoleum
                                                                The Ark
                                                                lunch at “Lyab-i Hauz”
                                                Khiva
                                                                Ichan Kala
                                            Nukus
                                                           Nukus Museum of Art
                                                           Aral Sea (nearby)
                                                Qo’qan
                                                                Khuodayar Khan’s Palace
                                                Samarqand
                                                                Bibi-Khanym Mosque
                                                                Gur-i Emir
                                                                Registan
                                                                Shah-i Zinda
                                            Tashkent
                                                            Amir Timur Museum
                                                            Fine Arts Museum
                                                            Kukeldash Madrasah
                                                            lunch at “Central Plov”
                                                

Turning Travel Nerd Goals into a Travel Nerd Itinerary

Islam Khodja Minaret, Khiva, Uzbekistan

I’ve spared you most of the gory details and only listed major tourist attractions, but here I have the places I want to visit--and restaurants I want to eat at--listed under the major city/region where they are located. You can see that as far as Uzbekistan goes most of my goals have been achieved. This has not been by accident. When the opportunity to travel to Uzbekistan arose, I was prepared with my goals, prioritized the places I wanted to visit and decided which places were logistically feasible to visit on the same trip. This helped me create my travel itinerary

For example, you can see that I have been to Samarqand, Bukhara and Khiva, the great old cities of the Silk Road. That is because travelers generally link them together and the transportation connections between Tashkent (the capital of the country with the international airport) Bukhara and Samarqand are convenient. Getting to Khiva is more of a pain, but there is a major regional airport there with links to Tashkent. In other words, the requsite tourist infrastructure exists in these places and it allowed me to hit them all in a couple weeks’ time. The only city on this list that I haven’t visited is Nukus. That’s because it is so far away from any other major sights. Hopefully I will get a chance to visit it one day (it’s one of my goals…sorry, just another plug for setting goals) but when I started to construct the itineraries for previous trips I realized that including it would eat up time I wanted to spend elsewhere. That is, I had to prioritize. I have also found that listing the places I want to go, in a visual manner, helps me think of how to put together an itinerary spatially and temporally.

So, set them goals, write them down, and when the genie appears you’ll know what to do!

The Power of Travel Information

With Monty's Tank, Imperial War Museum, London

Time, Money and that Other Thing...

Traveling requires three resources: time, money and information. People often focus on the first two, while failing to pay adequate attention to the third. If I was good at math, which I’m not, I would come up with an equation that represents the relationship between time, money and information—I’m sure it would make a good graphic...snore. Instead I will just say that unless you HAVE access to unlimited time and money, you need to GET access to unlimited information. Where to find this information will be the focus of my next blog. Today I want to try and describe that equation with some examples from my own stupidity…I mean, experience.

Scrooge McDuck and Spare Change for the Street Vendor

You need time to travel. You might have a bank vault that could shame Scrooge McDuck’s, but if you can’t take a day off then you’ll never be able to go anywhere. You also need money. You may have all the time in world, but if you don’t have a few coppers to pay a developing world street vendor for some hygienically questionable food, you’ll starve to death. I don’t deny this. But, people seem to think about how much the plane ticket/gas in the car is going to run them, and how long they’re going to be gone, without loading up on enough information on where they are going and what there is to see and do when they get there. You may be saying, “What? Of course people know what there is to do at their travel destination. Why else would they be going there?” Good question. The answer is easy: people are lazy!

Brain Vacation

Westminster Abbey, London

When we go on vacation we tend to want to shut off our brains. You don’t take two weeks away from work to do doctoral dissertation research at a museum. You go to look at the freakin’ exhibits! Yet, what is the point of taking time off, buying the plane ticket, paying for hotel rooms, etc. if your knowledge of London consists of 1) Tower of London, 2) Big Ben, 3) Westminster Abbey, 4) uh…. If you catch those first three, you might consider the trip a success. But just imagine if you had known that a short tube ride away from these sights, you could have watched a radical socialist and a Muslim missionary engage in rhetorical combat at Hyde Park’s “Speaker’s Corner.” Or, that the Sherlock Holmes pub, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jimi Hendrix used to eat Yorkshire Pudding—though not simultaneously—is just off of Trafalgar Square. It might not break your heart to get home and realize that you’ve missed something like that, but, then again, it may have made your travel experience all the richer had you known it was there. If you arm yourself with as much information about your destination as possible beforehand, you’ll find that—whether or not you get to see it all—you’ll come home feeling travel satisfied, instead of eating the bitter herbs of regret. Let me illustrate my point with a short story from my own wanderings.

Sweet Falafel and Bitter Goulash

In summer 2000 my wife and I joined a small group on a tour of Israel. The leader of our group had studied and traveled in the country and knew what its travel highlights were. But, he also asked each member of the group to read up on a specific sight we would be visiting, and then brief us on it when we arrived. Sure, most tourist sights nowadays have kiosks and glossy pamphlets, but it really made the places come alive when someone from the group would chime in with some less-commonly known information about the pile of rocks we were staring at.

Flash forward to summer 2001. My wife, our friend and I are on a trip in Eastern Europe. In reaction to our well-orchestrated Israel excursion the year before, we decide to go on a nice and easy, almost hippie (minus the Buddha toking and inadequate deodorant) backpacking trek. Our friend had lived in Hungary for two years and knew plenty about it, but none of us had been to the other countries—Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey—we planned to visit. We had bought some travel books, but had not studied them sufficiently before arriving.

Let’s compare the two experiences.

The trip to Israel was a veritable information overload. I heard more about the places we visited than I wanted to, and we crammed more sight-seeing into those two weeks than should've been humanly possible. In contrast, the trip to Eastern Europe ended up being a glimpse of a few sights, interspersed with lots of wandering, milling around train stations, riding in filthy taxis, getting lost, etc. When I think back on those journeys, I have no regrets about the Israel trip—we got our money’s worth and more. On the other hand, the Eastern Europe trip…leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t regret going one bit, but I regret not reading up enough first on ALL the sights we could’ve seen while we were there.

I will be the first to agree that getting lost, spending time on public transportation and wandering are actually all valid and important parts of travel. However, they should probably not be your primary activities. After all, if you go to Paris and don’t see the Eiffel Tower, why bother?

Beat that Horse!

Stained Glass, Bath Abbey

If this entry has sounded like a moron flogging a dead horse that could be revived by a small dose of common sense—great! You have already won half the battle. But, if you still think a cursory knowledge of your destination, plus a vague plan to “see what you can see” is sufficient, then I hope you have a lot of time…and money.