How to Publish a Magazine

How to Publish a Magazine

I have often wondered about what goes into self publishing a magazine and how I could start my own little Vagabond press. Perhaps this is a far off, long term goal of mine, but, as the opportunity arose, I conducted the following interview with the managing editor, owner, and co-founder of Cafe Abroad Magazine to find out how he began his publication nearly two years ago.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- November20, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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1. How did you begin Cafe Abroad InPrint? What gave you the idea? How did you take the initial idea and put it into action?

I had dozens of interns writing tons of stories for www.cafeabroad.com, so InPRINT was conceived as a piece to give more visibility and credibility to the website.

To execute the idea, I took the best stories and made a 16-page prototype in Feb, 2007. I then did a bulk mailing to 500 schools and 300 potential advertisers and called and emailed ‘til I figured out who wanted in,

2. How do you publish Cafe Abroad InPrint? Approximately how much does it cost to put out each issue? How large of a circulation does the magazine have?

I publish it using evergreen – a printing company in New Jersey. Each issue costs about $7,000. I print 11.000 copies – 30 issues to each of 325 schools and then some extras for bulk orders.

3. How did you approach the advertisers that place ads in the magazine? In what ways did you market the magazine to them as a potential source of advertising? Is Cafe Abroad run totally on the money made from selling ad space? Approximately how much does Cafe Abroad charge for ads in the print magazine? How much for the website?

I started attending international education conferences like NAFSA and The Forum on Education Abroad. All of the pricing information is available in the media kit in the “Advertise” section of CafÈ Abroad.

4. Do you contract out the graphic design work? Or do you do it yourself or have an employee or intern doing it?

I contract it out to a graphic designer. He’s a friend so he gives me a bit of a deal.

5. How many paid employees does Cafe Abroad have (not including travel journalists)?

Zero (including me).

6. How did you make the initial contact with students and set up the web-based study abroad community? How many students intern with Cafe Abroad each semester?

I created a database of study abroad offices and started making calls. A month later I had 225 applications.

100 interns per semester, though this semester I’ve scaled back operations to just 10 interns.

Related Pages:
Cafe Abroad InPrint
How to Self Publish a Magazine
Writing for Magazines and Newspapers
Article about Portugal Graffiti for Cafe Abroad
Travel Writing

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• How Not to Monetize Blog
• Obama Hope or Delusion
• Studying to be an English Teacher

How to Publish a Magazine
* Travel Blog Directory * Traveler Photographs.com * Travel Questions and Answers

Ethnography Journalism and Travel Writing

Ethnography, Journalism, and Travel Writing

I am shooting wide of the mark and I know it. I am like a floppy fish bouncing around out of water in New York City.

I had a feeling that I would find myself in this position before leaving Eastern Europe, and I am not surprised or too concerned. . . . Just going to ride this horse through the desert until it croaks beneath me. Then I will move on to where I feel more comfortable: the rest of the world.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- November 7, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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I wish to stand at the meeting point of travel writing, journalism, and ethnography. I wish to learn these three disciplines deeply, sluice the cream off the top, combine it all together and see what I come up with.

“Right now,” the journalist, the anthropologist, and the travel writer state equally, “I find that this place and these people and this situation is like this.”

All three disciplines generally record a defacto, first person account of the world in a certain place at a certain time; and all three disciplines use history, context, converations, and personal experience to essentially provide a still life of a brief moment of time on planet earth.

“I stand here now and these are my impressions of what I observe.”

This is all I wish to do.

Today, societies rarely erect long lasting monuments to their times. Ours is a history that will not be told in stone, but on paper: in digital files, books, magazines, and crammed away in the lost annals of the internet. Standing on the brink of a world in rapid flux, this has become the shinning generation of the chronicler. The question of “What is going on here?” has rarely been more difficult to answer.

The journalist, travel writer, and ethnographer ultimately write to the same ends. They document a moment, a place, a people, a situation. Their methods differ greatly, but their end results are the similar. They are all just recording evidence of “What is going on here.”

I am not there now. I am barely scratching the surface, but I am getting my feet wet. I know what I want to do, I just need to educate myself further in order to get there.

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I enjoy writing on this travelogue. I can occasionally misspell a word or two, crank out an intentionally incomplete sentence, and write words that sometimes don’t make any sense together. I feel that this is alright, because this is a place for ideas, impressions, and the recording of experience: it does not have to be edited. It is a space to play around a little. This is what I enjoy about reading other people's writing - the errant phrases that sometimes awkwardly provides the reader with a view of what is going on behind the written words.

I feel as if this is the true benefit of the travel blog: they show ideas and impressions of places as a person moves through them. The more incoherent, full of errors, and far-reaching they are the better. A travel blog is a place to air out dirty laundry and try new things, write of experiences as they happen, and to look back at the places from which you came.

Though I feel that I am not hitting the nail on the head on this travelogue either. I am not getting deep enough; I am not allowing myself the space to dig deeper. I am noticing this more and more in what I have been writing from New York City. I am lost here and I know it. I feel like I went down on a sinking ship and that these recent entries have been the result of me trying to grasp onto any piece of floating debris that I can. I hope that this is being shown.

I am from a rural area 600 km from NYC by Lake Ontario and have been traveling the world for the past eight or nine years. This is where I come from, and this is how I experience New York City. It is not pretty, but it does not have to be. It just has to be honest.

I am out of my element here, and this is allowing - no provoking - this self-criticism.

Through this self-critique a Path is emerging. There is a united line between the three aforementioned streams of writing that lead through the woods and I want to walk it. I want to take what I can from these three disciplines - study them deeply - and see what I can come up with. I can only hope that I will not think too much about this.

“Just spit it out,” Andy says. Good advice, but I know that the fatter my belly is, the thicker my spit will be. Now is a good time for me to fatten up a little: Read, read, read, study, study, experiment, laugh.

I know that, in the end, this is all for fun.

Related Pages:
NYC- Journalism Mission
NYC- Editor Eats Article
NYC- Another Concept of Journalism
USA- Fortunate Travel Blogger
Guatemala- I meet the Hobo Traveler
Honduras-Writing for Magazines and Newspapers
Morocco- Great Travel Books: The Royal Road to Romance
USA- The Real Impacts of Writing

Links to previous travelogue entries:
Congo Immigrant Impression of USA
Obama Celebration in Brooklyn
Code Pink Female Acivists Washington DC

Ethnography Journalism and Travel Writing
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

David Lida Interview

David Lida Interview

"And then I realized I had to get out of the house, and walk around the city. I had lived here long enough to clearly identify what I knew and what I didn’t know. I had to be on the street with all of my senses engaged, talking to strangers, going to neighborhoods where people warned me not to go, wearing out the soles of my shoes to get it right. I had to drink in the energy of the city every day, so that I could go home and then transmit that energy in the writing." -David Lida on writing, First Stop in the New World



David Lida is a Mexico City based author and journalist who wrote the books, First Stop in the New World, Travel Advisory, and Las Llaves de la Ciudad, as well as a plethora of magazine articles about Mexican culture and society. After reviewing his book, First Stop in the New World, which is a "street-level panorama" of life in Mexico City, I found his writing to be highly engaging, unpretentious, and, simply put, written from the ground up. I admire these qualities in a writer, and, to these ends, I sought to do a follow up interview with Lida to further delve into his world as a writer working from the streets of Mexico's capital city.

What were your initial impressions of Mexico City when you first went there 18 years ago?

My initial impressions were … impressionistic. You can find nearly all of them in the first paragraphs of the introduction in the book.

I actually first arrived in 1987. I had a layover of a day and a night. I had a rather long night that night. Something which didn’t make it into the final manuscript of the book, is that I went to the Teatro Blanquita. At the time, they still had vaudeville at the Blanquita, and I saw various comics, chorus girls, singers and dancers, as well as the orchestra of Pérez Prado, the king of the mambo, a couple of years before he died. Another performer that night was Sasha Montenegro, an Argentine of Yugoslavian descent who moved to Mexico in the early 1970s and became the star of a series of sex comedies. She sang a little, danced a little, but mostly pranced around the stage nearly naked, assisted by a pair of diminutive, male, sexually ambiguous assistants.
Somehow I knew I was in the right place. Mostly this was an intuitive reaction, and I couldn’t really explain why I knew.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- October 20, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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What makes you think that Mexico City has the potential of becoming the cultural capital of the 21st century?

I call it the capital of the 21st century (rather than the cultural capital) for the following reason. More than half the people in the world live in cities. And most of us do not live in neat, orderly cities like Paris or London, New York or Toronto. Most of us live in cities that have grown in an ad hoc, willy nilly manner in the last few decades, with populations that have ballooned to 10 million or more, with little or nothing resembling urban planning: Shanghai, Beijing, Sao Paolo, Istanbul, Lagos, Mumbai, etc.

I am not saying that all of these cities are alike. Each deserves its own book. But if you understand how Mexico City works – economically, socially, culturally, politically, sexually, etc. – you will at least have a clue, or a window, as to how much of the world works, and how many of these city dwellers survive.

I am impressed with how you intertwined the anecdotal nature of First Stop in the New World in a way that comes together to reveal a holistic view of Mexico City. How did the structure of this book come about?

There were two moments which I consider key in the three-year journey from the inception of the idea to the bound book. I worked for the first six months or so at home, trying to write what I already knew about. And I despaired because it wasn’t working. The material I was accumulating seemed static to me.

And then I realized I had to get out of the house, and walk around the city. I had lived here long enough to clearly identify what I knew and what I didn’t know. I had to be on the street with all of my senses engaged, talking to strangers, going to neighborhoods where people warned me not to go, wearing out the soles of my shoes to get it right. I had to drink in the energy of the city every day, so that I could go home and then transmit that energy in the writing.

The worst thing that one Mexican writer can say about another is escribe con las patas – he writes with his feet. I actually wrote this book with my feet, walking around and then coming home to sit at the computer.

The other turning point was when I came up with the idea of interweaving long, analytical chapters with short vignettes. Initially I had only planned to have long chapters. But I realized two things. First, there are certain topics – like the Centro Histórico, for example, or the wrestling matches – that I could either try to capture as a succinct snapshot in five pages, or else I would have to write a 300 page book. There is no way that I could imagine doing 30 pages about the Centro.

Secondly, I believe that these short takes and anecdotes truly reflect the fragmented nature of experience in Mexico City. Or at least the fragmented nature of my experience here.

Could you tell me a little of the trials and errors that accompanied your journey to becoming a professional writer?

I’m not sure how much I would define them as trials and errors as I would as ups and downs. I got my start on a daily trade newspaper in New York that services the fashion and retail industries. I began as a copy editor and five years later I was editing the arts page. The paper was widely read by editors of women’s magazines, so when I quit and became a freelance they all gave me work.

I thought it would be smooth sailing from there on in. I figured that in a couple of years I would find three or four editors who would give me lots of work on a regular basis and that would be that. In fact, within a couple of years all the editors who had been giving me work had either quit or been fired, and I had to start from scratch. And that is pretty much the way it has been for twenty years. I’ve had to reinvent myself constantly.

It has helped that I learned to write in Spanish. This expands my chances of getting published at all. I am especially happy about Las llaves de la ciudad, a book that came out here in Mexico at more or less the same time as First Stop in the New World. It’s a collection of magazine pieces about Mexico City, mostly profiles of people (from a guy who claims to be the D.F.’s first private detective, to a deaf-mute transvestite who has created her own sign language, to one of the city’s most notorious socialites). I wrote all of it in Spanish, and the response here has been extremely positive.

Having said that, I believe it is harder and harder for a freelance writer to survive in the world. I want to keep writing. However, one of the reasons that, in addition to writing, I became a mitigation specialist (there is a little bit about this on my web site, www.davidlida.com) is that I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life hustling magazine articles in an increasingly hostile market.

Do you have a crazy or funny personal story from Mexico City that you could share that was not included in First Stop in the New World?

Whenever I feel I have seen everything here, I walk through some door and am surprised. A few months ago I was in the Plaza Garibaldi, an area notorious for mariachis and dive bars, with a friend. She insisted on going to a table dance bar, where women strip and dance for an exclusively male clientele, with the exception of the occasional adventurous woman, like my friend. In any case, we went in there and saw a woman dancing who was clearly, visibly pregnant – I’d say she was four or five months along in her term. That was certainly a first for me.

Related Pages:
David Lida's Homepage and Blog
Vagabond Journey Review of First Stop in the New World
First Stop Amazon Page

Links to previous travelogue entries:
One Week Two Laptops Broken
Vagabond Journey Mission Statement
Downfall of the Maya

David Lida Interview
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

Herman Melville Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage for Herman Melville

"Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope." Herman Melville

"It is not down in any map; true places never are." Herman Melville

I awoke in a dark cave of a room on a Saturday morning and jump to a start, for I knew that Stubbs was somewhere in Brooklyn. We have talked for years about going on a pilgrimage to Herman Melville's resting place.

To Herman Melville's grave!
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- October 17, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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Stubbs and I read Moby Dick in tandem for the first time as we traveled through Southeast Asia and India in the spring of 2005. And we have been talking about joining together and visiting his grave for ever since. Our talk of this pilgrimage was always in the overly excited way that travelers tend to talk about future travels. Both of us knew that SOMEDAY we would find ourselves in New York City, ready to make the pilgrimage.

Photograph of Herman Melville.

This particular someday just happened to come today. Fate and happenstance had brought both Stubbs and I into the Big City in the dawning days of autumn. We knew that the crumbled remains of our written-word-hero laid in the soil of the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. I was excited that a long standing plan would soon be acted upon, and my thrill only grew with the knowledge that Stubbs was somewhere in my relative proximity. Years, yes years, have passed in which we have awaited this very day.

A pilgrimage to the place that holds the bones of the man who made The Whale!

To these ends, I jumped from bed and made a call in the dark, windowless room to Stubbs. He answered. I tried to get him to tell me where he was, and his only response was, "Brooklyn, 95th and 3rd."

As Chaya and I set off to find Stubbs in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, it became apparent to me that, given enough time, a traveler will eventually do ALL of the things that they plan to do. I was excited that I was actually embarking on a mission that was suggested years ago; I was excited at the prospect of accomplishment. I have the impression that travelers make plans just for fun. I enjoy having crazy talk with a friend about all of the places that we will someday travel to. I seldom actually know when I really get there, but I know that I am always going to be doing SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE. I have learned that travel plans sometimes come to life immediately, and sometimes they must wait their turn in a colossal 'to do' list before the time is ripe to act. .. ..and on and on and on into the horizon.

Stubbs is the name of a good friend as well as a period of my life and travels. We met as digging partners in the woods of Upstate New York on an archaeology project, and spent the next year and a half living and traveling together. Stories were made, yarns were woven. To meet back up with Stubbs now is to dig deep into the trove of past adventures and to resurrect our days of old with smiles.

"Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth." Herman Melville

First Edition of Moby Dick.

Chaya and I got down to 95th and 3rd, which is way down by the sea, and found Stubbs wandering around on the streets with a Buffalo Sabres cap upon his head. We met, shook hands, exchanged hugs, introductions, and then set off to the Bronx.

It took around two friggin hours to get up there, as we traversed New York City from south to north. We soon arrived at the Woodlawn stop at the end of the green subway line, and, after receiving directions from a jerky moving Indian station attendant, we stumbled out to find the cemetery. When we did, we found a think chain sealing the entrance closed. We were too late, it was after 5 PM. No workers or gatemen were even milling around the gates to bribe to let us in. There was no way to get through. The cemetery was closed.

Well, there was no legal way in.

Stubbs came down all the way from Buffalo, and this pilgrimage had been planned for years. We could not fail now that we were so close to reaching the ends of this long journey. We walked around the sky high gates in hopes that we could find a way through. Chaya noticed a break in the barrier next to a tree that some powerful vandal of old must have kicked in.

We slipped through the gap in the gate and ran happily into the locked up cemetery. Then an ominous feeling overtook us, for there were hundreds of thousands of gravestones and we knew not where Melville was buried. We had absolutely no bearings to take and, in desperation, we jolted quickly through the cemetery rows hoping that simple intuition would lead us to a headstone entitled "Melville."

We looked and looked, searched and searched. It was clear that this pilgrimage would not give up its fruits so easily. The cemetery was deserted, but we kept up hope in lieu of our hopeless mission. Reading the names on the headstones, the three of us walked quickly through a giant haystacks in search of a single needle.

"If I was Melville, where would I be buried?" Stubbs asked.



We were walking along a cemetery street called Pansy Ave. We all agreed that Melville would not be buried here.

We soon came across Hawthorne street and I thought that we could be getting close, as, in life, Nathanial Hawthorne was once Herman Melville's neighbor. Could this not also be possible in death?

Both Stubbs and Chaya disagreed.

"Herman Melville should be buried on Melville street!" they berated me in unison.

So we looked for a sign that could possibly lead us to the tomb of the man who did not even know that he was America's greatest writer.

Eventually, a white sedan pulled up behind us. It stopped by our side, and rolled down its window. I walked up to the car and found two middle aged ladies sitting in the front seats.

"We are looking for Herman Melville's grave, could you tell us where it is?" I asked.

"Yeah, I could tell you," spoke a plump woman in the passenger seat, "but you can't go there, the cemetery is closed. I am going to have to call security to have you escorted out."

As she lifting her cellular telephone to her ear, Stubbs and I fell to lowly state of beggars. We pleaded and pleaded, told the women that we had traveled over mountain, river, and sea to visit Melville's grave, that he was our hero, and that this was our only chance to complete our pilgrimage.

"Ha ha," the plump lady laughed, "and I swam over from Alaska! Haha, it doesn't matter, you have to leave. I am calling security."

Stubbs and I shot a glance around the cemetery looking for a way to escape, as we continued pleading. Something one of us said must of struck a chord deep inside the plump lady, because she lowered her cellular telephone from her head and told us to hop in the back seat.

We did.

Happy conversation was made with the two ladies, who were cemetery employees, as we drove to Melville's resting place. The plump lady in the passenger's seat was the local historian, and she pointed out a few famous graves as we drove by.

"That is where Pulitzer is buried," she told us.

VROOOM! The car roared by. I waved.

"That is where Bat Matterson is buried."

VROOOM! The car roared by. "Who the hell is Bat Matterson?" I asked.

The ladies laughed at me as if I were dense. Bat Matterson must be a New York City thing.

After this less than whistle-stop tour of the Woodlawn Cemetery, we arrived at the final destination of Herman Melville's body. We hopped out of the car and followed the plump historian up a small hill. She yapped and yapped about Melville's history and that of his family and the particulars of his headstone. But her words were just background wind, as Stubbs and I were transfixed upon the words "Melville" that were carved before us. We had made it to the end of a rainbow, we had completed our mission. I felt as riveted as I did on the day that Stubbs and I finally made it to India after the long journey from Hong Kong.


Photograph of Herman Melville's Headstone in Woodlawn Cemetary.

I then reached into my pocket and withdrew the pen that I meant to lay to rest with Melville, as this has become a tradition. There was a pile of pens from past visitors on the headstone, and I made a motion to lay mine with the pile, when I stopped short.

"Yeah, hark, hark, hark," roared the plump historian in laughter, "all kinds of failed writers are now coming to Melville's grave and leaving their pens! hahaha."

Failed writers? My ears pearked up.

The historian did not yet see the pen that was tucked inside my hand, and I indiscretly placed my offering back inside my pocket.

We came to Melville for darshan, for a revealing, for the pot of gold that lays at the ends of the pilgrimage rainbow, and all we found was a sarcastic fat lady making fun of us.

"He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great." Herman Melville

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." Herman Melville



Stubbs and I at the end of a long pilgrimage.

Related Pages:
Southeast Asia Travels
India Travel Blog Posts
Herman Melville and Wade Photo
Herman Mellville Wikipedia

Links to previous travelogue entries:
American Groovy
Photos from New York City
Ellis Island Immigration

Pilgrimage for Herman Melville
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

Mexico City First Stop in the New World

Mexico City- First Stop in the New World by David Lida

"Mexico City is poised to be part of the vanguard of this century. Culturally, economically, and politically, it can be seen as the capital of the Spanish-speaking world."
-David Lida, First Stop in the New World

David Lida's book, First Stop in the New World, is an anecdotal joy ride through Mexico City at street level. Told in short glimpses, Lida pieces together a rich menagerie of life in a city that is predicted to bloom, prosper, and grown out of control in the 21st century.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City- October 10, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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"The capital of the 21st century," reads the subtitle, and this prediction is the heart and soul of the book. By showing the highs and lows of life in Mexico's capital, Lida sets out to pave the way for the world's acceptance of Mexico City as the next global capital of culture and commerce.



Lida writes that First Stop in the New Wold is, "a journalistic, anecdotal street-level panorama of Mexico City. The book highlights the place’s paradoxes – that it is home to the richest man in the world, but half of the population lives in poverty; that criminals and cops are difficult to distinguish; that consumerism is ostensibly shunned but outwardly embraced. It journeys through the realms of sex and crime, money and religion, politics and entertainment, art and soccer."

I am unsure if Lida has his blinders off when making the claim that Mexico City will become the world's next cultural capital, but the stories that he tells in this book are highly enjoyable to read, regardless of whether they prove any off-handed prophecy.

Lida writes that, ". . . by 2050 the city will expand some forty miles west to envelop the city of Toluca, about sixty miles due south to swallow Cuernavaca, and another sixty miles to the north to absorb Pachuca, resulting in a gargantuan entity of some forty-five million inhabitants."

In lieu of this pervading onslaught of urbanization, I feel that Lida's book has come at the perfect time. Mexico City is now on the precipice of rapid change, and Lida's book stands as an indelible snapshot of a city that is caught perilously between the actions of coming and going.

First Stop in the New World starts out with a description of the urban stage upon which the stories of the book play out. Lida gives an introductory explanation of the "Hypermetropolis" - a word that is often used to describe what Mexico City is rapidly becoming - and how the eyes, and money, of the world are gradually drifting towards the urban heart of Mexico. He then shows maps and explains the genesis of the city that was once the capital of the Aztec empire, complete with an explanatory time-line of how it developed into the urban monster that it is today. From this starting point, Lida then leads the reader on a journey through the the highs and lows of Mexican City life.

Talks about globalization, sexuality, the Mexican media, art, gentrification, customs, slang, religion, work, and oddities formulate the backbone of First Stop in the New World. Lida digs deep into the meat of the city with the razor scalpel of a journalist, as he cuts out anecdotal descriptions of the people and places in Mexico City. Taken as a whole, this collection of short literary time-bombs provide the reader with a rather complex, though complete, impression of the the people of Mexican metropolis stand at the beginning of the 21st century.

Lida, who has lived in Mexico City for the better part of the past 18 years, has obviously had the opportunity and willingness to befriend all levels of the urban social sphere. From the grossly rich to the dire poor, Lida interviewed, conversed, and befriended businessmen, prostitutes, professional wrestlers, street vendors, and seemingly anyone else who could serve as an instillation in his non-duel portrait of Mexico City.

From First Stop in the New World:

"The clock behind the bar at El Nivel, the oldest cantina in Mexico City, runs backward, an apt metaphor for the spiritual condition of two of its clients on a recent Friday afternoon. Fiftyish, rumpled, crooked smiles on their faces, they sat with their arms around each other's shoulders, not only as a gesture of solidarity, but to keep from falling on the floor."

The above quote is a taste of the colloquial, friendly tone that Lida maintains throughout the book. It was written as if Lida was having a simple, warm conversation with his readers, and he openly invites us to walk through his door and really experience the vibrancy and depth of Mexico City and its people.

First Stop in the New World is truly a great primer to prepare for a trip to Mexico, or a book that will pull at the memory cords of even the most weathered traveler. This book was written from the street, and leaves a tangible record of a city that carries high promises through the gates of the 21st century.

Interview with David Lida

Blog of David Lida

Riverhead Books, First Stop in the New World

Links to previous travelogue entries:
Journalism Mission
Global Economy and Speculation
Editor Eats Article

Mexico City- First Stop in the New World by David Lida
* Travel Blog Directory * Vagabond Journey.com * Travel Photos * Travel Questions and Answers

New Travel Strategy Works

New Travel Strategy Works

I think that these past three months of traveling were the most personally enjoyable that I have had in a long time. I am now reflecting on this summer and am realizing how formative it was.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Brooklyn, New York City, USA- September 14, 2008
Travelogue -- Travel Photos
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For 7 of my first 8 years of knocking about the world I would return to the USA and travel around the country working on archaeology sites. I would often work 60 hour weeks and save every possible cent so that I could leave the country in the autumn and wander for the rest of the year. This was a good way of earning my bean money, but it was a way of life that jumped between extremes. For three months I would not do much of anything but work, and my traveling was generally great road trips from archaeology project to archaeology project across the USA. Then when I put away a good trunk of cash I would hop a flight abroad and not work for the rest of the year. This work/ travel /work/ travel way of wandering alternated between wearing me out and leaving me idle. It was one extreme or another.

This year I set out to change this. I did not return to the USA to work the summer archaeology season. This was a gamble, and one in which I knew that I could find myself belly up without a dime. Rather than digging in the dirt I decided that I would dig into happenstance, intuition, and the internet as I worked each day on the Road. Mainly, this was an experiment to see if I could travel the world continuously on the strength of my own grit, wit, and determination. So I continued working vigorously on Vagabond Journey.com, I began trading hotel pages on Hobohideout.com for free accommodation, and I took on any little job that presented itself: I translated a brochure for a geology museum, I painted oil pipes, I wrote an article about a celebration in the Czech Republic, worked on Andy's Hobohideout.com hotel website, and I finally took a job as a receptionist in a hostel in Hungary. In all, I think this summer proved to be a success. I am unsure if I am any more gritty or witty for my efforts, but I know that I can now live well in travel without relying on archaeological fieldwork for booting my bean money.

My grandmother would always say that you can do anything in the world if you just set your mind to it.

I say that you can do anything in the world if you just do it.

It became evident to me that I can continuously travel the world without wearing myself dry in contract archaeology; that I can obtain what I need to survive from writing, trading, and working on various projects and short term jobs.

I exchanged one set of wings for another though trying to make up a living as a traveling writer is perhaps the most time consuming job that I have ever had. I am at work from the time that I wake up until the time I go to sleep. Everything that I do in a day is done through the lens of writing about it. This is a very good way to go insane.

But I am hearing a small tap at the door, and I am beginning to suspect that this is working.

Not counting the amount of money that I put into buying plane tickets, I think that my European travel expenses just about broke even - I somehow very nearly earned as much money as I spent. A large part of this was because of the Hobohideout.com trades which kept my expenses low and funds raised from my websites.

I am happy. I set out in this internet writing journey in May of 2007 with the intention of giving myself a two year trial run to see if I could really travel on the strength of the written word. I think when the two year point hits next year there is a good possibility this could work.

For me, success is nothing more than $15 a day doing something that I love.

I am falling in love with this work.

Links to previous travelogue entries:

• Scholarship to Travel the World
• Worlds Most Traveled Motorcycle
• Couchsurfing in New York City

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Previous Posts on http://www.openroadsong.com

So now that you have reached the end of this travelogue, would you like to read more?

Well, if so, there are more than 400 other posts written on my first travelogue, Song of the Open Road at http://www.openroadsong.com. Just click on one of these links, and you can read back three more years into the Vagabond Journey story or, as ever, you can navigate this blog through the Vagabond Journey Directory.

Walk Slow,

Wade

Chinese Food

Chinese Food: An experiment in travel fiction

It was my first time in China and I was already nervous about eating the food. Before leaving home, my mother warned me not to eat the vegetables because they are grown in human manure, which could give me hepatitis, my father made jokes about how Chinese cows “meow” instead of “moo,” and my little brother added additional “meow” sounds to emphasize the fact that I could possible eat someone’s family pet. But I cast their warnings aside and set out for China with high hopes that, if the food there did not seem edible, I could survive for the first week on my hearty provision of Cliff Bars that my mother packed away for me (and I held onto that care package for dear life for the entirety of the ten hour flight to Shanghai).

For the entire flight I could not contain my excitement. I had finally commenced upon my journey to travel the world! “Jannie Schipper, world traveler,” I thought to myself with glee.

Once my plane landed in Shanghai, I obediently followed the signs and arrows that took me through the sinister grey corridors of the immigration, baggage claim, and customs formalities, and then rudely spit me out into the great unknown of China. I was now beyond the directional coddling of the arrival terminal- past the point of no return- and at the beginning of my study abroad adventure. In this moment of exposure, I stopped for a second to try to take bearings on my new environment. I saw before me a brooding gauntlet of Chinese men in slick black uniforms who were holding white signboards that had names written on them like Mr. Dong, Wang Fujing, and Ms. Shuntu Yujing, with funny characters drawn beneath them that look to me like robots (and I was suppose to learn how to read these? ?). In this moment of inter-cultural hesitation I was nearly pummeled from behind by a pushy Chinese woman with a cartload of luggage and shoved quickly through the gauntlet of sign holding Chinese men.

Now safely on the other side of this chasm, I knew that I was either going to have to sink or swim, it was make it to my school in Hangzhou or bust. I was told by my study abroad advisor at my home university in New York City that I just had to go to the bus station outside of the airport, pay 40 Yuan for a ticket, and take the bus to the stadium in Hangzhou, where I would be met by a representative from the host University. So I took some money out of an ATM, followed the airport signs to the bus terminal, and took my place in a line of hurried Chinese travelers who were also buying bus tickets. I was very nervous and did not know what I would say when I got up to the intimidating women behind the window, who was grumpily doling out tickets like they were moldy hot-cakes. But before long, I was up to the window and staring blankly into the face of the women behind the glass partition, who was staring blankly right back at me. After a moment of hesitation, as I struggled to find my voice, I managed a weak “Hangzhou,” while trying my best to pronounce it like my study abroad counselor. Without further ado the women behind the counter promptly shoved a piece of paper into my hand while simotaneous ly snatching away the small bundle of bills that I was clutching. She then quickly divided out her share of the money, tossed back the rest, and sent me away with a point in the direction of my bus. I felt ecstatic- it worked My first interaction in China produced a satisfactory result. I was now looking brightly forward to all of the new challenges that I would face while studying abroad

Newly restored with confidence I strode up into my bus and took a seat behind the driver. I was completely taken aback by how nice and new the bus was, it had soft cushiony seats that were completely clean, television sets liberally placed in many locations, and the engine even started up with a clear gentle hum. It was a far cry from the noisy and dirty Grey Hound busses that I was accustomed to riding in the United States- and I though China was suppose to be a developing country ? So well provided for, I enjoyed my comfortable ride to Hangzhou, trying hard not to doze off for fear that I would miss the first impressions of my new home. I soon arrived at the stadium in Hangzhou, which was easy to determine because it was the last stop on the line, and excitedly hopped off of the bus into my new city But before I even had time to look around, I was quickly met by the representative of my host university. She warmly greeted me and said that her name was Zhouyi.

“Pronounced like your American name, Jo-ey,” she said with a smile.

I liked her immediately and all my fears about China quickly vanished. Zhouyi and I walked for a couple of blocks and then hailed a taxi. The green painted cab quickly stopped and we got in. The cab driver then began chattering excitedly in Chinese to Zhouyi, who was sitting next to him in the front seat while I was seated in the back. After a few moments Zhouyi turned to me and translated for me what the cab driver was saying:

“He wanted to know where you are from,” Zhouyi told me. “When I say that you were from USA, he did not believe me. He say that you are too skinny to be from USA, he say that all of the fat people in USA must have eaten all of your food. That is why you had to come to China.”

We all laughed at this and I knew then that I was going to like this country.

Our cab driving comedian soon let us off at our stop and Zhouyi pointed up (high up) to my new home. It was a blank off-white colored high-rise that stood inconspicuously in a sea of identical off- white high-rises. I gulped a little at the surrealness of my new living quarters and had to wonder how anybody was able to find their home in such a uniform landscape. But I came to China to have adventures, so I strode with Zhouyi past the smiling door guard and into the elevator that took me high, high up to my room.

We soon walked in through the door of apartment # 802 and, before I even had a chance to look around, I was quickly seized upon my new roommates. One was a girl who looked to be around twenty years old and was wearing a colorful free-flowing skirt that had pictures of Indian gods and goddesses sewed all over it. She told me that her name was Nicky and welcomed me to my new home in China. My other suite mate was a guy who seemed to be a little older, he had a long black beard and colorful tattoos ( ) that ran down his arms to his fingers. He told me that his name was Ishmail, but I had a hard time believing him- it seemed a little too “Moby Dick” for my liking.

After I was acquainted with my new suite mates, Zhouyi quickly left me in a cloud of smiles and waves. I was in my new home in China and everything seemed to be looking up. After walking around my new place and looking out at the city through the large widows that almost completely covered the walls, I became conscious of an empty feeling in my stomach. “Oh no,” I solemnly said to myself, “I am hungry.” I then quickly made way for the Cliff Bars that my mother packed for me, and quickly tore one open.

I was quickly assailed by Ishmail, who exclaimed with a gesture of exasperation, “What are you doing ? I hope you didn’t come all the way to China just to eat Cliff Bars ”

“Come on ” Nicky added. “We’re going out to get some food It is not far.”

What was I going to do? I did not want to seem like a party pooper my first day with the people that I would be living with for the next three months and, anyway, they were right, if I wanted to eat Cliff Bars I could do so at my mom’s house in New York. I came to China for the adventure

So we all strode out of the room, down the elevator, waved good-bye to the smiling door guard, and walked down the street a few blocks to a little modest restaurant on a corner. Upon stepping inside, I was immediately repulsed by the chipping pink paint on the walls and the yells of drunken men from an adjacent room. But I figured that since I was already there, I may as well eat something. So I picked up the menu that was laid on the table in front of me by the quickly moving waitress and, to my absolute horror, it was all in Chinese Those little robot like characters covered the whole page and did not leave room for a single Roman letter among them. I was obviously looking troubled, because Ishmail soon cut in and offered to order my food for me.

I thanked him with a sigh and leaned back to take in my first glimpses of the real China. The old wooded table was a little lopsided and rocked a little whenever anybody leaned on it, the walls were covered with photographs of mountains with little rivers pouring down them, and there was an odd looking plastic gold cat on a mantle piece that was busily moving one paw up and down. “That’s funny,” I thought to myself. I then heard the drunken men in the next room let out wails of uproarious laughter as the waitress passed through the door and into our section of the restaurant. She quickly took our order and Ishmail spoke for all of us. I could not make out anything that he ordered, but when he pointed to me he said something that sounded like, “go-ro.” This was an odd word I thought, as I tried to match it with the food names that I have read on the menus of Chinese Restaurants in New York City. I could not recollect reading anything that was even close to “go-ro,” but I was not really too concerned. “I came to China for the adventure,” I reassured myself.

The three of us then sat around the table making small talk. Ishmail really had a thing for bad jokes and puns. He was cranking them out left and right and really kept us in stitches. Finally our food came on steaming hot white porcelain platters. There were plates full of luscious greens, heaping piles of rice, delicious soups, and a portion of meat that I could not really identify.

This meat was chopped into many portions and was still connected to small bones that ran through the center of it. It sort of looked like a kind of chicken that I had once eaten in Chinatown that was really delicious. So, putting all of my fears away, I reached over with my chopsticks, closed in a piece, picked it up, and stuffed it straight into my mouth. I chewed away at if for some time and realized that it wasn’t chicken, though it did not have a particularly offensive taste. It actually tasted rather good. I then went to grab another piece when I was stopped short by the stares of Ishmail and Nicky.

“What?,” I stammered rather unsteadily. I was becaming a little nervous at this point.

“What did I just eat,” I asked hesitantly.

Ishmail and Nicky looked at each other as if they were about to burst for a moment and then exploded with uncontainable laughter:

“YOU JUST ATE DOG MEAT ”

Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
Morocco
Sometime in September of 2007

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