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Chapter 1 - Some of my favorite things.
Chapter 2 - My Tavel Adventures
Chapter 3 - The Longest Weekend (A true story that few believe lol).
The sky was just beginning to turn a peachy orange and pinkish color that fateful evening as I slowly approached the curb in my little sports car on the NW corner of 57th and 7th avenue in Manhattan where I was expecting to pick up the love of my life. Kathy Collins was 22, a professional ballet dancer and I thought she was simply sensational - we had been living together a few months and I was sure she was the perfect girl for me. Little did I know at the time that an event was about to occur that would totally change my life forever.
I was born and raised in a sleepy little town in the Mississippi river valley known for its picturesque hills and valleys which made it a perfect place for a boy to grow into early manhood. We climbed up and down the surrounding 200 foot high bluffs which were a great place to have BB gun fights and play hide and seek. The nearby woodland forests were filled with squirrels, rabbits, deer, while the local marshes afforded great places to spear carp or go duck hunting. On the edge of the Mississippi river, we shoveled sand into screens looking for arrowheads the Indians had used centuries earlier to shoot fish. The sweet fragrance of Lilac from a neighbor's large bush drifted softly through the warm evening air.
I wouldn’t have given up those years of growing up in the Midwest, but as I came of age, I began to see things differently. When I was 17 I left home to go to the University three hours away and never did move back. It just seemed that to fit in one had to think the same, dress the same, look the same and be the same as everyone else - and that's ok for some but I suspected that there was a lot more to life than trying to pretend to live up to one's parent's expectations. I always have loved my father very much but the ideas that my mom had were not more than those ideas her mom had shoved down her throat. The idea that if you believed or pretended to believe in certain ideas all your life then after you bought the farm you would happy forever - that seemed to me to be not only unlikely and very problematic but downright nuts. As a famous comedian once said, "I believe in all religions because I don't want to miss heaven on a technicality."
As I approached manhood I decided that I would dissolve and neutralize all the ideas about life that I had learned from a loving but very confused mother, and invent a new way of being based on what I thought was important. That is when my life began to have form, a center. Life is short and I didn't want to miss out on anything simply because society suggested that something was a good or bad idea. Wanting to do things just because that's the way it's been done in the past, for example, was very questionable and yet I found myself thinking and doing things for no other reason. I tried to practice doing the total opposite of what society expected of me. It produced favorable results. I began to be in touch with something that I considered real and having value.
I left the University towards the end of the first semester of my senior year - my major, mathematics, came easy but the social amenities available living at a frat house and other things offered temptations I found impossible to resist and I withdrew on the last day possible. What now? I was single, had a few dollars in my pocket, at least enough to buy a bus ticket to New York City. I packed my bags and on the way to the bus station I dropped a postcard in the mailbox addressed to Mom and Dad. That’s how they learned I was moving to New York.
I had visited New York City for one week on a high school senior trip and although I didn't know anyone there, friends suggested that the area around Columbia University on the upper west side would be a good place to look for an inexpensive place to live, so with a for-rent section of the New York Times in one hand and my heavy suitcase in the other I hopped on a bus headed up in that direction. I eventually found a three bedroom ground floor apartment one-half block from Central Park on West 82nd Street which had a fun little goldfish pond in the middle of the garden in the back yard. It would become a perfect place for parties.
I was lonely the first couple of years living in the city but things changed when a neighbor invited me to a huge "Welcome Home" party for someone who turned out to be a famous and infamous Greenwich Village character and what a magnificent character he was. He and his friends eventually became some of my lifelong buddies and while they were all crazy, nuts, totally unpredictable, fun loving, and brilliant, they were absolutely wonderful to hang out with and they were exactly what I needed to help escape the pedestrian lifestyle of the Midwest.
Some were writers, others were producers, jazz lovers, musicians, painters and we kept each other up to date in the latest cutting edges of culture and arts in the city. We occasionally met at a museum or art gallery that had a new opening. I hung out with these guys almost on a daily basis for the rest of my time in New York. I began to think of the city as being my home, the place where I could grow up at least culturally, socially and intellectually.
Meanwhile as my sports car came to a stop at the curb on the corner of 57th and 7th that fateful evening I didn't at first see my girlfriend when suddenly an angry face appeared in my side window yelling threatening obscenities - at first I thought I was being robbed until I realized that this guy, who turned out to be the son of a famous New York mobster, was the ex-boyfriend of my true love - he had just returned from Paris and apparently had total control over her life. It was an unbelievable shock with my ego having been torn from its very threads - my girlfriend had dumped me and had moved back in with him. It was such an emotionally difficult time for me that I considered moving far away from this agonizing experience.
Three other things happened at the same time that helped with the decision to leave New York: 1.) Three of my very best buddies were also leaving for various reasons. 2.) My car burned down with no insurance, and 3.) My boss saw me driving my little sports car (a Triumph TR3) with three girls in it. I had had a strange set of undiagnosable medical things happen that kept me tied up for a couple of weeks and while my boss had been in medical school he perhaps felt guilty that he had not provided his employees with health benefits so he offered to pay me full salary for 6 months while "recovering" without my having to go into the office when actually I was hanging out with my buddies, going to art galleries and jazz clubs while smoking lots of pot 24 hours a day. He eventually called and wondered when I would be returning to the office.
Omitted here is more from the chapter "Living in New York".
It was time to leave New York even though I had only finished three of a four-year program at the Juilliard School of Music. As I readied myself to leave the city, I stumbled across a student-ship leaving for Rotterdam, Holland. The Groote Beer was a World War II troop transport ship and it was advertised as being filled with students from all over the USA. A one-way ticket cost $125. and I jumped on the chance to tour around Europe especially having just read Kerouac's "On The Road". One long blast from a fog horn, a respectful salute to the Statue of Liberty and we were on our way.
Many of the 700 girls and 200 guys on the ship hung around the bar when it closed every night at midnight and with no tax on alcohol on the high seas, we regularly ordered 40 double gins on the rocks for $4.00 - ten cents each. Every night the same couple dozen of us hung out together and you can imagine a long line of inebriated college kids doing the cha cha cha all over the ship from the engine room to the bridge and back. Living on an ocean-going ship for five days with nothing to do but hang out and watch the waves and breathe the gentle breezes was a perfect antidote to living in the hustle and bustle of the city.
While standing in line waiting for lunch the very first day out I sensed that someone was standing right behind me just as a girl said in a low voice, "Are you following me?" - I turned to see a heavenly looking girl with a big smile on her face and I replied, "Yes". She said, "Good" and we both laughed. She turned out to be a Freshman from UCLA and that started a week-long close friendship. We thoroughly enjoyed each others company and were together almost all the time for the rest of the voyage and as the boat docked in Europe we exchanged addresses with big hugs but having different agendas, we never saw each other again. I hope now after many years that she has had a very happy life filled with love.
We landed in Rotterdam after our week-long voyage at sea and I was leaning over a rail watching the ship tie up when I noticed a band, a marching band and I later wrote, "Out of tune, out of step, out of needle and thread to fix their ripped band uniforms - yup it's a parade hey it's for us."
I arrived in Europe with just $125. in my pocket (which was gone in two weeks) but I ended up hitchhiking around Western Europe, North Africa (Tanger, Morocco) and Egypt and all over the Middle East for a little over a year. In high school I had found a book in my father's library called, "The Fifteen Most Decisive Battles of the World" which I found totally captivating and I decided to try to visit as many of these famous sites as I could and I ended up spending seven months hitchhiking all over Italy, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt trying to re-create these battles as I visited these historical landmarks. I also thoroughly enjoyed finding and exploring the many dozens of magnificent ancient Greek and Roman structures throughout the Middle East that are still standing. Baalbek in Lebanon is still one of my all-time favorites.
I rarely hitchhiked at night and when I got tired I would simply find a place that looked quiet and comfortable and safe and off the beaten track and using my backpack as a pillow, I simply dozed away. I was never robbed or even threatened my entire trip.
If asked with respect no hotel or restaurant ever denied the use of their bathrooms. When the bathrooms had hot water I quickly shaved and took a sponge bath. Once a month or so I bought packages of 10 to 20 inexpensive undies - I never washed the old ones, I just threw them away and put on new ones. I did look presentable. Most of the time I wore my Brooks Brothers dark blue blazer, a button-down blue shirt, and tan slacks. In Paris, I slept under the bridges for days on end. The only problem was to find a piece of cardboard to sleep on that didn't have pee all over it. I rarely ate American food preferring to experience the local flavors of wherever I was. I didn't want the bother of carrying a camera around thinking instead that looking at things clearly would help create permanent images in my brain. A world traveler friend once suggested the best way to travel was to simply keep one's eyes and ears open.
I carried a little ukulele in my backpack and whenever I passed a restaurant that had a long line of locals waiting to get in I assumed the food was good and inexpensive and I would toss my hat to the ground, play and sing popular folk songs until I had collected enough money in the hat to eat. I did that almost every day. If the weather was excellent and the natives were happy the tipping was occasionally significance. I usually would also collect enough money so I could also buy a weekly bus or subway pass when I was in a big city and I always arranged to have enough extra money for museum and jazz club entrance fees. Of course, I always had enough money for a beer or two no matter where I was.
I have always been a huge jazz and opera fan and once in Italy, I spent $165. so I could watch my favorite opera from a box seat. I also did need a couple of dollars for a visa stamp every time I went from one country to another. Back then American Express offices throughout Europe had a free postal service which my parents eventually used to send me $30. a month thus the title of this book, "Europe on a dollar a day". It and my ukulele was everything I needed to survive. I discovered that there was actually very little that really I needed to spend money on.
Although more from my chapter "Hitchhiking around Europe" is in another document, the following map does show some of the places I visited.
I remember when I finally arrived back in the USA the customs guy at the LaGuardia airport in New York slowly paged through my passport and when he realized that I had been gone over a year he looked up, smiled and said, "Welcome home". I got all clogged up. I couldn't help it. It was like I had been in a continuous existential war every moment for over a year and I had come out of it ok. I had survived. I was alive. I was happy and I had safely arrived back home.
(To date I have been to 64+ countries, around the world 3 times, to China and India three times, Paris about 20 and I have lived all over other parts of Europe, Asia, North Africa, and South America.)
Part 1 - Language problems while traveling abroad,
Part 2 - Currency problems,
Part 3 - Passport oops,
Part 4 - Favorite places to visit,
Part 5 - Traveling secrets,
Part 6 - How to upgrade airline tickets free,
Part 7 - Interesting tails from my travels,
Part 8 - Facing perilous danger unknowingly
I never really had any serious problems with languages - I do not speak any foreign languages but there are some things one will naturally quickly learn how to say when in a new country like: How Much? Where is? Thank you? Please? How are you? Being able to count from 1 to 10 is usually a great help as well.
Once a bunch of us in Paris hopped on a chartered bus for a weekend on the French Rivera and on the way back I sat next to this really cute girl who almost spent the entire 8-hour trip back to Paris trying to teach me how to say 'Paris' without an accent. I would say it, she would say no then say it herself and we went round and round like this for what seems like hundreds if not thousands of times and only once did I pronounce it correctly. It's the R that has a new sound for my tongue, lips, mouth, throat, head cavity, and brain lol. It really did clarify the problems of learning to speak a new language.
I once had a 2-day layover in Calais, France waiting for a boat to take us across the channel to the UK and there was a guy my age from Rome and he wanted to practice his English - we were sitting in a little park and we concentrated on the word 'sparrow' - the little bird and when he tried to say it he rolled his Rs and it was absolutely impossible for him to say 'row' without twirling his tongue.
Once I was in a little cafe in Shanghai, China and I watched the waiter bring a very very nice looking big bowl of vegetables and fish soup to someone seated near me. It looked sooooo good. I got out my dictionary and found the words for 'fish' and 'soup' which is what I ordered. She said some things in Chinese and I presumably said yes and she soon brought me a big bowl with hot water in it and one large whole fish including the head and tail lol. Hmmm not quite what I was expecting. I obviously should have pointed to the good-looking soup then to myself. The waiter would certainly have understood.
Once in a little restaurant in Hangzhou, just south of Shanghai, I ordered two little buns filled with meat and vegetables via pointing to a picture in the menu and raised two fingers - the waitress asked me some questions in Chinese and I probably said yes without knowing what she was saying and 10 minutes later she brought me two huge plates each containing about 50 of these little buns. Oops. I must have looked hungry lol.
I found a really nice little restaurant at the end of a bus line in Macau and gathering next door in a parking lot were hundreds of women who were getting in line to buy tickets to get on a boat to take them just across the little river into mainland China to work. After I finished lunch, for kicks, I got into line and when I got to the guy selling tickets he looked up to me and started laughing. He motioned to his co-workers and they started laughing as well. He quickly made it clear that I could not get on the boat with all the ladies. This is the same restaurant in which I once said to the waiter, "No I do not want a braised pork chop with fried lice, I want a braised pork chop with fried rice".
One is always at the mercy of people who deal with the public when it comes to money - in a new country the bills and coins are new and different and when you give someone a bill you just have to trust they will give you the correct change. They rarely did that in Rio de Janeiro.
When I visited Rio in the early 80s for a six-week vacation they had been having serious inflation problems. Two years before I got there the government had printed brand new paper bills. New 1,000 bills, new 100s, new 10s, and new one dollar bills. They were all new colors so people could easily tell them apart. The new ones were blue, orange, red, and green for example. One year before I got there they printed a new batch of bills again changing the colors. I can't count the number of times I gave a clerk a one hundred dollar bill (10 dollars in their currency) and the clerk gave me some change and nine bills marked '10 dollars' which looked fine except the ten dollar bills she gave me were only worth a few pennies each. You had to know which colors of the bills were new and which were old.
The only other money problem I really had was dealing with a money changer in Paris:
I needed to change $100. dollars into French money so I walked up to a money changer in a little phone like booth just next to the Notre Dame and asked the lady in the booth if she charged a commission. She said no so I handed her a $100. bill and in a few moments she returned only $80. worth of French money. I refused to take it suggesting she made a mistake. There is no mistake, she replied, we don't charge a commission but we charge a service charge.
She absolutely refused to give me my $100. back insisting that the transaction had already gone through and there was nothing she could do. She kept trying to get rid of me so she could service other customers. Finally, I said in a very loud voice, call the police, you are not going to get away with this. She said ok fine but get out of the way of my other customers. I tried everything but it was clear that she was not going to give me my money back or change her mind.
So, I stood right in front of everyone and started yelling at her and her other potential customers, "This lady is a liar and a thief. Do not do business with her." I yelled it over and over louder and louder. A few people came along and I explained what had happened. The crowd began to form. A policeman came over and someone explained to him what had happened. At the very last minute as the police began to question her, she gave me my $100. back. Sheesh lol. You never know.
It was getting cold in Paris in October that first year so I decided to hightail it to London where I had a better chance of finding a job so I could at least buy warmer clothes. The best way to get to the UK from France is to take a ferry from Calais, France to Dover, England. I hitchhiked from Paris to Calais, got on the boat but as the boat was approaching Dover I heard my name on the loudspeaker and that I was to go to the passport inspection station where I was informed that I would not be allowed in England. WTF lol. They refused to explain why they wouldn't let me into England DUH and I was told I must stay on the boat which would be returning to France. Hello? I put up as big a fuss as I thought I could but they insisted that I stay on the boat. It returned to Calais, which by the way is a very very nice little French town. I had no choice but to wait for the boat the next day. I didn't have money to stay at a hotel but found that a local Catholic School for girls allowed people to sleep there but one could only be there from 7 pm to 7 am.
For three days in a row, I got on the boat and was sent back to France without explanation. It did give me a chance to wander all around this delightful little town and I eventually found out that every year in late summer the UK stop student types from entering England because the Queen had strict rules regarding the percentage of people they rejected. Let the tourists in but throw the students out. Since that time I have thoroughly disliked anything and everything about England even to this day. Even now whenever I hear an English accent I feel umm unfriendly.
The only other time I had passport problems was after hanging around Beirut, Lebanon for six weeks I decided to continue my journey east to India. October was a perfect time to visit India because the monsoon rains had just finished and the trip afforded me an opportunity to visit three famous old cities - Damascus, Syria - Baghdad, Iraq, and Tehran, Persia (aka Iran). Damascus, the first leg, was only 70 miles from Beirut and it turned out to be an exciting place to visit and it was full of mysterious charm, excellent food, great little outdoor cafes filled with people drinking hot mint tea and smoking hookahs, friendly natives, and like really old cities, a central market that looked like it has been there for thousands of years. On one side of the city was a little mountain on top of which were a lot of TV towers. I thought the view from up there might be spectacular so I took a taxi to the top but was stopped near the top with soldiers and rifles. So much for the great view. I really really liked Damascus and stayed there a couple of weeks before continuing my trip to Baghdad and Tehran and beyond.
I caught a truck going all the way to Baghdad - it's only a ten hour trip by car but I had to sit in the back next (on top of or under) a giant earth moving machine and yes it was a very bumpy trip. Every once in a while I would sit up in the cabin and wave to all the people we passed. Crazy tourist, I am sure some people thought. We spent the night sleeping on the desert floor - I put up my tent, crawled inside hoping to avoid any creatures of the desert night. As we approached Baghdad we were stopped by soldiers for a visa check. Visa? Oops. I didn't have one and despite trying my best to get in, I had to go all the way back to Beirut to get a visa.
Back in Beirut, I decided I would visit Egypt before I continued to India and I spent six weeks traveling all over Egypt. Alexandra, on the coast, has a magnificent history. I was into my second year of hitchhiking around and I guess I had enough. I eventually caught a boat from Egypt to France and a flight back home.
Whenever I am in a new city (outside of the USA) I almost always first go to the 'old' market in the oldest part of town. There is the heart, the essence of what is there.
Acapulco
I have so many favorite places. When I lived in Los Angeles the airlines had what they called a Triangle Fare. If you had a roundtrip ticket from Los Angeles to Chicago you could include Acapulco, Mexico for an extra $5.00 (yes five dollars) so every year for twenty years that I flew back to visit my parents, I included Acapulco. It has breathtaking beauty all around. It is simply a magnificent place to visit. I always stayed near the top floor of a family hotel right on the beach at the Hotel Ornos. There are morning beaches, afternoon beaches, and evening beaches. There are guys on the beaches with fish on a stick they are ready to roast for you for pennies. The sun is very hot, the natives are friendly and the food is excellent and inexpensive, BUT, You may want to check with the State Department because it can be a very violent place for tourists. Here are some pictures of Acapulco
Baalbek
Baalbek, Lebanon, is the site of one of the most mysterious ruins of the Roman Empire, a monumental two-thousand-year-old temple to Jupiter that sits atop three thousand-ton stone blocks. I heard about it from friends I had met in Beirut and when I got to the site, at the end of the Bakka Valley, I was totally mesmerized and was convinced I was on another planet. I was almost speechless for two days. I was the only one at the site. Here are some pictures of Baalbek.
Paris
Paris is one of my all-time favorite places in the entire world and I have been there at least a couple dozen times and have gone into the details in another part of this blog but for now, here are a couple of pointers to Paris. There are more than 150 art museums in Paris. Museums in Paris , The Louvre , The Louvre via Wikipedia - Or click here (alert - some of the links don't work yet) for Paris pictures or here for more pictures of Paris and around Farnce.
I remember back when I first visited Paris. I had no money for hotels but soon discovered that there were many college guys my age who slept under the Paris bridges. It was a very cold October the first time I arrived in Paris and I hung around the famous Paris Bookstore Shakespeare and Co. a lot just to get warm. (Here is a nice Shakespeare and Co. article from Vanity Fair magazine)
I found out later that the owner, George Whitman, an expat, let college type people from all over the world sleep there free in exchange for two hours of daily work in the bookstore. There were regularly 20 - 30 of us sleeping in sleeping bags all over the floors in the three-story building. Actually, because I was writing a biography of Jack Kerouac, George gave me the luxury of being able to live in the upstairs apartment (which had a kitchen and a bath) as the writer-in-residence. I occasionally lived there for months on end while enjoying the city. It became my 'home' in Paris and I am a proud Tumbleweeder (one who has lived in the bookstore).
I will never forget one cold Saturday evening when a bunch of us decided to do something special for the bookstore. We pooled our money and bought a big bag of chocolate covered almonds and a big jar of instant espresso coffee and a bunch of tiny paper cups. Part of the crew prepared the coffee in the upstairs little kitchen while I, apparently because I had a very red hat and a red coat was the first Santa Claus. We took turns standing outside the front door of the bookstore that cold Saturday from early evening to 11 pm when we closed, offering everyone a small cup of hot espresso coffee and a chocolate covered almond untouched by human fingers. All of the customers were delighted with the idea of free hot coffee and chocolate just for showing up - in fact, one young lady was so enamored with the unexpected offering that she wrote a poem and presented it to us. It is always great to be unexpectedly acknowledged for things like that. I have wondered if George ever found out what we did. He probably did - he knew everything that was going on from top to bottom, but living and being in the bookstore is a whole other story.
I still keep in touch with many very very dear friends from all over the world from those days living in Paris.
Rio de Janeiro
Before I got married I was able to spend six incredible weeks in Rio. Two weeks before Carnival and three weeks after and it is simply one of the most magical places on this planet. The natives are very friendly, the food is fantastic, the views are out of this world and the Carnival itself is very very special. Here are some of my favorite pictures of Rio.
Whenever I travel I always sew big pockets into both the right and left insides of all my pants. If you start off with a light but strong piece of cloth about 16" long and 8" wide, fold it in half, sew up the sides and sew the opening at the top into the insides of the pants, you will find it is extremely convenient because in these pockets you can keep money, traveler's checks, your passport and return airline tickets without fear of being pickpocketed. At any time you can reach under your belt and pants and get access to cash without anyone really noticing what you are doing.
If I am traveling alone I always bring along a little pup tent (with collapsible aluminum supports) and use earplugs and an eye cover. No matter where I am sleeping, I open the tent, put it on top of any floor or ground or bed then throw in my sleeping bag and pillows. When I am in a youth hostel I put my backpack in the tent and zip it up with a little lock. It won't keep thieves away but it will keep cleaning people honest. With a tent, my body never touches any bedding and I avoid bed bugs.
I never hook up with any kind of a tour when I travel. Busses are almost free and they go all over town. Nor have I ever booked a hotel room in advance when I am traveling alone or even when I am traveling with my wife - I never know long I am going to stay until I have had a chance to look around and check things out - If it looks interesting I may stay a couple of days or even a couple of weeks or months. I am more of a youth hostel kind of guy. If I had ample money, of course, I would stay at comfortable hotels but I am usually on a very low budget so I can travel longer and further. I spend a lot of time talking to other travelers to find great local things to do, find local popular restaurants and inexpensive places to sleep. I have three rules when it comes to places to sleep: they must be clean, safe, and inexpensive. I like youth hostels because it's easy to meet other travelers who know their way around.
I had to frequently remind myself to never complain about anything. EVER. Complaining just causes drama which is the very last thing one needs while traveling thousands of miles from home lol. Just keep on smiling as the song goes. That worked out well for me.
I always keep my eye open for local restaurants that have a long line of locals waiting to eat. I almost never eat American food or go to American food joints. I frequently ride lots and lots of busses when I get to a new place. I always try to find a bus with a vacant front seat so I have a good view, and I never get on a bus that is packed with people. I frequently rely heavily on a book called The Lonely Planet which is an excellent guide for traveling on a low budget. There are hundreds of different Lonely Planet books each about a different country. I could, but never have checked with the State Department for travel alerts. If I am going to be anyplace for more than a month I frequently check in with the local American Embassy giving them my local address just in case someone is trying to reach me for any reason.
A world traveler once suggested, "When you travel, keep your eyes and ears open." When I am traveling with my wife I like to have a camera handy but when I am alone I don't want to be bothered with a camera. I always try to imprint images in my brain so I have them as long as possible.
When I travel with my wife she understandably wants a hotel room with a private bath although we did stay at youth hostels throughout China. Inexpensive clean hotels usually are around $40. a night while youth hostels average around $6.00 a night.
British expat and New York Times best-selling author Tilly Bagshawe knows a thing or two about flying.
She told Bloomberg that she typically flies around 100,000 miles a year, and has often managed to get herself bumped up from economy class without paying by deploying a two-word strategy.
Even when you have air miles, carriers are notoriously stingy when it comes to handing out upgrades. And the days of dressing smart at check-in the hope of a freebie are long-gone.
But, according to Bagshawe, there is still a way to get what you want, at least with her preferred airline, Virgin Atlantic.
Apparently, all you have to do is utter the words: "revenue management," which a little-known department, which she likens to the "Flying Club’s boss" that has responsibility for making sure a flight is profitable.
Bagshawe advises you call and ask the reservations agent: "Have revenue management released any first-class seats for miles upgrades yet?"
"When they say no, ask them to check or just be put through to revenue management so you can ask when they will release some, as well as how many seats are left," she went on. "Politely respond like this: 'You have 20 seats unsold? Why aren’t you releasing them?'
"Often by the end of the conversation they say, 'OK, we’ll release one for you,' or they might tell you to call back tomorrow.
"Doing that, we’ve had a pretty much 100% success rate," she added.
Business Insider contacted Virgin to find out whether this trick is actually likely to work. A Virgin Atlantic spokeswoman responded with the following: "Each year we release thousands of reward seats for our Flying Club members and customers can check availability online and through our contact center."
Click here for details.
Traveling in a foreign country offers a great deal of unexpected freedom. There is zero concern about what people think or say about you. Their opinions really have nothing to do with you - it is more about their own expectations and interpretations. One must be careful so you don't unintentionally insult them by not observing their sometimes unknown, sometimes important rules of behavior. Here are other unusual social habits you might want to know about while traveling to foreign lands.
Singing (scatting) in Jerico
The first three years I lived in New York City (all over the upper west side) I studied composition at the Julliard School of Music where I became a huge Jazz fan especially enjoying Charlie Parker (alto saxophone) and I listened to his music over and over enough times to be able to sing/scat his lines in many of his songs. When I was sitting in a little cafe having coffee in Jericho, Jordan, (Yes the "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho" Jericho) I noticed a huge two-story mound of earth and dirt, right in the center of town - the mound was famous because of some historical occurrence. Jerico has been around a while having been inhabited since 9,600 B.C. making it over 11 thousand years old. I wanted to contribute something, anything, to this really beautiful old town and the only thing I could think of was to share my love of Charlie Parker, so without any fear of rejection or concern that people would laugh at me, I sat on top of that huge pile of dirt and scatted all the Charlie Parker songs I could think of for about an hour. It probably didn't hurt that I smoked a lot of hash all over the Middle East at that time. Every day for the next couple of weeks that I was there, shopkeepers and people all over town would smile and stop me and want to talk to me - they all knew that I was the one who had been "singing" on top of the dirt pile. Plus there were very few Americans who stopped in their town and all were curious and asked many questions about everything.
Actually, the same kind of thing happened to me once in Tangier, Morocco. From the beach, there is a very very long steep road that goes up the hill to the main part of town. One day I saw a very old thin man pushing a two-wheeled cart trying to get up the hill with great difficulty. I was just a young guy in my early 20s so I thought what the heck so I helped him push the cart all the way up the hill and from then on wherever I went, all over town people would smile and say "Ah you helped old man push cart" - small world. Almost everyone in that part of the world is extremely friendly to strangers offering food and lodging and friendship.
Arguing with a Russian engineer in southern Egypt near Luxor.
I was sightseeing at the Aswan Dam in southern Egypt when a tall rough looking guy came up to me, put his finger on my chest and said, "Russia good, America no good". He was not aggressive but apparently just wanted to start a conversation, so I gently poked him in his chest and replied, "Russia very very bad, America very very good" and I smiled. I didn't know any Russian and he didn't know any other English words so we eventually shook hands and smiled a friendly smile and I walked on. Egypt is the only place where little kids yelled at me, "America go home." Don't miss the National Museum in Cairo, and on the south - Luxor, the Valley of the Kings and Queens, and Abu Simbel. BTW southern Egypt is EXTREMELY hot in the summertime getting up over 100 degrees in the shade. Alexandria, on the coast, has a long very interesting history.
Bathtubs in Tangier, Morocco
In one of the highest spots in the city of Tangier in Morocco, on the North western most tip of Africa, there is a flat solid gigantic rock about the size of a tennis court on top on which there are more than a dozen large rectangles each about the size of a large bathtub cut into the rock. The scenery from that place is breathtaking with the Atlantic ocean to the west and the Mediterranean to the North and east. Although mainly empty, many of these 'bathtubs' had trash in them and I had no idea why they were there. Much later I discovered that these 'bathtubs' were the burial locations for Napoleon's favorite Generals who had died in battle. The discovery of that sort of thing is one of the reasons I like to travel. I was in Tangier for six weeks and loved every minute of it. Although at this time I had no money I rented the top floor of an apartment building for four American dollars a month and rented out rooms to tourists from Europe for $10. dollars a night - I was rich lol. We (the college guys I was hanging out with) found a little cafe run by a Spanish couple that served meals for $.25 for a complete meal. This was a long time ago and no doubt prices have changed since then lol.
Getting to the famous Battle of Marathon burial mound.
As I have previously mentioned, as young adult, I became fascinated with a book in my father's library about the 25 most decisive European battles which I read and reread many many times. On my way over to Europe, I decided to visit as many of these sites as I possibly could. For example, I met an Italian fellow on the ferry from Brindisi, Italy to Greece and he invited me to travel around Greece with him for 3 weeks in his little yellow VW. He was well prepared and had a list of the best youth hostels throughout Greece. I very much wanted to visit the location of the famous Battle of Marathon and we began to follow a crude map which is all we had. The roads kept getting narrower and narrower until finally, we were driving on a single path road. It looked like we had somehow ended up in a cow pasture and sure enough, as we made a turn in the road we discovered that we were on the INSIDE of a cow pasture. I got out of the car and opened the gate so we could get OUT of the pasture. We waved and smiled at the bewildered farmer as we passed him up the road. The famous Battle of Marathon burial mound was just a short distance away.
My first real history lesson.
I was in a little coffee house in Athens, Greece and someone asked me where I was headed. "Lebanon", I replied and everyone suddenly became animated and said, "Oh no no you must not go there. They are all really terrible people." I had not seen an English newspaper for many months and figured I was not up to date with current events and I asked, "What happened"? And they explained that one of Greece's most beautiful princesses had been invited to spend a holiday in Lebanon but when she got there they killed her and her entire entourage. "Wow, I replied. When did this happen?" "Oh about three thousand years ago" they replied. Oops lol.
The lady in blue.
I had a chance to spend six weeks in Rio - four before the Carnival and two after. Being there early I found a really nice inexpensive apartment just a couple of blocks from the Copacabana Beach. Rio is a truly magnificent place for an American to visit. Having absolutely no religious restrictions on what they can and can or should not do, the people there are happy and free to be whatever they wish. For example in the week of Carnival most streets are filled with people joyously slowly moving down the street dancing the Samba. The music is still in my blood. One evening a bus came along and hanging in the open front door was a completely naked slightly fat lady - her entire body painted blue, singing a popular Samba song waving and smiling at everyone. The crowds went wild with delight. In America, with her more arrogantly parochial and bigoted customs and laws, she would probably be thrown in jail.
Steering a large ocean-going ship and sitting in an airplane cockpit.
On a very large ship carrying cars and people from Tangier, Morocco to Spain I ran into a guy my age and we decided to examine the entire ship including the engine room (we waved and smiled at the guys down there) and we finally found ourselves on the bridge talking to a young extremely good-looking young female captain. I asked her how she steers the ship and she pointed to a large round knob. I asked her if I could turn it and she said yes but just a little. I turned it just one little notch clockwise and the entire ship jerked rather suddenly to the right. It was one of the most memorable moments of my life.
Whenever I get on a commercial airplane, if the pilots are seated, being an ex-pilot myself, I always sort of yell in - "Hey guys any chance we can practice a barrow roll today?" The best answer I ever got was, "Not intentionally." lol. I occasionally send a note to the Captain indicating he has ex-pilot on board and once it paid off. On a flight back to Bangkok, Thailand I was invited into the cockpit and it was a once in a lifetime magnificent experience. The view from up there is simply out of this world.
Problems on top of a Hill in Sparta,Greece.
Being familiar with the battles between Athens and Sparta in 411 BC. from reading Thucydides I was determined to visit a very famous site on top of a hill in Sparta. Halfway up the hill was a very tall fence with a gate. Although I have never really been a gatecrasher I really did want to visit the site so against my better judgment I climbed up and over the tall gate and started wandering around the magnificent ruins on top of the hill. I suddenly stopped because I was at the very edge of a deep hole that apparently had been the basement of an old building. There were no tourists or people around for miles and had I accidentally fallen into the 10-foot drop into the hole I would have ended up pushing up daisies in Sparta. Luckily I wildly swung my arms around and avoided falling. Yes, it was scary and it presumably was the last time I ever crashed a fence.
The hard way to get to Burma.
I was living in a little town called Mae Sei in the northernmost part of Thailand and wanted to go to Burma just across the river from where I was staying but the bridge was closed down and no one was allowed to cross it because of some kind of conflict. I was living in an apartment like compound built into a hill with lots of other guys my age when I heard that the actual Thailand - Burma boundary was just half a mile up the street from where I was living. Determined to get to Burma I ignored all the suggestions about not going that way and wandered into the jungle at the end of the street. After a half hour walk, I came across a little telephone booth like shack in which there was a soldier with a rifle. Like an innocent young guy from the midwest I smiled and waved hello. He made an unusual gesture with his arm and hand bobbing which I didn't understand but continued on my way. He didn't shout so I thought I had his approval to continue. After being sure I had been in Burma I returned only to discover later that his hand bobbing was trying to tell me the area was saturated with Cobra snakes to prevent anyone from entering or leaving Burma. Oops lol. Luckily these were the only two times that I ever had any serious potential difficulties in my travels.
The following is an experience I had while living in Florida after being married about ten years.
This is one of my favorite stories which I call The Longest Weekend. It is actually a true story but very few believe it could be true. Here is that story:
Bye Honey
My marriage is mostly (well, sometimes at least) hugs and kisses and lovy and dovy and stuff but this was not one of these days. My wife has a terrible habit of hiding my things. I will bring home papers or whatever, set them down somewhere and, whala, the next time I go look for them they are gone.
They appear to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Later, sometimes much later I may find my things under a blue pail in the garage for example or somewhere totally unexpected.
Although my wife and I have been through this and other things a thousand and one times in the past thirty plus years that we have been married, this issue is as yet unresolved. She continues to hide my things. No doubt she has her own explanations, excuses, reasons, justifications and what have you for her behavior but it came to a head just a couple of years ago when I pronounced, "If you EVER hide anything of mine again I will do something that will not put a smile on your face."
There, she had it. She was now on notice. It is just one of many games wives apparently like to play. Husbands are innocent of everything of course lol.
"Don't blame me for your illusions" I sometimes yell.
"Don't blame me for your delusions" she sometimes yells back.
It was time for lunch. I was excited because I had just bought a $4. a vegetable steamer that works in the microwave and I wanted to try it out for the first time. We generally steam things in a rice cooker but that takes 45 minutes and I was looking forward to being able to steam fresh vegetables in six minutes.
I opened the cupboard door under the espresso machine just left of the sink to get the new microwave steamer and guess what.
It was gone.
Immediately I knew that my wife had hidden it which of course made me furious - not even daring to think that that was her intent.
I made a sort of gurgling sound with my throat in a state of extreme frustration and immediately thought to myself, "that's it - I am going away for the weekend."
There was a ham radio festival on the east coast of Florida the next weekend - this was a Thursday so I decided to pack my bags and immediately drive the three hour trip to the ham festival, help them set up Thursday and Friday, hang around the festival on Sat then on Sun or Mon drive down to Miami then return home mid Monday or Tuesday.
It was a wonderful plan and I was excited about getting away from my nagging stuff hiding wife.
I left my wife a note which read, "You should not have hidden the steamer. It was a terrible mistake after you promised never to do that again. I am going away for a little while. Bye."
I put the note on the kitchen table, put a few days worth of clean clothes in a backpack, grabbed a sleeping bag, my toothbrush, my passport, stopped at the bank for some cash, and away I went.
I knew my wife would happily survive if I wasn't around for a while - we were living with my father, she had her own car, was financially secure without my being there, and had lots of friends to keep her company.
"Woopie" I yelled to no one in particular as I started driving from the West coast to the East coast of Florida.
However, after about ten minutes as I approached the main North-South Florida Interstate highway ( I-75 ) I suddenly began to consider alternative places to spend the weekend. A hamfest would be fun, no doubt, but, but, just what are the practical alternatives.
How about a weekend in Key West? I hear lots of cheering in the background.
Or, of course, one of most favorite places on this entire planet is New York City but that's a full twenty-four hours driving straight through, a little much.
No, let's go south to Key West I thought to myself as I followed the arrows to the entrance of the highway going south to Miami.
Three hours later I found a parking space on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, put a quarter in the meter for ten minutes, walked quickly across the white white sandy beach toward the Atlantic Ocean just to dip my toe in it just to say hello and it was then I noticed the very very dark actually almost black clouds to the south. There was a storm line with ugly clouds all around. The wind was, in fact, picking up and I thought to myself, ah, hello? do I really want to drive three hours straight into that storm to get to Key West?
I smiled at a group of people and said, "Getting a little windy, uh?" and one of them replied, "Oh, that's Hurricane Floyd, it's just a small one - don't worry about it."
Well, Key West was out of the question, and New York City was back in. Yeaaaaaa !
"New York here I come" I yelled to the wind as I leveled the car at sixty-nine miles per hour heading north toward the great city of New York.
What is there to do in New York City if you have just a weekend? Have a beer or two and smoke a good cigar at the White Horse Tavern? So so many things to do in the big Apple - the town I call home. I only lived there for five years but it has gotten deep into my DNA as has Paris.
Wow. New York City. I truly love the city and all its magnificence and charm.
I was into the drive to NYC about three hours north of Miami when the weather report on the radio mentioned that a cold front was about to blanket the entire east coast including New York City.
Woops.
No thanks to cold weather. Been there, done that.
I pulled over to the side of the road and sat for a few moments trying to decide what to do, where to go.
I glanced up to see an airplane fly into a cloud. "That's it" I proclaimed - an airport.
I was soon in the United Airlines ticket counter at the Southwest Florida International Airport talking to a travel agent.
As I got out my United Airlines credit card I said, "That is correct madam, it really doesn't matter where I go, you see, I am running away from a nagging wife and I just want to get on an airplane today."
She laughed and said, "Well I need to know the name of a city that you would like to go to."
I thought for a moment and said, "Well how about Beijing or Shanghai." I was serious. I had been there some years ago and would enjoy a short visit.
She fiddled around for a while with her computer and finally said, "I can get you out this evening at 7:10 which arrives in Shanghai yesterday evening at 9:30 pm".
Perfect I thought. "OK", I said, I'll take it.
"You have a visa, right?" she asked me.
woops. "Laughing - where is your next favorite place to visit," she asked.
Paris.
Yes, let's go to Paris.
She found a ticket that got me into Washington Dulles at 7:40 that same evening and at about 8: am the next morning I was standing outside the Charles de Gaulle airport and it was chilly and still dark and damp and there I was standing in my Florida short pants - I may have been the first passenger to arrive in Paris still wearing his never EVER take em off Florida shorts.
My knees were shivering and I quickly thought about going someplace to change into something warmer. The only problem was that I didn't have anything warmer lol.
The last time I was in Paris I took a bus from Gaulle airport to the Arc de Triomphe and from there I took a short walk to the subway on the Champs Ulysses which took me directly into the Latin Quarter. Unless I am in the Latin quarter I just don't feel quite right - too many tourists perhaps, not quite like a homey comfortable feeling I get any time I am in the vicinity of Place St. Michael on the Left Bank.
The Latin Quarter is not named after people from Latin countries in South America, it is named the Latin Quarter because all the people who lived there in the old days spoke Latin.
Kewl.
When I lived in Paris a long time ago I stayed at a great place just behind the Notre Dame and there was a bath down the hall and the beds were squeaky but the blankets were thick and warm. The fact that it was a six story walk up just meant that I would get more exercise.
That was my best bet - a six story walk up into a tiny room with no hot water except an hour or so in the mornings. But this was Paris and when I first arrived in Paris my early 20s with the intent to spend two years hitchhiking around the world, I was happy to join fellow travelers sleeping on pieces of cardboard under the French bridges. A tiny room was paradise compared to the bridges. If I had only imagined when I left home that I would end up in Paris I would have brought along more money or at least other credit cards.
So, here I was in Paris with no money and no credit cards. Hello? "Is there something wrong with my brain or something?" I thought to my self as I rushed down Blvd Saint Germain toward the old neighborhood where I used to live.
It was wonderful being back in Paris but I soon discovered my old neighborhood had disappeared. The area around the old location of the University of Paris changed after the Paris student riots - the French government scattered the University departments all around Paris. There were no more blocks upon blocks of tiny apartments housing students.
But ahhh I remembered the Shakespeare Bookstore just across the river Seine from the Notre Dame and wondered if that was a possibility. I found George Whitman (an ex-pat who has been living in Paris for 60 years) sitting around a bunch of people on the second floor - I stayed there some time ago - he welcomed me and offer me tea. I joined the conversation about Ayn Rand, got George's approval to stay here and an invite to live in the writer's apartment upstairs to work on my book about Kerouac and settled into another Paris experience that one can only dream about. But that's a whole other story in itself. Whenever I am in Paris I always try to get down to Tanger, Morocco so after two months at the bookstore and after a hint of cold weather I hitchhiked to Tanger to warm up. I simply love Tanger and have been there often. Back in Paris, lots of hugs and goodbyes and I returned to Florida to my forever loveable but nagging wife.
Thus the longest weekend lasted three months but we have now been married over thirty years and my wife is still hiding my stuff. Such is married life lol.
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