Locked up Abroad: It’s only Christmas, why are the shops closed?

by Dave Seminara on

I’d never seen such a long line at a supermarket in my life. It was December 22, 2006 and I was hoping to buy a few items at a chain supermarket in Vienna, Austria. After waiting in line for about 15 minutes, it was almost my turn. But then an announcement was made, in German, the lights were dimmed and the people behind me in line dispersed- some left their items in their baskets, others took the time to replace their groceries on the shelves.

“Veer closed now,” said the cashier, in English, sensing my confusion.

“But can’t I pay for my things?” I asked, hopefully.

“We close at six,” she said, pointing to a clock which proved that it was exactly six o’clock.

“Do you know if there are any other grocery stores in the area that are open?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said. “Everything will be closed until Wednesday.”

My wife and I had just arrived in Vienna for a four day weekend, and it was only Friday night. We assumed that the shops and museums would be open on Saturday and again on Tuesday. It turned out that the city was practically sealed shut for four full days. Some shops had limited hours on Saturday, December 23, but all were closed on Sunday and Monday, and again on Tuesday for St. Stephen’s Day.

Some restaurants remained open, but all the museums and other tourist attractions were closed. I didn’t actually mind that, but the real kicker was the fact that the streets were so eerily empty. Part of the joy of walking a great city like Vienna is the people watching, and the site of empty streets and shuttered storefronts was depressing. As Morrissey once crooned, “I want to see people and I want to see life.”

Fast forward to Christmas Day, 2011 in Falls Church, Virginia. I was about to make a sandwich from some leftover ham from our Christmas Eve meal and decided that some Swiss cheese would be the perfect complement to my lunch. I drove up the street from my house and found that both supermarkets we frequent were open. Not only that, but there were plenty of shoppers out and about. If the woman at the deli counter hadn’t wished me a Merry Christmas, it might have been just any other day.

I couldn’t help but think back to the four day lockdown in Vienna five years ago. Americans aren’t used to going even a full day with the shops closed, how would they cope with a four consecutive day shutdown? On Friday night, impatient shoppers hoping to buy Air Jordan sneakers were so eager to get into the shops that many rioted in cities across the country. Imagine the mayhem if the U.S. were to suddenly adopt European-style labor laws which mandated store closings for public holidays.

As a traveler, public holidays can be both a blessing and a curse. Having an opportunity to see how people celebrate various holidays in other parts of the world can be priceless, but walking empty streets for days on end is obviously a drag. As Americans, we’re used to being able to satisfy almost any passing fancy, even if it strikes us on Christmas day. That impulse is very hard to shake, no matter how long you live outside the U.S.

How do Americans cope with holiday shopping hours in other less consumer driven parts of the world? Some choose to bitch; others slow down and figure out how to go native. I’m caught somewhere in between, but I have to admit, my ham and Swiss cheese sandwich tasted awfully good.

[flickr image via Kevin Dooley]

Want to win a flight anywhere in the world?

by Kyle Ellison on

Yes. Anywhere in the world. Provided the ticket is under $1,500 (no business class to Cape Town, in other words).

If you’re in need of a travel fix for 2012, this seriously couldn’t be easier. To celebrate the launch of their new site, The Ambler, a site that focuses on Central American travel and culture, the creators of the site are offering readers the chance to win a $1500 travel voucher to the airline of their choice.

All that’s needed for entry is to leave a comment on a life-changing travel experience in order to be entered into the grand drawing. Vote for your favorite travel stories left by fellow users, and, as online contests usually go, the person with the most votes at the end of the contest period will be the winner of a spanking new ticket to a destination of their dreams.

So what are you waiting for? 15 seconds of your life could put you 15,000 miles around the globe, with $1,500 to get you there. When it comes to global travel, I’ll hop at any opportunity for a way to get back out on the road.

For more information or to enter the contest, visit the contest site and start thinking how travel has made you who you are today.

A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Can a guy who didn’t get high get a security clearance?

by Dave Seminara on

I was sitting at my kitchen table with a former law-enforcement official feeling nervous about the fact that I’d never taken any illegal drugs.

“In the last seven years, have you illegally used any controlled substance- cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, hash, narcotics, stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens, steroids, inhalants or prescription drugs?” the man asked, reading from a list of prepared questions.

“No, not at all,” I answered.

The man looked up from his yellow legal pad and put his pen down.

“You never smoked marijuana?” he asked, squinting his eyes as if struggling to see me.

I had no pony tail, I wasn’t wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt, and there were no half eaten cartons of Cherry Garcia in sight. Was my story really so unbelievable? I half-considered concocting some recreational drug use just to be a bit less boring.

I had passed the Foreign Service written exam and the oral assessment and had received a “conditional” offer of employment from the State Department. The offer was contingent upon being able to pass background and medical examinations, and having the good fortune to be invited to join an A-100 class, which is an introductory class for incoming Foreign Service Officers.

My kitchen table non-confession was with a contract background investigator who had been retained by the Office of Personnel Management to delve into my background to ensure that I wasn’t a spy, a terrorist, or a drug addict.
After the series of questions on drug and alcohol use, he asked me if I had any plans to overthrow the U.S. government by force. He was reading from a prepared list of questions, so it wasn’t like he’d sized me up and thought I was a radical jihadi, but I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had ever answered yes to that question.

I sailed through the rest of his prepared questions without a raised eyebrow until we got to a section on my prior foreign travel and foreign contacts. I did my best to compile a list of my foreign travel over the prior seven year period, but had no idea who I should list in the foreign contacts section. I’d made dozens of foreign friends in my travels over the years but for the sake of simplicity, listed only a few as “close and continuing contacts.”

I assumed that the State Department would want Foreign Service Officers who had traveled extensively and had foreign contacts, but in the context of a background investigation, foreign travel and contacts are viewed with suspicion, and each foreign trip elicits a litany of additional questions.

After speaking with me, the investigator started knocking on the doors of my neighbors to ask about me each of the many addresses I’d live in during the previous seven years. After several of my former bosses and co-workers were interviewed, I was warned that the investigator needed to interview my current boss.

The State Department recruiter had specifically warned us against giving notice at our current jobs because our employment offer was merely “conditional” and not a done deal, so I had to inform my boss that I was quitting. Probably. But not really giving notice just yet. They were understanding, but it made me a bit of a lame duck months before I was to leave and the day the investigator came to our small office, the place was buzzing with gossip. I had to tell everyone that I was “probably” going to join the Foreign Service. Sometime soon, I hoped.

More than a year after I passed the Foreign Service exam I finally had my security clearance and a concrete offer to join the Foreign Service. A week prior to leaving for training in Washington, I asked my girlfriend to marry me. She said yes, but we had no clue what country we’d be in the next year and that suited me just fine.

Next: The List, The Call, The Flag- Assignments in the Foreign Service

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.

[flickr image via Wiros]

Travel meets journalism at Roads and Kingdoms

by Meg Nesterov on
Last month, writers Nathan Thornburgh (a contributing editor to TIME and recent guest of Fox News) and Matt Goulding (food & culture writer and author behind the Eat This, Not That! book series) launched a new website with the intriguing tagline: “Journalism, travel, food, murder, music. First stop: Burma.” Combining on-the-spot reporting on current events and politics with in-depth cultural observations, rich photography, and engrossing narratives, Roads and Kingdoms feels like a travel blog we all want to write: a bit daring, occasionally foolhardy, and often inspiring. Fresh home from their first major trip and recovering from Burma belly, Gadling talked to co-founder Nathan about Roads and Kingdoms.

How would you describe your blog in one sentence?
Travel meets journalism.

How did it come about? How has your background in news helped (or hindered) your travels?
Matt and I felt like our work – he writes about food, I’m a foreign correspondent – actually had a lot in common. As writers on assignment, we found that the best parts of being on the road – the amazing meal on the street corner, the back-alley bar with the great live jams, the sweaty tuk tuk ride through the outskirts of the city – are left out of the final product. It’s those parts that we want to provide a home for. It’s a different kind of travel mindset, whether you’re going to London or Lagos. Journalism is all about being curious, which is a quality great travelers have as well.

It’s not meant to remain a blog: we’ll be launching our full site soon, which won’t just be our travels, but a variety of dispatches in the Roads and Kingdoms style, from writers and photographers and videographers around the world.
Why did you choose Burma as a first destination?
First off, we think Burma is going to be a huge tourist destination in the years to come, if the country continues to open up. It’s an amazingly vivid and warm country, and has a lot of the traditional rhythms of life that Thailand, for example, has lost.

Burma also had the perfect combination of stories for us to launch Roads and Kingdoms with. We were able to report on the killer hiphop scene in the south, up-and-coming graffiti artists in Rangoon, and of course, the amazing (and all but undiscovered) Burmese cuisine. Then Matt went to Bagan, this breathtaking valley of temples that will become a big part of Burma’s tourist boom. While he took in the temples, I visited the heart of the war-torn north, where I was able to hang out with gold miners and Kachin refugees and see a part of Burma that not a lot of people get to see.

What do you hope to inspire in readers?
We’d love to inspire readers to travel the way we do: with a sense of wonder and a big appetite, with curiosity and an awareness of the backstory behind the destinations.

Flashback, Burma Day One: Bad Crab from Roads and Kingdoms on Vimeo.

Roads and Kingdoms did not get detained in Myanmar for being journalists entering on a tourist visa. But Nathan still hit an unexpected roadblock on the first day in Burma: a plate of chili-slathered, rancid crab.

What are the challenges in blogging somewhere like Burma?

We were fortunate that our trip coincided with Hillary Clinton’s historic visit to Burma. The government didn’t want to create any problems that week, so we were incredibly free as journalists there; much more so than I could have ever imagined the first time I went in 2003. I was followed and watched when I visited the north, but they didn’t interfere with my work. However: Internet access still sucks. You can’t blog if you can’t connect, and that’s a huge problem in Burma.

How is social media adding to the blog?
Social media is huge for us. We’re starting out as a Tumblr, for example, not just because it’s great for articles/photos/videos, but because it’s so shareable. We want people to get involved, not just as passive consumers, but as advisers and compañeros along the way.

Where are you going next?
We have a short list, and we actually want readers to help us decide. London? Moscow? Lima? It’s a big world out there!

Follow the adventures at RoadsandKingdoms.com and connect with Nathan and Matt (and assorted interns) on Twitter @RoadsKingdoms and Facebook.

A Traveler in the Foreign Service: Not much of a diplomat

by Dave Seminara on

My journey into the U.S. Foreign Service started as a Colonel Muammar Gaddafi impersonator in a school auditorium near Buffalo, New York in 1986. I was taking part in an 8th grade Model U.N. assembly, and had been given the difficult brief of dressing up like a citizen of Malta and delivering a speech advocating Maltese interests, whatever those were during the Cold War.

According to my trusty Encyclopedia Britannica, (remember those?) Libya was one of Malta’s primary trading partners, and since it appeared to be relatively close to Libya on the map, I went ahead and donned a flowing white Arab-style robe with matching headdress and aviator sunglasses for my speech. A photograph of me in my Gaddafi costume appeared in The Buffalo News, and someone at my school decided to send a copy of the press clipping to the embassy of Malta in Washington, in the absurd belief that they might find some amusement in the fact that a 13-year old boy was photographed grossly misrepresenting their country.

A few weeks later, I received a package from the office of the Prime Minister of Malta with some books about the country, along with a scathing letter, which darkly and absurdly hinted at a sinister, anti-Maltese conspiracy perpetrated by our “so-called free press” in Buffalo. My school was convinced that I’d created an international incident and forwarded the letter to the State Department. Five months later, I received a letter from the State Department’s Desk Officer for Malta, which contained an unlikely piece of advice: consider a career in diplomacy.

My parents bought me a shortwave radio and the crackling sounds of far-off places fed my desire to see the world. After college, I took jobs in advertising and publishing more or less to fund travel opportunities, and took off as soon as my bank account allowed for extended overland trips in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, Central Asia and China. The trips left gaping holes in my resume but renewed my interest in joining the Foreign Service.

Wanderlust is a romanticized concept but it can also be an affliction, a malady that prevents people from becoming settled, productive members of the rat race. After returning to Chicago, my adopted hometown, after along overland trip in 2000, I resolved to make a serious push to get into the Foreign Service, in the hopes that it would be a career that could channel my wanderlust into something productive. Rehabilitate me, if you will.Others have had much longer and more distinguished careers in the Foreign Service than I have, and this series isn’t meant to be a definitive account of what life in the service is like. There are more than 5,000 Foreign Service Officers working in some 200 posts all around the world, and everyone has their own stories, experiences and perspectives.

When I tell people that I was in the Foreign Service, I get a lot of blank stares and awkward questions. Even well educated people often have no idea what the Foreign Service is.

“Is that like the French Foreign Legion?” a medical doctor and Ivy League graduate once asked me.

In this series, former Foreign Service Officer, Dave Seminara, will attempt to explain what the Foreign Service is and isn’t, share some Foreign Service vignettes, and provide an answer to this question: is the Foreign Service a good career option for compulsive travelers?

Next: ‘You’ve Never Smoked any Marijuana?’ Getting into the Foreign Service

Read more from A Traveler in the Foreign Service here.