“Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, — act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!”

–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Psalm of Life,” (1839)

This is a book about warning signs. The author wrote the book because he thought warning signs from other countries are neat. The book is to show people the signs that they see, which help people figure out what to do. They use pictures instead of words so you see what could happen.

For example, there is a picture of a wheelchair racing down a hill towards water. There must be sharks or other creatures down at the bottom of the hill. If you’re in a wheelchair and somebody let go of you, you would roll down the hill into the water and be eaten. Another sign says “Beware” and shows a car hitting a cow. There might be cows coming across the road and a car might hit them. Another picture looks like someone standing—we just see his legs—and some sort of saw or machine is coming towards the man’s knee. This sign warns you a saw might be coming and it might saw your leg off.

This book is good. I like it because there’s lots of things you’ve probably never seen. You can look at them and say, “I’ve never seen this sign before.”

The book might be better if there were words on the bottom that told you what the pictures are. The pictures would be more interesting if the people had eyes and you could see their hands. The colors are okay. If I drew these pictures I would use colors I thought people might be wearing.

I would recommend this book to someone who likes signs.

.

Note: Cedar Van Tassel will enter the second grade at Southeast of Saline School in north-central Kansas next month. His past contributions to Vagablogging have included a book about God, a poem about monsters, and in informational science article about the natural world. He recently noted to this mother that his Uncle Rolf is “not an adult.”

Recent Vagablogging.net guest book reviews include Bill Jenkins’ review of Elliott Hester’s Adventures of a Continental Drifter, and Tom Davis’ review of Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari.

This week, my “Traveling Light” column at Yahoo! News covers a familiar (and surprisingly common) question about “catching rides” on frieghter ships. Specifically, Suzanne from Colorado asks:

I recently read that it’s possible to travel from country to country as a passenger on cargo ships. Do you have any kind of advice for catching a freighter, or is it only for crazy adventure-type people?

Catching a ride on a cargo ship, I tell her, is not just for crazy adventure-type people. In fact, the accommodations are much more comfortable than your average day on the indie-travel road.

For a full rundown on frieghter travel, including costs, itineraries, facilities, activies, and booking information, click over to my Yahoo column here.

Hunger – aside from being a nagging pang in your stomach, reminding you to consume – can often be the catalyst for adventure itself. Sometimes, your appetite can send you on a curious search for turkey in Turkey (“sorry, only lamb!”), or to an elderly street vendor for a moonlit dose of Indian junk food. Or, if you’re particularly hungry, your growling stomach can lead you to Argentina for an all-meat diet, as Maciej [MAH-tchay] Ceglowski fervently describes in his essay, Argentina on Two Steaks a Day.

“The classic beginner’s mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it’s the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed…”

Indeed, food is one of those seemingly workaday aspects of life that — when out of your element, in your travels — can seem detached, mystical, romantic, and sometimes outright bizarre. It can even leave you with some of the most vivid memories of the places you’ve been – a virtual culinary postcard, stamped, dated, and filed away, waiting to be referenced again. For me, it’s the smell of freshly baked beignets and chicory coffee from Café Du Monde in New Orleans, or the sense of bewilderment when a flamboyant Italian waitress cracks a raw egg in the center of a once-delicious looking pizza in a small Italian café outside of Milano. For Maciej, it’s Argentine beef.

What is it for you?

Be sure and check out Argentina on Two Steaks a Day in full over at Maciej’s website.

Travelocity has a nifty application that allows you to set your departure city and maximum fare per traveler, and the tool magically spits out where you can fly for said amount.

So if you’re ready to travel, but not too concerned about the destination, fire up Dream Maps and see where the $700 you earned washing dishes can take you this summer.

Note: Today I’m debuting a new feature here at Vagablogging — “Learning Languages, with Tim Ferriss.” Tim Ferriss is fluent in five languages, has studied more than 15, and has spent the last 12 years analyzing the world’s best language learners. He has lived in more than 25 countries, designed curricula worldwide for Berlitz®, and studied East Asian Studies and Neuroscience at Princeton University. He can be reached at timferriss@gmail.com with questions, feedback, and topic suggestions.

Each culture has unique difficulties pronouncing words from unfamiliar languages. For the Germans, it’s the trilled “r” of Spanish or the dreaded “th” of English. Americans just can’t spit out the retroflex curled tongue of Mandarin or the open vowels of Portuguese. Then there are the poor Japanese, who seem to have trouble with everything.

But who can blame them? Their language got short-changed with only 112 phonemes, the basic sounds that form the building blocks of pronunciation. In comparison, Chinese ekes out a slightly higher 411 and English boasts an impressive 80,000 or so.

What makes languages hard or easy? It largely depends on how much the phonemes of your mother tongue overlap those of your target language. If you speak English, the jump to Spanish is often little more than tagging vowels on the end of everything — voilá, you can now intelligibly mangle a romance language. The Japanese also have practically no trouble with Spanish, which closely mirrors the sounds they’ve been using since infancy. Chinese and other tonal languages, in contrast, are just as hard for English and Japanese speakers alike. It’s not our brains or ears that are the problem — it’s our tongues and throats.

As with a new exercise program, you are conditioning your muscles when you learn a new language, and your tongue or vocal chords 1) don’t change without sufficient stimulus, and 2) don’t thicken or elongate overnight (I hope not, anyway). It doesn’t matter how smart you are. It cannot be overcome intellectually. If I give you an African language based on clicks, you can work on it for 10 hours in the first day until your jaw flips up and swallows your head; you still won’t have the hardware to produce the sounds. It takes time.

This is not bad news. In fact, it’s great news. A “bad ear” isn’t an acceptable excuse to ditch a worthwhile language — just continue to practice and give it some time. Chances are that you need a few more reps with the offending sound and a little recovery in between. Opt for frequent but short sessions when you hit a plateau. 30 minutes six times a week is ten times better than one hour three times per week. If you hit a period where you feel consistently tongue-tied, take a few days of rest: you’re over-training.

Remember, learning to pronounce a new language is physical conditioning: Hit the vocal weights and get your rest. It’ll happen.

“You see, for a certain kind of Audi-driving, Nobu-dining, Loro Piana-wearing person, a vacation destination is not just a simple matter of preference, but more a critical lifestyle choice. Exactly where this individual chooses to spend a quick-fix city break or a long, languid summer is crucial to him because, he believes, the exclusivity of his cultural and geographical selection defines his personality, in much the same way that the suit he wears, the wristwatch he brandishes, or the car he drives defines him.

“For him, it is not enough for a place to be just “nice”. Sunshine, sandy beaches and friendly hotels are not sufficient. He is looking for something more ambiguous than culture and history, topological beauty, tranquility and relaxation. He is on a mission to mine that rarefied seam of holiday gold, the brand of vacation kudos known as “the hip resort”, somewhere that is on the cusp of word-of-mouth discovery and quiet but discerning commercialism. Somewhere off the track beaten by package deals and low-cost airlines, but knowingly furnished with down-filled mattresses, designer sheets and a wi-fi connection in the lobby. He wants equal measures of tranquility and elegantly raucous hedonism, the perfect execution of rustic luxe, somewhere with an “authentic” culture and locally sourced food served with a metropolitan slickness.

“Ideally, like Goa or Ibiza, this little Shangri-la should have the barefoot credibility of being first discovered by the hippies and having since enjoyed a tasteful gentrification.

“Whatever happens, the hip resort seeker must get there at the right time. Too early is OK — at least he can brag about that later. Arriving too late, on the other hand, is unforgivable.”

–Simon Mills, The Guardian, “So hip it hurts”, April 29, 2006

Earlier this month I mentioned the debut of Jen Leo‘s latest travel-humor anthology, What Color is Your Jockstrap? (to which I contributed one story). As part of this announcement, I mentioned that Jen would be giving one free copy of the book to a Vagablogging reader who entered her email drawing, and now I can announce that Joel Carillet is our winner!

According to a bio I found online, Joel Carillet has a master’s degree in Church History and has spent much of the past six years working overseas. He taught at a college in Ukraine, worked for a study abroad program in Egypt, did human rights work in the West Bank, and spent fourteen months traveling overland from Beijing to Istanbul. Among his memorable experiences traveling was listening to Henry Kissinger talk politics with a White House official as they all stood before their respective urinals in a Washington, D.C. hotel. Enjoy the book, Joel!

Since today is a stop on Jen’s Jockstrap virtual book tour, I asked her to share with readers how she and I originally met, and how I ended up becoming the “Rolf” character in her essay “A Prude in Patpong,” which ultimately appeared in the pages of her first humor anthology, Sand in My Bra. Here’s her story:

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Back in May, World Hum’s Top 30 Travel Books of all time included Tony Horwitz’s Baghdad Without a Map, which occupied the #26 slot. Curious about Horwitz’s take on the World Hum Top 30, I emailed him asking which travel books he might have included.

This is what Tony told me:

Off the top of my head, which is pretty empty at the moment, I’d say Jonathan Raban’s Old Glory : A Voyage Down the Mississippi, the best of his many fine books, and P.J. O’Rourke’s Holidays in Hell, for the sheer mad laughter of it, even though it’s not really a travel book. I’d also add La Relacion, or The Relation, by Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, the Spanish conquistador-turned-castaway who wandered America in the early 16th century and became a faith healer to native Americans, among other things. It’s the first great American cross-Continental road trip, albeit before there were roads.

Some of the potential drawbacks of group travel are often the very perks of a solo trip: no arguments over where or when to go, no mismatched food tastes, unbalanced fitness levels or clashing differences in hygiene habits. When you’re alone, you’re free to make any and every decision without worry of offending one of your travel mates. But solo trips, while often liberating, can also be quite lonely.

For those of you more inclined to hit the road with a travel partner, there’s a new website to help simplify the process of planning your group trip. So grab your friends, and meet Triporama.

According to the site’s development blog, the idea surfaced after a group of friends struggled to organize a summer trip to Mexico. “As anyone who has ever planned a detailed group trip can tell you, the phone calls and emails are fun at first … But quickly they become less enjoyable by having to decide on things like, ‘Where’s the best place to stay for the budget?’”

Triporama is the end result – an astonishingly easy, wiki-like website to get you and your friends on the same wavelength before the big trip.

The site – which requires (free) registration – has four main sections, each editable by the group members who have accepted the invite to your particular Triporama page. These sections include a rudimentary message board, a place to share related links and travel details, as well as a handy poll generator for a democratic approach to choosing the more important options of the trip.

While there’s plenty of room for more advanced features, the sites simplistic approach is refreshing. This makes it extremely easy to use, even for those who might not be as Internet-savvy as yourself.

Triporama.com.