Thankfully, the last, nightmarish portion of the aforementioned scenario did not actually happen to me. I am indeed alive, possessed only of catastrophic, obsessive-compulsive thinking and a raging array of allergies. The Leopold’s sandwich did contain bones and sketchy sauce, but the instant I tasted a spice to which I’m allergic, I washed the poison away with a chug of water, pushing the plate aside. I left with my life and a commemorative “Leopold’s” t-shirt.

My fear about experiencing such an event became quite real, however, upon my husband’s choice of a 40th birthday trip. We had recently agreed that when the newly aged between us turns 40 he should receive a trip to any destination in the world. In this arrangement, the other spouse would be denied a vote; he would just have to plan the adventure. This winter, citing a desire to dramatically expand our senses and sensibilities before we become feeble and close-minded, Bryan used his ‘anywhere’ gift to visit the one place I had categorically rejected 10 times: India.

The trepidation I sustained about traveling to the exotic South Asian country gorgeously depicted in Slumdog Millionaire (and, it should be noted, the latest Mission Impossible) wasn’t just any American’s hangup about not being able to drink or brush your teeth with the local tap water. “Delhi Belly,” as Indian traveler’s diarrhea is sometimes called, was actually the most mild of my concerns, including: hepatitas A, malaria, rabies, typhoid, poor Internet access, and having to wear the same three outfits 21 days in a row.

I had a much larger challenge to do battle with my humbly active imagination: I cannot eat most Indian food. A documented sufferer of Oral Allergy Syndrome (yes, it’s real), I cannot chew, swallow, or digest an array of food that spans the alphabet. That means no apples, avocado, bananas, beer, carrots, chili peppers, cumin, and coriander, to say nothing of eggplant, ginger, kiwi, mustard, olives, peppers, peaches, pears, plums, red wine (possibly the worst food group to lose), and a few other items that might pop up on a menu in Delhi, like sesame and tamarind. In fact, aside from dear, innocuous basil, I cannot stomach any herb or spice, which poses a problem in a country where such items are not only culturally sacred but utterly unavoidable. Asking an Indian waiter to ditch the spices in your dinner is like requesting a well-chilled bottle of Zima in France. You insult a nation.

Bryan and I dislike group tours, so my job was to book every hotel and restaurant, find local guides, and figure out knotty logistics on an ambitious agenda. Over three weeks, we would visit New Delhi, grand capital of the world’s largest democracy; the sacred river Ganges, viewing cremation sites along the ghats at dawn from a boat; majestic, mountainous Rajastan where we’d ride elephants up to the Amber Fort in Jaipur; explore bustling, crowded Mumbai (think two New Yorks, both needing a desperate paint job); relax on the party beaches of Goa (would it be more like Ibiza? Or Daytona?); and of course, view at sunrise the romantic Taj Mahal, wonder of the world — which for all the beauty and fuss on the outside of the grand masoleum, doesn’t actually have much but two dead bodies inside. McMansions in my New Jersey hometown aren’t as classy, but at least there’s furniture.

Our shared goal was to see things we had never seen before and appreciate the country that would soon boast the largest population on the planet. Bryan would taste everything. I would taste as little as possible. If I ate any of the aforementioned ingredients (and possibly any number of others I didn’t know about), I would initially feel discomfort in the throat, tingling, followed by fluffiness in the tongue. My first line of defense would be to swallow water, followed by Benedryl, the fast-acting anti-histamine. Not terrible on the scale of stroke, cardiac arrest or stabbing, but a bad attack could lead to anaphalytic shock, which is potentially deadly. If things turned dire, the plan was to stick one of my two Epi-Pens into my thigh, right through my poor Seven for Mankind jeans, and head to the nearest hospital. Not to be squeamish, but I am terrified of medical care outside Manhattan, much less in rural India. My employer gave me the phone number for an emergency evacuation service, although such a flight would take me to Singapore, which I didn’t find comforting. They love spicy too.

Preparation, I assumed, was the surest strategy to success. My company’s nurse gave me an armful of inoculations and horse-size antimalarials. I booked us accommodations at incredibly expensive five-star hotels, including several modern, elegant, service-focused, award-winning Oberoi Hotels where I was assured on-site medical help and continental food options. Another hotel was in Rajastan, where I booked a “luxury tent” at the brand-new Rasa Resort, a boutique hotel designed by a star architect. (My only shock there was they didn’t have a liquor license). I also brought a full medicine kit: My daily Zyrtec allergy pill; two different forms — pill and liqui-gel — of Benadryl; and the two loaded Epi-Pens (not sure what two would do for me — would I stay on after a first disaster? How much do I love my husband?). The second, far less exciting layer of meds, included boxes of Immodium, Pepto Bismol, Advil, and Malarone (for malaria prevention). I was a walking CVS and thankfully not pegged by the TSA as a drug trafficker. (I also brought cute little rolls of travel-size Charmin toilet paper. “Monuments might have holes in the ground for toilets,” I warned Bryan as I packed.)

My most important stash, however, was a supply of so-called “nutrition” bars. Fearful there’d be days during which I might not even eat, I had 27 of these in a Zip-Loc. Most nutrition bars on the market are made with nuts or almond butter, so I held a week-long taste test of more than 20 brands from Whole Foods to find something I could safely eat — NuGo dark chocolate chocolate chip. These came in handy during long travel days when the only food options were in-flight meals on Kingfisher Airlines (for obvious reasons, we opted not to fly on its competitor “SpiceJet”) as well as cheese and mayo sandwiches for sale in the airport, at which even adventurous Bryan shook his head. Even in the new air terminals, there wasn’t much else to eat. (As someone who works in advertising, I know the so-called “brand value” of actually being valued. I wrote to NuGo to let them know they were important to my experience and they proudly posted a photo of my stash on their blog. They hadn’t been to India either.)

The trip was wild. We spent three weeks traveling through four Indian regions, all with different food, languages and history. In Delhi, we saw grand monuments such as India Gate, prayed in the Bahai Lotus Temple (gorgeous piece of architecture), and enjoyed a tuk-tuk ride through the serpentine streets of Old Delhi, past thousands of shops with wedding supplies and below dangerously dangling electric wires along which monkeys scurried. The holy river Ganges in Varanasi was as mystical as we had heard, and from a small boat we watched a haunting cremation service at dusk along the ghats. The sheer volume of garbage in the streets, however, everywhere got to us, and if I could suggest anything to the beautiful people of this amazing country, it would be to organize an all-India ‘Clean Up Day.’ One billion people could pick up one billion pieces of trash. It could work.

Being gay wasn’t the problem I thought it would be, although public displays of attention are frowned upon for anyone. For us, “friends” became a double entrendre with a wink, although sometimes hotel staff didn’t know which of us was which and called us both my name, ‘Mr Zucker.’ In Jaipur, a city famous for its crafts and the arts, a store owner proved his homo-friendly attitude when from a bottom drawer he dramatically presented a binder of Kama Sutra drawings of phalluses and poses. He was both surprised and disappointed when we blushed, buying only an elephant print for my sister. My thinking was not prudish but pragmatic: I didn’t get caught bringing Cipro into the country; I certainly wasn’t going to get caught bringing antique porn out.

Everyday meals were inexpensive compared to The States, and, happily there was good variety of food choices. Our fancy hotels had elaborate western-style buffets for breakfast, so I would load up just in case I encountered problems later that day. Lunch was trickier because we would often find ourselves on a tour or in the middle of a town far from our hotel. Our first real Indian meal was the first day in New Delhi. I braved a paper masala, a giant tubular dosa, or rice pancake, filled with flavor. Two bites in, however, I did taste too strong a spice. The warning sensation started in my throat, and I disappointingly had to reach for a bottle of water, careful to hear the musical snap of a breaking seal so I could be assured it had not been covertly refilled with tap. The attack was averted, and I didn’t need the Benadryl in my pocket nor the Epi-Pens I had optimistically left in the hotel room. On the opposite side of the table, carefree Bryan happily feasted on two colorful curries. So I didn’t have to face the waiter or imply that I didn’t like the food, he took a few bites to put a dent in my dish too. It’s embarrassing, especially in a country with millions hungry, to barely touch your 300-rupee dish.

Bryan was proud of me for being such a good trouper and thanked me repeatedly for both taking the trip and my flawless logistics. (He’ll never know it was a miracle that the driver in Agra showed up after I had given the wrong date.) In our 11 years together, we have always traveled well together. “Is there something you can have?” he’d sweetly ask while I anxiously reviewed a menu, convinced I’d find nothing. Several nights, he suggested Chinese or Italian food, a gift to me of less worry, more choice.

As it turns out, even on Indian menus, there usually was something tempting I could order.  For example, I fell in love with plain Indian yogurt — not as thick as Greek yogurt and not as wimpy as Stonyfield.  Eating it every morning, too, may have helped us build up natural defenses against bacteria throughout the trip, a potential fact that braved Bryan to one day add ice to his diet Coke. Ice!

At every meal we also enjoyed nan, Indian’s famous and inexpensive flat bread, which comes in plain, butter or garlic. While I will always be a devoted Francophile, I’d now argue that a good nan is even better than a Paris croissant — and far less messy. I think the Indians agree; we passed a Le Pain Quotidien in south Mumbai, and it was completely empty.

Obviously chicken and lamb were also plentiful. I managed to ingest morsels of both with little or no spices, drowned in yogurt to dull any possible discomfort. Cow was, no surprise, a rare find, but after visiting several markets and witnessing a guy smoking next to a dead goat hanging on hooks surrounded by flies, I lost my appetite for a steak anyway. That half the country is vegetarian hardly seems surprising now. And while I couldn’t drink big, cheap bottles of Kingfisher Beer like Bryan, I could pour myself into Indian wine. Sula Winery’s Savignon Blanc is crisp, delicious. Like New Zealand’s grapes but even cheaper.  The Sula brand must be well-regarded too; it’s the official house wine of the luxury Oberoi Hotels chain.

Tell anyone you’re traveling to India, and the most likely response—after they widen their eyes with jealousy or anxiety—will concern the Taj Mahal and the food. I can’t imagine now who would go to India and not make a point to see the latter wonder, and I’m sure there are as many who couldn’t believe I had no intention of eating Indian dishes in India. Of course, I know I missed out on a lot, but I also know via my photo album and disproprortiantely huge new frame of reference all that I took in from the travel experience. In the end, food is obviously a big part of getting to know any culture, but I will argue that one can also achieve that by riding local buses, taking photos with school kids, touring neighborhoods, navigating regional airports, sipping martinis while watching sunsets over the Arabian Sea — and, well, riding elephants, just as long as you don’t taste their snacks.

Well, yes! Those words—written by Henrietta Steventon, a participant in the Oxbridge Academic Programs, a summer course for international high school students—were exactly the point I’ve been trying to make ever since I began writing the “Getting Lost” series for the New York Times travel section. In the last year, I’ve traveled to Tangier, Ireland, Chongqing, Las Vegas, Java, and, most recently, the Greek Islands with neither map nor guidebook, without hotel reservations or contacts, with no access to the Internet, and with no real idea of what I’m going to do when I arrive, all in the hope that I’ll get lost, either geographically (unlikely) or psychologically (possible, but tricky).

Still, people keep asking why I’d want to get lost, as if it’s not simply a bad idea but a nonsensical one, a surrealist response to a perfectly normal question. Which it kind of is. Travel on its most basic level involves orienting oneself in unfamiliar places—to do the opposite of that is almost not to travel at all.

But for me, after decades of fairly intensive travel, orientation has become easy, too easy. In June of 2010, for example, I showed up in San Jose, Costa Rica, to film a video segment with a friend who’d been living there for years. Within 24 hours of arriving, I’d crisscrossed the city multiple times in a rental car, ID’d the “cool” neighborhoods, found the seedy zones, and basically understood the city’s psychogeography better than my friend. It was a feeling of accomplishment, but also of disappointment. My window of discovery lasted a single day—darn.

Now, to extend that window, I want to get lost, because it’s hard to get lost. And, in getting lost, I am opening myself up to finding new things, places and people and experiences I could never have predicted I’d find. Also, it’s pretty fun.

And so, a little over a month ago, I had the chance to explain all of this to these Oxbridge students, one of whose classes was being taught by my old friend, Wah-Ming Chang, who invited me to join in one day. For about 30 minutes, the kids—who hailed from Istanbul, Rome, Mexico City and beyond—asked me good questions, and then the fun began. Wah-Ming, her colleague Colin McDonald, and I led them all down from Barnard, where classes are held, to Central Park, and told them to get lost, or try to, with the idea that they’d be writing about their experiences afterward.

Today I have the joy of presenting you with my favorite pieces of writing to emerge from that class. First up, a little more of Ms. Steventon’s prose:

Then all of a sudden, we find ourselves surrounded by foliage. We push through. Our hearts pound with the anticipation of exploration. A single bead of sweat trickles down from my hairline. We struggle through the plant life like Moses parting the Red Sea, the wood chips crunching under our feet. We can almost feel what we have been attempting to feel for approximately 18 minutes now: that lost feeling is just reachable. We push past a trunk of a tree stretching to the sky, and are now lost in the jungles of… the fantasy has been lost. The dream destroyed. We are now standing on the side of the main road, on the border of the central park. We might as well be tourists hailing a cab. Our idea of ‘Jurassic Park’ has become the reality of Central Park.

Man, how well I know that feeling of being right on the cusp of discovery, only to watch the unfamiliar terrain coalesce into something you know all too well. But it’s instructive nonetheless, and you keep hoping that next time the discovery will be true.

As the generation of futuristic technology we often find ourselves lost in our own virtual perceptions. Lost in our own Facebook profiles while singing “Rolling in the Deep” and answering a text message. In most cases, “getting lost” in Central Park means “I’m looking at Google maps while figuring out the way.” I have a blackberry, an Itouch, and a computer; you know what I don’t have? A compass, a survival kit, and a Victorinox pocket knife. Despite the obvious details- yes, I’m a city girl. I believe that technology for all its grandeur will never surpass nature; the sun’s first bundle of light, the sound of the first leaf to descend in fall, the immensity of the ocean, and the smell of wet grass. Thus, setting off to this slightly unconventional task (has a teacher ever asked you to get lost? Exactly.) I was not surprised as to what I realized.

—Alejandrina Alvarez

While I’m pretty sure every generation since mine (or before) has defined itself as that of “futuristic technology,” Alvarez nails how our tools not only make getting lost more difficult but also get in the way of really seeing and experiencing where we are. I say this as a deep lover of Google Maps (and all maps), one who’s often walked digital paths while ignoring the gravel ones beneath my feet. Sometimes it’s necessary, but if we can survive when left to our own devices (and not the electronic kind), we’re in trouble.

One student, Hannah Silsby, took this “get lost to observe better” approach extremely far, and produced a wonderful, multiple-point-of-view narrative:

The heat sunk in past our skin as we wandered. In a state of longing for lostness, we reared left up the hill. Like a line of ants returning home, each person followed the one in front of them. The only difference was that we were not going home; we were attempting to lose our individual distinction and explore as faceless, colorless, genderless beings. We were attempting to meld with the background and observe ourselves.

The group lingered through the forest, once uninvaded by humankind, now harnessed. Searching for an unfamiliar place, barren of recognition, we funneled past peaks and curves. We stumbled upon an affectionate couple, lost in their own way.

Our embrace became like being one single solitary creature, daunted by an extra body. Still my legs blanketed his, my smile lingered over his. For minutes only the sun intruded on us, blazing jealously [zealously?]. A group of adventure teens wander near, seeking something besides intrusiveness. They take a perch nearby, they see us, don’t seem to mind. But we mind.

They soak themselves in the sun like black cats, wordless. A girl stands and circles the ruin of a building behind her.

I twist m way around the mangled birch building, peering into the windows and shaking the cracking rusted locks. Finding nothing, I circle back to the sunning stone where my classmates tan and pant. I pass a black man wearing an aging red shirt, he smiles. I wave.

Harry bent down towards the empty soda can hidden in the long grass and placed it in his shopping cart. The half-full cart made noises like church bells as he navigated it through the rough terrain of Central Park. His red shirt collected films of perspiration beneath the arms. He smiled at a passerby, a young blond girl.

Henrietta lay sprawled out on the hot stone among the other students. The dress she had recently been sent by her mother resonated in the wind, skating puffs of breath. Her eyes wandered to the couple only a few feet away: once so affectionate, now cautious. She thought it sad, that the gay couple had changed their positions so drastically from affectionate to friendship. Would they have kept their holds of each other if they had been a straight couple? She prayed that they were only shy expressing affection, and not with their identities.

Henrietta followed the school of students exiting the scene, her vibrant pink dress still respirating in competition with the wind.

Once we returned to the meeting place, we planted our supple, sweating bodies on the benches. Just beyond the boundaries of the railing sat an open valley of heaving hills. A pair of sparrows chased each other, tail to beak, about the pathway before taking leisure on the railings behind a bench. I observed them. They flirted and bobbed together, stealing my attention. I removed my notebook from my bag and attempted to sketch the moving companions. They flittered lovingly between excited rotations and gentle smooches. They were bothered not by the wind nor by my peering eye or flickering pen, and were distracted only by each other’s actions.

The slow exhale of the wind leapt about my forearms and giving life to a newspaper sheet rolling by. The birds took no notice of the sighing earth, and simply continued flirting.

Of all the students, the fedora-wearing flâneur Felipe de la Hoz—who I came to think of as Mr. Hat—perhaps got the “getting lost” point the best:

I believe getting lost is a beautiful thing. There are really very few experiences as freeing as finding yourself in unknown territory. We are so used to knowing exactly where we are and where we are going at every moment of the day that once we actually look around and are struck suddenly by the cold splash of reality, by the realization that we are, surprisingly, not in control and indeed completely helpless, it immediately turns off all of that static in your mind, all the white noise, the chores, the petty problems are wiped, the hard drive rebooted and you are left floored. Everything else is gone, and now there is only you and this place, this alien place, wonderful and terrifying, removed from everything and everyone; and you are left in nirvana. Time stretches out, it becomes irrelevant and distant; seconds blend into minutes and hours. There is no purpose. There is no destination. Walking goes from being a method of transportation to an almost meditative state; it is a trance, as deeply introspective as any religious service. It is the experience of exploration that we all had yet have forgotten about with the passing of years; it is the same exploration as that of a child, a child bewildered by the fresh and new world around him, experiencing all the sights and sensations individually, each tree on each leaf fascinating, hungrily studied and absorbed and loved and appreciated. There is no why; why is not necessary in this place. Getting lost is like spending day after day after day living in generic stock photographs, and then, one day, tripping into an impressionist painting. All the things you didn’t notice could be there if you simply look at the world a different way. Every element of the landscape is now a finely crafted work of art. Who knew the branches were such a sight? Who knew buildings were not just places you went to pay your bills, but each has a life and a personality to be observed? The warped lens has been removed, and you can see things as they are. Don’t ignore the world; the world is here for you to see and experience and appreciate. The next time you look around and what you see is not what you expected, consider yourself lucky; each sight and person and experience is a gift, and it is up to you to find it.

Finally, I’d be remiss in not quoting Julia Fonteles, who didn’t quite get lost but who did get right to the heart of the weirdness of travel writing:

It was an interesting idea, and it’s hard to imagine someone making money out of this job which is really an adventure. I guess people make money doing all kinds of things today.

Well, yes!

This sounds like a story that should be running in the Onion. Logan Airport announced today that it will be rolling out a new security measure, a technique it says it picked up from Israeli security forces. It’s not a new type of X-ray machine or some sort of awesome Israeli sleeper hold, it’s something called a “chat down.” Basically, specially trained agents will chat with passengers to root out any bad apples.

The name of these special agents? Behavior Detection Officers, or BDOs as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is calling them. You can’t make this stuff up, people.

The funny thing to me … okay, it’s all funny, but the additional layer of chuckles comes from the fact that I think probably 20 years ago before all the new airport security measures, TSA agents probably routinely chatted with passengers. Sure they didn’t have a set script, but if they were doing the small talk routine with someone and that person was cagey and weird, they probably would have pulled them aside. Do we really need to be told by Israeli special ops that talking to people is a good way to determine whether or not they’re crazy?

Note: If you’re flying through Logan and want to put these BDOs to the test, the TSA has publicly said that looking nervous and avoiding eye contact are two behaviors they don’t consider to be giveaway signs. They are keeping those signs to themselves for the time being, but borrowed a page from “Lie to Me” in their explanation: “Security officers are screening travelers for involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered.”

Despite some complaints that this technique is not scientifically validated (including from Congressman Bennie Thompson, a ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security), the program is launching at Logan this week and will run for 60 days.

Posso presentarmi?
May I introduce myself?

The most entertaining presentazione (introduction) I ever heard came when the distinguished chairman of psychiatry introduced my husband at the medical school of the University of Pisa. Although they had met before, he had obviously never read Bob’s curriculum vitae.

“Dottor Hales,” he began in Italian, graduated from West Point, the United States Military Academy in 1970.  He paused and reflected, “at the time of the Vietnam war.” He then observed that my husband had trained as an Army paracadutista (parachutist). As he skimmed ahead, his face suddenly lit up. “Dottor Hales,” he announced dramatically, parachuted into Vietnam and won the highest military honors and many medals for his bravery.

“Che eroe!” (What a hero!) a young doctor behind me murmured in admiration. Not comprehending a word, my husband, whose only military assignment outside the continental United States was Hawaii, nodded as if in modest recognition. I struggled not to giggle (ridacchiare).

Italians take introductions seriously. Putting two people in contact with each other for the first time, according to Il Galateo (an Italian etiquette book), is “un momento affascinante della vita di ognuno “(a fascinating moment in everyone’s life). “Due interi universi—la vita di due individui—convergono per integrarsi.” (Two entire universes—the life of two individuals—meet to make a whole.)

That’s why knowing how to presentare qualcuno a qualcun altro (introduce someone to someone else) is important. Whom do you introduce to whom? A child to an adult (un ragazzo a un adulto), a younger adult to an older one (un adulto più giovane a quello più anziano), a man to a woman (un uomo a una donna), a less recognized personality (una personalità  mediamente conosciuta) to a well-known person (una persona molto nota).

So what if you aren’t sure who is older or more distinguished? “Usate una formula interrogativa neutra” (Use a neutral formula), say linguists Valeria della Valle and Giuseppe Patota in Le parole giuste (The Correct Words). Phrases such as “Non vi conoscete?” (Don’t you know each other?), “Vi hanno già presentato?” (Have you already been introduced?) or “Posso presentarvi?” (May I introduce you to each other?) work equally well in Italian or English.

Avoid overblown descriptions and titles of whatever type (titoli di qualsiasi tipo). Give the person’s first and last name (nome e cognome), as in “Le presento Giorgio Valli” (I introduce/present Giorgio Valli to you.) You also can simply give both names: “Giorgio Valli, Mauro Conti.”  When introducing yourself to a stranger, give your first and last name, accompanied con un sorriso e una stretta di mano (with a smile and a handshake).

“Piacere “ (pleasure–to meet you) is the standard response when introduced. According to Il Galateo, you should avoid gli inchini (bows) and il baciamano (hand-kissing), which it dismisses as “ottocentesca abitudine démodé” (outdated 19th-century habits). Never out-of-date is a man’s gently carrying a woman’s hand toward his lips. Every time an Italian gentleman has introduced himself in this way, I have been utterly charmed.

Words and Expressions
lettera di presentazione – letter of introduction or cover letter
presentarsi bene –- to present oneself well, to have a good appearance
presentare un amico –- to introduce a friend
presentazione ufficiale —  officially introduced

Dianne Hales is author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language.

Right now, a ticket will cost you $200,000, with a minimum deposit of $20k, but a larger deposit (or an outright purchase) will allow you to skip ahead a bit in line past over 400 other depositors, and join Katy Perry, Russell Brand, Pharrell Williams, and Dallas Austin near the front of the line, when flights depart in 2013.

Now, you can hold out hope that the price will go down within a few years; if 200k seems like a little much, even for an airplane ride a couple dozen miles closer to Betelgeuse, bear in mind that any form of passenger air travel, when novel, has been ludicrously expensive. Remember this: when Sinatra, in a classic wealth-as-seduction move, implored all women to “Come Fly With Me” in 1957, he was laying the foundation for 50 Cent, not choosing between peanuts or pretzels. That year, the very concept of “economy class” was brand-spanking-new, and in any case, certainly not where the air is, or was, rarefied.

While passenger flights are now cluttered with crying toddlers, SkyMall magazines, and Jodi Picoult novels, the new strata of stratospheric travel perversely mirrors just how much wider the income gap has become since 1957, and how much farther out of sight a little Sinatra-level coin will buy you. So what, besides delirious exclusivity and Hipstamatic prints of the Kármán Line, does the modern person of wealth and taste get for their two hundred grand?

Not a hell of a lot. For the main event, you’ll join two pilot/astronauts and five other passengers on the VSS Enterprise for a three-and-a-half hour trip, “a fraction” of which will actually be spent in sub-orbital space, with just around six minutes of weightlessness. Seems like a steep cost for such a brief time up there, but if it’s a success, longer trips, full orbits, and possibly even a moon landing will be on the program before long, and maybe the frequent-flier miles will count for something.

It is, however, all part of a larger experience. Once purchased directly from Virgin Galactic or an “accredited space agent,” the price of your ticket includes, importantly, “three days of pre-flight preparation, bonding and training onsite at the [Spaceport America] spaceport.” The LEED Gold-certified commercial facility, from which UP Aerospace, Lockheed Martin and Armadillo Aerospace will also operate space flights, is nearing completion in the desert outside of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (where, not coincidentally, Branson is constructing a luxury hotel).

For prospective space tourists, Branson’s program looks to be a little more inclusive than NASA; he suggests that almost anyone who can front the cash can come aboard. The Virgin Galactic website states “the vast majority of people who want to fly will not be prevented from doing so by health or fitness considerations.”

Still, if you can’t or won’t spring for the 200k, there’s always other ways to float weightless for six minutes, and even if you positively must do it via Virgin Galactic, there are options. You can join the band Muse, who are planning on cajoling a free trip out of Branson in order to be the first band to record a song in space, or you can secure employment among Branson’s expanding Virgin Galactic workforce, or you could attempt to be a future replacement for any of the pilot/astronauts he’s recently hired, provided you have a minimum of 3,000 hours flying “large multi-engine aircraft and high performance fast jet aircraft and low lift-to-drag ratio glide experience.” If you’re still a bit short in such qualifications, the National Test Pilot School in nearby California does offer a course, but tuition is a keep-the-riffraff-out $918,000 – enough for seats on the VSS Enterprise for you and three homeboys, so why bother.

In spite of the cost, and perhaps a limited bang for one’s buck, if you’re an “outer space” fanatic and if money’s no object, it’ll be like no six minutes you’ve ever experienced before, as Katy Perry’s testimony, reported in a constellation of sites online, demonstrates. “Russell and I are interested in anything extraterrestrial,” she says. “I just thought, ‘What else can I give this man?’ He’s had every experience in the world, but not a trip to space.”

Better get up there while it’s still rarefied.

Yesterday morning I got an email from Airbnb in my inbox. Normally I delete emails from companies, but the first few lines of this one made me want to read on: “Last month, the home of a San Francisco host named EJ was tragically vandalized by a guest. The damage was so bad that her life was turned upside down. When we learned of this our hearts sank. We felt paralyzed, and over the last four weeks, we have really screwed things up.”

For those of you who haven’t yet heard the details, here’s a quick snapshot: The aforementioned EJ wrote a blog post in late June about having returned from a week-long business trip to find her apartment ransacked by what later turned out to be a 19-year-old meth addict, whom she had connected with through Airbnb. As that post began generating more and more buzz, Airbnb moved quickly to assert that it was doing everything it could to help EJ and to aid in the police investigation. EJ countered with another blog post in which she outed Airbnb for not only being slow to respond and not overly helpful, but also for contacting her with a request to pull down her initial post or at least “update the blog with a ‘twist’ of good news so as to ‘complete[s] the story,” and for complaining that her post could negatively impact the company’s image.

Holy shit! Every paranoid fear the whole social travel trend has ever sparked is coming true. And at a time when investors are dumping millions into the space (Air BnB announced $112 million in investments last week, while competitor Wimdu recently locked down $90 million). I knew renting my home out to a stranger, or trusting a stranger to put me up someplace decent sounded like a bad idea. You should never talk to strangers, much less  share space with them, right? I bet those investors are kicking themselves.

Or maybe not. Here’s the thing: Air BnB, despite apparently mishandling this situation at the start, is now doing the right thing. They’ve got insurance in place now to cover hosts for up to $50,000 of damage, a policy they are extending to the poor San Francisco host who kicked this whole thing off. The company also launched a safety section on its site with tips, as well as several enhanced safety features, including 24-hour customer service and an in-house security task team charged with looking into reports of suspicious behavior.  Unfortunately, most of that is not really going to help EJ, whose ordeal is still ongoing and who is stuck with a crappy situation regardless, but it does nonetheless bode well for current and future users of Airbnb. And here’s another thing: That mostly happened because the AirBnB community raised a ruckus in support of EJ and insisted that the company sort itself out.

That gets at what makes the social travel trend, or the peer-to-peer travel trend, depending on who you talk to, not only generally cool but also likely to stick around: It harnesses the power of communities to mostly positive ends.

This is also a new industry, and by addressing security concerns now, social travel companies will make it easier for the industry to grow. By baking security concerns into its road map at its launch (4 months ago), and providing 24-hour customer service and on-the-ground employees in the countries it serves, Air BnB competitor Wimdu hopes to curb bad behavior before it starts. The site also sends employees to stay at host properties to vet the spaces and the hosts first-hand, and will be rolling out its own insurance policy shortly to ease the concerns of hosts.

And the power of the communities created on these sites is still strong. “EJ seemed to be partially disappointed that the strength of the Air BnB community wasn’t enough to provide security, but the community aspect of social travel does provide a baseline level of checks and balances,” says Wimdu founder Russell Goldman. “If a site works well there’s enough users on the host side and the guest side that people are reviewing and being reviewed by each other, and so you do have some comfort there.”

That coupled with insurance policies and a decent process in place to handle the occasional reservation gone awry seems like enough to satisfy most travelers and would-be hosts. Despite the Airbnb shake-up, the social travel industry continues to grow exponentially larger and more profitable each month (Wimdu already has more than 400 employees, and spaces in over 200 cities). It’s  likely to continue growing and by most accounts that’s a good thing. Whether they afford you the opportunity to feel like a local in San Francisco, a gypsy in France, or a millionaire on your own private island in Fiji, these services are offering new, fun travel experiences. They’re tapping into that desire many tourists have to get a local’s viewpoint of the places they visit, and they’re creating a feeling of community on multiple layers (within various geographic locations, as well as online, amongst members). And, like any community, they need policing.

In the recent New York Times-acclaimed book

From the court, a beautiful city, as light as feathers, fluttered off down the coast. Perhaps – like its people – Georgetown didn’t truly believe it belonged here, and so it hovered over the water. Nothing was firmly attached. It was all built on canals and breezes, a city of stilts and clapboard, brilliant whites, fretwork, spindles and louvres. The streets were as wide as fields, and the cathedral seemed to drift endlessly upwards, reputedly the tallest wooden building in the world. One area was even called Lacytown, as if, at any moment, it would simply take off and drift away, home perhaps.

Naturally, with so much kindling, Georgetown was always burning down. During the nineteenth century, it was devastated five times by fire, and then another four times in the century that followed. There’s always a good reason for these fires, riots or an eruption at the Chinese fireworks plant. The latest victims, in 2004, were a cinema – one of the last in the city – and the Roman Catholic cathedral. Faced with these disasters, the Townies would simply cut some more sticks, and start all over again.

Water too was a constant feature of the Townies’ lives. At high tide, the sea towered five feet above the city, all held back with a wall. It was all a permanent reminder that, tropical though the city may have seemed, it had the soul of Amsterdam. For two hundred years – well over half its colonial existence – Guyana had been Dutch, and this was the town of Stabroek. Muddy, hot and flat, it may not have looked much but, during peace negotiations in 1802, it was considered a better bet than Canada. A few years later, the British grabbed it again, and named it after George III, the farmer king. Soon afterwards, the whole soggy colony passed to Britain, to be known as British Guiana.

Two centuries on, the moisture was as vigorous as ever. People often told me how, a few years earlier, their city had all but vanished under several feet of water. Most of the time, however, it was just a low-grade skirmish with the damp. The forest was constantly trying to creep back into this city, along with the mildew. Even concrete rotted here, and cars seemed to moulder. By day, the canals were silky and green, and by night they were operatic with frogs. ‘Why? Why?’ they’d sing, which made the dogs all howl. Nature, it seemed, was gradually reclaiming its inheritance.

Amongst this riot of parrots and flamboyants, the Townies could still be fleetingly British. They’d talk about things like ‘Spring’ and ‘Autumn’ whilst the weather remained doggedly hot. They could even be a little archaic, with children peeing in ‘posies’ and having ‘tennis rolls’ for tea. In the shops, too a little Britishness had survived; you could still buy Vicks Vapor Rub, a bottle of ‘Nerve Tonic’ or stack of True Confessions. Meanwhile, Fogarty’s department store was like a huge pink slab of Croydon, now quietly decomposing. Downstairs, it had a 1940s café, complete with skinny sausage rolls and dim lighting as if the war – like the café itself – was somehow still going on.

But nowhere felt quite so left behind as the city museum. Downstairs were all the odds and ends of colonial life, together with Britain’s departing gift: a tiny Austin Rolls-Royce Prince. Upstairs, meanwhile, hadn’t changed at all since 1933, when Evelyn Waugh called by. The same, faint miasma of formaldehyde still lingered over what he’d described as ‘the worst stuffed animals I have seen anywhere’. Not surprisingly I had the place to myself, and so the curator pounced on me and made me take my hat off.

Out on the street, traces of the old empire were harder to find. Of course, almost all the civic buildings were notionally British – although they didn’t always look it. Often, even the queen’s most loyal architects had let heat and fantasy go to their heads. Father Schole’s City Hall looked like a runaway dolls house, and Blomfield’s cathedral had used up so many trees that, even now, it was at risk of vanishing into the mud. It was only in the details that Georgetown’s streets were still lingeringly British; the Hackney carriages, the EIIR letterboxes, the statue of a great sewage engineer, and a pair of Sebastopol cannons. Once, however, I did see a large building site called ‘Buckingham Palace’, although – sadly, perhaps – before any resemblance had taken shape, the financing had failed.

Despite these trappings, I soon came to realise that the Guyanese were neither British nor truly South American but lived in a world of their own. Sometimes, it seemed that being foreign came so naturally to them that they didn’t even understand themselves. There were several thriving dialects, and the city would grind to a halt not just for Christmas but also for Diwali, Eid and Phagwah. Depending on who I asked, the national dish was either roti, chow mein, a fiery Amerindian concoction called pepperpot, or chicken-in-the-rough. Originally, each race had had its own political party, but now there were fifty. Amongst a mere 750,000 people, this sometimes made Guyana feel like several dozen countries all stuffed into one.

I often felt this as I walked across Georgetown. One moment I’d be passing Chinatown, then a mosque, ‘The House of Flavours’, a Hindu temple, and the Pandit Council. Then, I’d turn a corner and find myself in the middle of a ‘Full Gospel Miracle Crusade’ or a Mexican Circus (‘With Real Tigers!’). Occasionally, the different cultures seemed to elide, creating tantalising hybrids. Who I wondered, was behind all the Duck Curry Competitions? Or the ‘Festival of Extreme Chutney’? Most of the time, however, everyone kept to themselves. As I passed through each neighbourhood, the music changed – from reggae to Hindi, through soca and hip-hop, and back to calypso.

All this would be odd in a big city, and yet Georgetown was tiny. There was only one escalator in the whole town (and it still drew a crowd), and the rambling National Gallery received just twenty visits a month. Everyone knew everyone, even the men who sold horse-dung from their carts. You couldn’t do anything, it was said, without word spreading outwards through the Spit Press (‘You tell Tara,’ as one taxi-driver put, ‘and Tara tell Tara’). Only I was the odd one out: a bucra, or white man, in a town with everything but.

Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio,  il cuore più verde dell’Umbria

The Greenest Heart of Umbria

According to an ancient legend, the gods Athena and Poseidon once argued over who would rule the city of Attica in Greece. Zeus, the father of the gods, declared that the new ruler would be the one who could present him with a discovery that would most benefit mankind. Athena commanded Mother Earth to grow a new tree whose fruit would have almost magical powers. Upon beholding the albero d’olivo (olive tree), Zeus pronounced Athena the winner.

The spirit of Athena lives on in Umbria’s Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio, the greenest part of the verdant region known as  the green heart of Italy. Over the last three years Monte Vibiano, renowned for its olive oil and wines, has become the first agribusiness (la prima azienda agraria) in the world to cut its carbon emissions (emissioni di CO2) to zero.

Monte Vibiano’s “360-degree Green Revolution”  includes a solar park that generates enough electricity to power the entire estate, sustainable bio-fuels and a fleet of electric powered vehicles. In the summer, lo staff del Castello (the Castello employees) trim vines by hand to ensure that the grapes get enough sunshine. In the fall olives from its 12,000 trees are also picked by hand.

A free eco-tour (tour ecologico), available in English as well as Italian, provides a first-hand view of the environmental-friendly technologies — plus a fun bonus.  Visitors board electric jeeps (jeep elettriche) for an exhilarating ride through the Castello’s vineyards (vigneti) and olive groves (oliveti), set on a hill (su una collina) overlooking hundreds of acres of fields and forests, with the town of Perugia in the distance.

After the tour you can visit the winery (cantina) and the oak barrel cellar (barricaia) and learn the processes involved in the production (fasi di produzione) of wine and olive oil. The Green Wine Bar, an elegant terrace (terrazzo)  decorated with unique furnishings made with recycled wine barrels and corks, offers a free tasting (degustazione) for visitors. In addition to  award-winning wines, you can sample Monte Vibiano’s signature quick-frozen olive oil, served on freshly toasted bruschetta.

Monte Vibiano’s olives and grapes grow in such a pure envionment (un ambiente puro) and breathe the best air (l’aria migliore), so its oil and wine taste unlike any others, explains Lorenzo Fasola Bologna, whose family has lived in the Castello for centuries. Because of la nostra tradizione (our tradition) and la nostra passione (our passion), he says,  il vino diventa poesia (wine becomes poetry) and olio diventa arte (oil becomes art).

If you come to Umbria, don’t miss this unforgettable experience. Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio is open year round, but you must make a reservation (prenotazione) for the eco-tours.  You can also buy its exceptional olive oil and wine online.

Words and Expressions

la salvaguardia della natura – the safeguard of nature

l’inquinamento — pollution

la conservazione – preservation, maintenance

essere al verde – to be in the green, to run out of money, the equivalent of the English “going into the red” (This expression dates back to the time when the base of a candle was painted  green. When the flame burned down to the green, people without money ran out of light as well.)

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language.

A year or so ago a friend of mine wrote a story for the website of a national women’s magazine that was something along the lines of “How to Dine at a Four-star Restaurant with Kids.” It was one of those list articles that magazines love, the sort that websites love even more, and her editor had asked for 10 tips. By tip #8,  she had run out of ideas so she threw in “don’t breastfeed at the table.” She was envisioning dinner at a super high-end restaurant, the sort of place that you would probably never take a baby in the first place, but that would have a lovely women’s lounge nursing mothers could retire to just in case. Two days later there was a Facebook page dedicated to getting her fired for daring to say anything against breastfeeding in public.

This morning’s news that Malaysia Airlines has banned babies from first class struck me as a very similar sort of story. The airline has actually had the policy in place for awhile, but just officially announced that it will be expanding it across all of its flights.  The general public and the media have just caught wind of it, and it’s turning into quite the hot-button issue. On the one hand, we’ve all been the passenger stuck next to a crying baby on a long-haul flight…it’s no fun, and I can imagine feeling even less positive about it had I dropped several thousand dollars on the ticket. Still, parents are outraged at infants being outright banned from anywhere. Is this some sort of Baby Jim Crow?

Eh, no. But demand for child-free flights, or at least child-free zones on planes is increasing. British Airways and Virgin America both floated the idea of child-free flights earlier this year, and a recent survey found that 60 percent of travelers were in favor of creating “family-friendly zones” on planes that would essentially contain all the crying babies and fidgety toddlers to one area.  Which, in the end, might make moms more comfortable too–most parents I know feel terrible when their kid is the one getting the stink-eye on a flight, and if they were surrounded by other parents and kids, it may not feel like as big of a problem.

As for the First Class thing, to me this is indicative of a broader trend toward integrating children into absolutely every experience and space. I see babies at cocktail lounges, in the lobbies of swanky hotels, at high-end restaurants, and in designer boutiques. These are clearly not people who can’t afford a babysitter so much as people who seem to think that having a kid shouldn’t change their life at all. But you know what? It does. Much like my friend’s suggestion about babies in high-end restaurants, there are just some places that aren’t baby-appropriate, and maybe people need to change their lifestyles a bit during the baby and toddler years.  Is flying Business Class for a couple years really such a tough compromise?