Tami Kosch, host of Community Matters on Seattle's Progressive Talk, AM 1090, interviewed Dave Fox about his book, Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad, and his travel experiences in general. The program aired in August, 2006. Here's a transcript of the interview:

Tami: Good morning. I'm Tami Kosch. This is Community Matters Weekend Edition, and we're talking with local author Dave Fox, the author of Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad. So you travel for a living and write about traveling. How did you get started in this? In loving travel?

Dave: Well I started traveling at a very young age. My family lived in England for a year when I was eight years old, and we traveled all over Europe that year. My parents really took advantage of the close proximity to a lot of other cultures, but I think that even before that, I really was kind of raised with the travel bug. I was brought up in a suburb of Washington, DC. It was a very international community. So I had a lot of friends from all over the world at a pretty young age. One of my best friends moved to Bangladesh for three years and we were penpals when I was six years old. My mother was an exchange student in Greece. My father grew up, actually, in Geneva, Switzerland, so just a lot of exposure at a young age to foreign cultures, and it was just kind of a normal part of life for me, I think.

Tami: And then do you think, does humor grow or are you just blessed with being funny?

Dave: No, humor is very definitely a skill that you can learn. It's not... I think there's a misconception that you're either funny or you're not. I think that it comes more naturally to some people than others, and I think that in the case of my book, you know, travel and humor are a perfect marriage of genres as far as writing goes because there are so many things, when you put yourself in a foreign environment, so many things that have the possibility of going awry and going a little bit haywire, and often those circumstances aren't the most fun experiences while they're happening, but they make for great stories afterward.

Tami: Like, when I was an exchange student in Finland, and found out that I'd been drinking wine coolers all summer, and I thought they were soda pop!

Dave: [Laughs] There you go!

Tami: Yeah. Yeah. That's where you get a lot of your good stories. Now, tell me, when you take a group out to travel, what do you tell them first off?

Dave: One of my big rules of travel is, "When you travel, things will go wrong." And I think that when you travel with that philosophy in mind, then when things do start to go a bit awry and a bit not quite as you expected them to, you can be more at peace with what's happening. I think that things... one of the reasons we travel is to take ourselves out of our familiar environments and to go put ourselves in situations we're not used to. That's the excitement of travel. But if we're going to go do that, we have to accept the fact that things are not always going to go as planned. They're not always going to go as expected, and when we're... the more foreign our environment is, the more likely that is to happen, just because we don't necessarily know the local cultural rules and that sort of thing.

Tami: Well, and like you say, that's what makes for the good stories. But yes, we need to go into it because as Americans, we always expect everything to run right and efficiently, and we're a little disappointed sometimes when things go awry.

Dave: Absolutely, and I think that's one thing that travelers really need to adjust themselves to quickly. They'll have a much happier trip if they are of the mindset that things are going to go a little bit off kilter from the way they envision them before they get over there.

Tami: So way back, you were eight years old when you were in London? What was your first impression when you got to school there? The difference between American school and London?

Dave: Well I think the weirdest thing about living in England at age eight was that I was just a huge celebrity on the playground. I had an American accent, and back in the 1970s, there was a real fascination among British kids with American culture. They were getting a lot of our TV shows exported. Shows like "Happy Days" and "Starsky and Hutch," and things like that, and so they had a lot of preconceptions about America: We all drove fast cars and ran around shooting each other....

Tami: [Laughs] Oh, of course!

Dave: [Sarcastically] Yeah! That's what we do here in America! And you know, so there was just a... almost a celebrity status that I received instantly the day I showed up at school and opened my mouth and spoke with an American accent, and it was intense enough that I actually lost my accent over the course of the year, I think because I was a little bit overwhelmed by....

Tami: The "fame?"

Dave: [Laughs] ...by the fame that I had, just on my elementary school playground in England. Yeah.

Tami: And then when did you get to travel again? Were you a foreign exchange student?

Dave: Yeah. I was an exchange student in Norway for a year, actually right after I finished high school. I went to an extra year of high school in Norway in a little town called Drøbak, which is located just down the fjord from Oslo in a... just an absolutely idyllic little village. I was incredibly lucky, and lived with a Norwegian family for the year, and went to regular Norwegian high school classes and didn't speak any Norwegian when I arrived other than "Do you speak English?" and "Where is the bathroom?" but, you know, you learn quickly when you have to.

Tami: Mm hmm. Well, when you're there for a whole year....

Dave: Right. Right. Yeah.

Tami: So tell me, what was your favorite experience as an exchange student?

Dave: My favorite experience as an exchange student? I think I would have to say high school graduation. They do graduation completely differently in Norway from the way we do it here. Teenagers in Norway are given a lot more freedom than American teens, and in my observation, I think they have a lot more responsibility. They accept a lot more responsibility as well. It was an interesting thing when I was writing my book, that I had one editor say, "You must remove all references to teenage drinking from your book because American audiences just won't go for that." Well, that's the reality. That's what you go through over there, and I was 18 years old, which is the drinking age in Norway, and so high school graduation is kind of one big crazy party, but it's done... I think teenagers over there are taught responsible drinking habits in a much more sensible way than we are in the United States. They learn to drink around their parents instead of doing what American college kids tend to do, which is they get away from home....

Tami: The kegger on the beach or a frat house?

Dave: The kegger on the beach, and they can't go into a bar in the United States where there's a licensed bartender who knows when to cut them off, so they're out with their friends who are equally inexperienced, and, you know, I saw some sad situations when I returned to the US after my year in Norway with people who were not being raised in an environment where they were taught to drink responsibly. But I have to say that just going through that whole rite of passage from a foreign perspective was just a fascinating experience for me, and a lot of fun.

Tami: You know, Scandinavian teens do seem more like college students here in their maturity. I would agree. We were allowed to drink also, but we were told, you know... they... I think it was one... if you were caught drunk driving, you went to jail.

Dave: Yeah. Absolutely.

Tami: I mean, you know, and that was from... that wasn't the parental scare tactics. That was from the other kids. They were like, "Uh uh uh, you don't do that."

Dave: Yeah. And that's... it's the law over there too. They have incredibly tough drunk driving laws, and people don't touch alcohol if they're going to get behind the wheel of a car, and so it's just an idea that they are raised with and I think that people are more responsible about it over there as a result.

Tami: So was there any doubt in your mind? Did you try another field before you got into travel, or was it just a straight shot?

Dave: My two passions in life have always been travel and writing, and I think that throughout life, I've kind of oscillated between the two and, you know, I worked as a journalist for a while, and then worked in the travel industry for a while, and finally, now that I'm in my mid, or maybe I should say late 30s, I'm finally being able to sort of mesh the two together and really do both of them, but it's been sort of a process of kind of figuring out how I could pursue both of my passions, which are kind of low-paying passions [laughing] and make a career out of it.

Tami: Right.

Dave: And it's finally working out.

Tami: I understand that. Is this your first book? "Getting Lost?"

Dave: This is my first book. Yeah. I actually have a... I just signed a deal for a second book on how to write more vivid and exciting travel journals with a small publisher in Portland called Inkwater Press. So that will be out next summer.

Tami: Oh, fantastic. More with Dave Fox, the author of "Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad," when Community Matters Weekend Edition Continues. I'm Tami Kosch. You're listening to Seattle's Progressive Talk, AM 1090.

[---Commercial Break---]

Tami: Good morning. I'm Tami Kosch. This is Community Matters Weekend Edition on Seattle's Progressive Talk, AM 1090. We're talking with local author Dave Fox. His book is "Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad." And Dave since you're in the know about travel things, what travel guides do you recommend?

Dave: I think that there are so many different styles of travel, and there are lots of different guidebooks out there for lots of different travelers. You know, my boss, Rick Steves, he has his approach to travel, which a lot of people have really embraced, and he speaks to a lot of Americans who I think might not have the courage to step outside of their comfort zone and go to foreign countries. But then there are more upscale guidebooks for more upscale travelers. There are books that go for more of the shoestring traveler audience. You know, books like "Lets Go: Europe." That's what I started traveling with when I was a scruffy backpacker doing the sort of travel at all costs on 26 dollars a day sort of thing back when I was in college. So I think what's really important is go out and find the guidebook that works best for you. And I also encourage people not to overplan things. I think that it's nice to travel with sort of a bit of a free spirit, and some spontaneity, and allow yourself to make deviations in your plans, because you never know what opportunities are going to come up once you start traveling, and it's nice to not be so tied down by your itinerary that you can, you know, break away from it when a unique opportunity presents itself.

Tami: Right. Take advantage. Now where are you traveling to this summer?

Dave: Well I've been in Scandinavia for the last four or five weeks. I just got back two weeks ago, and I'm home for just a little break, and I'm going back next week to guide a couple more tours. I guide tours for Rick Steves. And so I will be there for about five weeks. I'm also taking a week's vacation down in Croatia.

Tami: Oh, how nice. Do you have friends in Croatia?

Dave: I don't. It's a place that I've just been wanting to go to for years. I took a train, an incredible train ride through Yugoslavia when it was an intact country before the war in the late '80s, and I've always wanted to go back. It was an amazing train ride, and you know, peace has returned to the region and I'm hearing incredible things about it. I think the time to go is now before it gets overwrought with tourists again, because that will happen. It's a beautiful part of the world.

Tami: And what do you recommend -- the difference between group travel, if you go with a group, and people doing solo travel?

Dave: Well again, I think that it's a matter of finding what works for your style. There are some big advantages to both types of travel. When you travel on your own, you've got the freedom to explore and to roam. You're not tied down to schedules as much. When you travel with a group, if you take a tour, then you've got a guide who knows the area. They can tell you more about the history. They are arranging your, you know, your hotels and some of your meals for you and that sort of thing, so it's a little bit less work to go with a tour. What you lose when you do that is some of the independence you have, and the freedom to kind of wander and make your own discoveries.

Tami: But also maybe, nice to go with a group the first time you go to a country and then the second time, if you want to go on your own, you're well-versed.

Dave: Absolutely. I think what's most important is, go! Go in whatever way you're comfortable going. But I think travel is so important right now, you know. We've got so many sad and scary things happening in the world, and I think that the more that we, as just citizens of the planet, come in contact with each other, the more we get to know each other on a personal level, as opposed to a political level, the more we start to understand that people really in general are good people around the world. We get so much rhetoric thrown at us in the media, and just, you know, from our politicians and so forth, and I think that it's so important these days to go connect with other people, and particularly as Americans. I know a lot of people are saying, "Well, I'm afraid to travel right now because so many people are angry at America."

Tami: Yeah.

Dave: I think this is the time we should be traveling. This is the time when we should be going out and showing people, "Hey, we are interested in learning about your culture. We are interested in teaching you about our culture, and our culture beyond the politics," and really connecting with people. I think that's so important right now.

Tami: And being peaceful. Spreading some peace.

Dave: Absolutely. Yes.

Tami: And when you open up the... there's a lot of fear around travel. We have... one of my aunts and uncles are the "crazy" portion of the family, that I just love, you know, I think they're a lot of fun, and they sold their house and took off for a year in their RV, and they were in telling stories, and I was just eating it up, just loving it. "Oh and then we met so-and-so, and we just went and...." And there's some danger involved with that, and I wasn't thinking of it, and they laughed, and then the rest of the family was just, did their whole... [Gasp], aghast. They're aghast that, you know, that they met people on a train or wherever they were and just went to their house in Mexico of all places. How do you get past that fear, and calming, you know, maybe the uptight branch of the family to the wild branch of the family?

Dave: Boy! Taming the uptight branch of the family, that's a tricky one. I know my parents still worry every time I leave the country. I get phone calls and letters from my mom telling me to be careful and, you know, I think that as a traveler, I have learned really to trust my instincts. I've been in a few scary situations. I've been robbed a couple of times and, you know, things can go wrong, but what I've learned over the years is that every time I've been mugged or confronted in some uncomfortable way, I've had a bad feeling about the person and lingered too long. Now, on the other hand, I have met many many people, and gone into situations where if my parents or my friends knew I was going... going over to somebody's house or something like that who I had just met, they'd say, "Dave, you're insane. You're going to get yourself killed."

Tami: [Laughs] Yes!

Dave: But you meet people. You have a good feeling about them, and you know, I've been very fortunate that I've never had anything really serious happen to me in that regard, but I think there is some risk involved in traveling. If you want to be totally safe, stay home, cower under the bed, and never learn anything about the world....

Tami: [Laughs] And watch Jerry Springer?

Dave: And watch Jerry Springer! There you go! But no, I think really the most important thing is just trust your instincts and they will take you far if you really listen to them.

Tami: Okay, now I have to ask you -- set up here -- what about your instincts before the riot? Or do you want to tell about that?

Dave: Well, you're talking about the near-riot I almost started when I was eight years old?

Tami: [Laughs] Yes.

Dave: I've got to say that my instincts when I was age eight, traveling in Tunisia for the first time, my travel instincts were maybe not quite as developed as they are today, so I didn't have any instincts as I went to take a photograph that upset some people, and I was an eight-year-old American kid, very innocently wandering through a North African market. I had just wandered a few feet away from my mother, and before she could do anything to stop me, I raised my little plastic camera I had just received for Christmas and took a picture. And there was a big celebration going on, and everything just stopped, and I actually wasn't aware of what I had done until a couple hours later when we were back at our hotel and my parents explained to me that I really shouldn't have taken that picture.

Tami: That you were the one that stopped the celebration?

Dave: That's right.

Tami: And that is something. We as Americans, we're, we love taking our photographs, and when is it inappropriate?

Dave: We absolutely have to be sensitive about what we photograph, and where and when we photograph it. I think, when in doubt, ask. You know, just ask someone. Even if you don't speak the language, you can point to your camera and raise your eyebrows, and they get the body language. You're asking if it's okay to take a picture or not, and I think that that's a really important thing to do. Places of worship, anywhere in the world, I think it's a very insensitive thing to take pictures without at least checking first. Pictures of people... some people love to be photographed. I've found sometimes photography can be a wonderful way of connecting with people. They find it very flattering that you want to take a picture of them. Other people don't like it. And I think as a basic courtesy, you don't go and shove your camera in somebody's face. I've seen people do that before, and that is not the culturally sensitive way to take pictures of people. Some photographers might argue that you get better pictures that way. I suppose it depends on your goals. But in terms of traveling with a bit of cultural sensitivity, I think, just ask. And smile. That's the other thing. It's amazing how disarming a smile can be, particularly when there is a language barrier. If you approach somebody and you look friendly to them, they will tend to respond with friendliness.

Tami: It's all about that gut instinct.

Dave: Absolutely.

Tami: Do you have a website you'd like to direct people to?

Dave: I do. Yeah. My main website -- my name is Dave Fox, and davefox.com was taken, so davethefox.com is my goofy humor website. And also, my book, if people are interested in reading some sample chapters of my book, they can go to davesbook.com, and they'll find out all about some of the other trouble I've gotten into over the years.

Tami: [Laughs] Apostrophe or not? just daves....

Dave: Just davesbook.com.

Tami: That's easy to remember, and the book is "Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad." What else would you like to say about travel?

Dave: I think, like I said, I just think it's so important that people get out and travel these days. It certainly has changed my life, and I think it's a great thing to do. Another thing that I really encourage people to do when they are traveling is to keep a journal of their travels, and I've actually got another website, traveljournaling.com, which explains how to keep a more vivid travel journal. I find... I teach classes in travel journaling, and there are two main frustrations people have when they try to journal about their trips. One is that they just don't seem to be able to find time to write in their journals, and the other one is that their journals sound a little bit flat and pedestrian, and I've got some tips online for how you can write more vivid travel journals, how to find time to journal, but I think that writing things down, even just scribbling random notes -- it doesn't have to be well-polished essays, in fact it shouldn't; we don't have time to write that sort of thing when we're out having our adventures -- but scribbling a few notes down, we can document our trips in all kinds of ways that we can't just by taking pictures. Most people rely on their cameras to capture their journeys, and photography is great, but when you write about things, you can focus on not only what you're seeing through the viewfinder, but all of your senses -- what you're hearing, what you're smelling, and tasting, and how your body feels, and also all the emotions, and things you go through, the people you meet, some of their mannerisms, things you can never capture in a photograph.

Tami: And sometimes, years later, you want to go and look back, and you're like, "Oh..." and the journals do seem sort of flat. You're like, "Oh, I needed to... I wish I could have captured this in a better way."

Dave: Sure. Well, I'll give you an example. I guide tours through Scandinavia, and we take a cruise through the fjords in Norway, and the Norwegian fjords have been voted, or ranked, the number one most beautiful tourist destination in the world by "National Geographic" magazine a few years ago. Well, people get on a boat through the fjords, and they write in their journal, "The fjords were beautiful." That doesn't tell us anything. That's not a news flash. Give some description. Talk about the swooping cliffs that plunge down into these icy blue waters, and the seagulls that chase the boats, and the little, maroon-colored farm houses that freckle the land, and even the smell of diesel that you're getting coming off the boat and how that seems to clash with all of this really stunning nature that is engulfing you, and that sort of thing, the... maybe the mist and fog that settles over the water. When you start bringing out those details, you have a much more vivid description of where you've been.

Tami: Right. You feel like you're.... You brought me there. So....

Dave: Right. Mm hmm.

Tami: Well thank you so much for visiting with us on Community Matters Weekend Edition.