The Best American Travel Writing 2014 (50 page)

A couple of hundred feet of easy water and I saw a white-haired man standing on the dock of a rowing club. I held out my hand. Without hesitation, he took it and pulled me in. I told him my name.

“Tony,” he replied.

“You must be a rowing club.”

“Yes. We're the Generals.”

On land, I started sorting through my gear and talking expansively about the previous night. “The fruit trees. The grass. The moon. The view. The friendly grasshopper. It was incredible. The best night I've ever spent anywhere.”

Tony said, “It used to be a garbage dump. They closed it when it caught fire.”

I took a long shower in the club's locker room, dressed in the cowboy boots and suit jacket I'd been hauling around in a dry bag all week, and walked across town. In St. Mark's Square, surrounded by tourists, Gino shook my hand and said, “You made it.”

 

Before I left Venice 20 years earlier, Gino had let me row his boat for the first time with paying passengers. Two German girls, blond, twins, looked up at me in what I imagined was awe as I rowed them down the Stream of Lead. I rowed without speaking or splashing—preserving the silence in order to amplify the moment when we'd burst into the Grand Canal.

Then I one-handed my oar, pointed over their heads, and shouted, “Ponte Rialto!”

The girls performed an ungainly swivel, which rocked the boat and made me stumble. Simultaneously, the No. 2 express
vaporetto
came powering through the canal's sharpest bend, arced under the bridge, and bore down on us. We were going to be rammed. My adrenaline surged—but I had no idea how to move my 36-foot skateboard out of the way. A strong hand pushed me down into a crouch and wrested the oar from my grip.

Gino had been watching, poised to take over, noting criticisms and whispering warnings. Now I stayed low as he detailed my many mistakes.

“You let go of the oar just now for what reason?”

“To point out the sights.”

“Never let go of the oar.”

“Okay.”

“Talk about history; don't point at it.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you think you were doing with that wall you almost ran into? Do you know how much it costs to buy a new
ferro
?”

Gino had kept the oar. I'd crouched, embarrassed. Then a quick glance showed that the twins were enraptured. Fifteen minutes later, their parents handed over a hundred dollars in cash for the near drowning I'd provided.

“May we please have a photograph?” they asked me in perfect English.

After delivering a halting English response, “It's. No. Problem,” I placed a daughter under each arm and Gino took the picture. I imagine I'm still in a family album, somewhere in Germany, as a gondolier's son.

Elif Batuman
is the author of
The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
. She is a staff writer for
The New Yorker
and writer in residence at Koç University in Istanbul. In 2007, she was the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.

 

Julia Cooke
is the author of
The Other Side of Paradise: Life in the New Cuba
(2014). She is a frequent contributor to
VQR
and
Condé Nast Traveler,
and her writing has also appeared in
Guernica, Departures, Metropolis,
and the
Village Voice,
among others. She has lived in Mexico City and Havana and now calls New York City, where she teaches at the New School, home.

 

Janine di Giovanni
has reported on war for nearly a quarter of a century, working in some of the world's most violent places. Her trademark has always been to write about the human costs of war and to single out individuals to recount the cost of conflict and human rights abuses. She is the author of five books, and her recent TED talk “What I Saw in the War” has gotten more than 600,000 YouTube hits. She is currently Middle East editor of
Newsweek,
a consultant on the Syria crisis for UNHCR, and a contributing editor at
Vanity Fair
. Her
Vanity Fair
article “Madness Visible” won the National Magazine Award and was later expanded into a book. She has also won Britain's Foreign Correspondent of the Year, two Amnesty International awards, a Nation Institute grant, and Spear's Memoir of the Year for her book
Ghosts by Daylight
. She has taught and lectured on human rights around the world, including at Sciences Po in Paris. In 2010, she was the president of the jury of the Prix Bayeux-Calvados for war correspondents. A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, she lives in Paris with her son, Luca. She is currently writing a book on Syria.

 

A.
 
A. Gill
, a contributing editor at
Vanity Fair,
is a features writer for the
Sunday Times
(London). He is the author of several books, including
To America with Love,
AA Gill Is Away,
and
Here & There: Collected Travel Writing
. He lives in London.

 

Arnon Grunberg
was born in Amsterdam in 1971 and works as a novelist and reporter. His work has been translated into 27 languages.

 

Harrison Scott Key
is the author of the memoir
The World's Largest Man
, due out in 2015. His humor and nonfiction have appeared in
Oxford American, Creative Nonfiction, The Pinch, Reader's Digest,
the
Chronicle of Higher Education, Swink,
and elsewhere, and his work has been adapted for the stage by Chicago's Neo-Futurists in their show
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind
and others. He teaches at SCAD in Savannah, Georgia. On Twitter, he's @HarrisonKey.

 

Peter LaSalle
is the author of several books of fiction, most recently the short story collection
What I Found Out About Her
and a novel,
Mariposa's Song
. A collection of his essays on literary travel,
The City at Three P.M.: Writing, Reading, and Traveling,
is forthcoming in 2015 and includes pieces from magazines such as
Tin House, WorldView, The Nation, Creative Nonfiction, Agni, Profils Américains
(France), and
Memoir Journal,
as well as
The Best American Travel Writing 2010
. He divides his time between Austin, Texas—where he teaches creative writing at the University of Texas—and Narragansett in his native Rhode Island, while also continuing to travel as much as he can to explore the various places where his favorite literature is set.

 

Amanda Lindhout
and
Sara Corbett
are authors of the book
A House in the Sky
. Lindhout is the founder of the Global Enrichment Foundation, a nonprofit that works with women in Somalia and Kenya. Sara Corbett is a contributing writer for the
New York Times Magazine
.

 

Andrew McCarthy
is the author of the
New York Times
best-selling travel memoir
The Longest Way Home
. He is an editor-at-large at
National Geographic Traveler
. He has written for the
New York Times, The Atlantic,
and numerous other publications. McCarthy is also an actor and director.

 

Michael Paterniti
is the
New York Times
best-selling author of
Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain
and most recently of
The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese
. His writing has appeared in many publications, including the
New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Harper's Magazine, Outside, Esquire,
and
GQ,
where he works as a correspondent. Paterniti has been nominated eight times for a National Magazine Award and has been the recipient of an NEA grant and two MacDowell Fellowships. He is the cofounder of a children's storytelling center in Portland, Maine, where he lives with his wife and their three children.

 

Stephanie Pearson
is a freelance journalist and contributing editor to
Outside
magazine. Her work has appeared in
Outside, O: The Oprah Magazine, National Geographic Traveler, Men's Journal, Popular Photography,
and the Lonely Planet Great Escapes book series, among others. She splits her time between northern Minnesota and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

Tony Perrottet
was born in Australia and was a denizen of the East Village of Manhattan for many years. He is a contributing writer at
Smithsonian
magazine and a regular at
the New York Times, Wall Street Journal Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler,
and other publications. He is the author of five books, most recently
Napoleon's Privates: 2,500 Years of History Unzipped
and
The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe
. He is currently working on a book about travel in ancient China.

 

Matthew Power
was a contributing editor at
Harper's Magazine
and wrote for
GQ,
the
New York Times, Outside,
and
Men's Journal
. His work has been anthologized in
The Best American Travel Writing, The Best American Spiritual Writing
,
The Best American Science and Nature Writing
, and
The
Best American Nonrequired Reading
. He was a three-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in international reporting. Power was the recipient of the 2005 Society of American Travel Writers Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Award for Best Land Travel Article and the 2008 Bronze Award for Best Adventure Travel Article, and he was a 2004 nonfiction scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He died in March, while on assignment in Uganda.

 

Steven Rinella
is the author of
The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine
and
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
. His writing has appeared in many publications, including
Outside, Field & Stream, Men's Journal,
the
New York Times, Glamour,
and
Bowhunter
.

 

David Sedaris
is the author of the books
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Holidays on Ice, Naked,
and
Barrel Fever
. He is a regular contributor to
The New Yorker
and BBC Radio 4. He lives in England.

 

Peter Selgin
's
Drowning Lessons
won the 2008 Flannery O'Connor Award. He has also written a novel and two books on fiction craft. His memoir,
Confessions of a Left-Handed Man,
was shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize. He teaches at Antioch University and is assistant professor of creative writing at Georgia College & State University.

 

Bob Shacochis
is the National Book Award–winning author of seven books and countless magazine pieces. His most recent novel,
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul,
was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2014.

 

Alex Shoumatoff
has 10 published books and since 2001 has been the editor of a website, Dispatches from the Vanishing World. He was a staff writer for
The New Yorker
from 1978 to 1987 and a founding contributing editor of
Outside
and
Condé Nast Traveler.
He is a senior contributing editor to
Vanity Fair.

 

Gary Shteyngart
was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel,
The Russian Debutante's Handbook
, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel,
Absurdistan,
was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the
New York Times Book Review,
as well as a best book of the year by
Time,
the
Washington Post
's “Book World” section, the
San Francisco Chronicle,
the
Chicago Tribune,
and many other publications. He has been selected for
Granta
's Best of Young American Novelists list. His work has appeared in
The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ,
and
Travel + Leisure,
and his books have been translated into more than 20 languages. He lives in New York City. His most recent work is the memoir
Little Failure
.

 

Thomas Swick
is the author of a travel memoir,
Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland,
and a collection of travel stories,
A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler.
He has written for the
Missouri Review, American Scholar, North American Review, Oxford American, Wilson Quarterly, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Smithsonian,
and
Afar
. This is his sixth appearance in
The Best American Travel Writing
.

 

Patrick Symmes
is a journalist who has published more than 30 articles in
Outside
magazine. He is the author of
Chasing Che
and
The Boys from Dolores,
both of which treat the revolutionary history of Latin America.

 

Jeffrey Tayler
is a contributing editor at
The Atlantic
and has also written for
National Geographic, Condé Nast Traveler, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy, American Scholar,
and
Harper's Magazine,
among other publications. He is the author of many critically acclaimed books, including
Facing the Congo
and
River of No Reprieve
. His seventh book,
Topless Jihadis: Inside Femen, the World's Most Provocative Activist Group,
is out now as an e-book. “In the Abode of the Gods” is his fifth story selected for inclusion in
The Best American Travel Writing
. Since 1993, he has lived in Moscow.