At its best, traveling is memorable and character-building -- expanding our knowledge of what is possible in the world.
And at its worst, traveling is also memorable and character-building -- expanding our knowledge of what can go wrong in the world.
Doug Lansky takes special delight in travel failures -- be they by air, land or sea -- and he's compiled a list of the very worst for his book, The Titanic Awards.
Lansky says the travel sections in newspapers initially inspired him to catalog travel industry blunders.
"It's sort of worked backwards, in many respects," he tells NPR's Tony Cox. "In the news section, when things go wrong, you write about them."
But in travel, it's the opposite: "You write about them when they're great," Lansky says, "and then you sort of ignore them when they're bad."
He says the result is travel sections that read like glorified travel brochures, and much of what's printed in travel magazines and newspapers is just smoke and mirrors.
He says anyone who's traveled has seen those idyllic pictures in guidebooks or magazines:"[The] desolate beach, and it's empty. And then you get there and it's filled with tons of beachgoers with crazy looking lesions, and it's not quite as picturesque as you see on the postcard."
But Lansky thinks the stories of travel gone wrong are the most interesting ones. He's particularly fond of stories about passengers getting thrown off planes, like the one about the woman traveling with a little boy. The little boy was looking out the window, waving and saying "bye-bye" to the other airplanes, and the woman was trying to keep him quiet so as not to disturb the other passengers.
Finally, the flight attendant warned the woman that her son was scaring other passengers "with this bye-bye stuff," Lansky says. The flight attendant then suggested that the woman sedate her child, which she refused to do. So the flight attendant had the pilot turn the plane around and taxi back to the gate.
"They chucked her off the airplane," he says.
Lansky found his Titanic Award winner for Worst Car Rental Company Name in Australia -- Rent-A-Bomb -- pre-9/11. Since then, he says, the name has only gotten worse.
But for all his travels, Lansky says he still has a hard time recommending destinations -- there are just too many variables that contribute to a really good trip.
"It's because of the weather, it's because they didn't get sick, and that they met some lovely people, and there was a festival going on, and maybe they got invited to a local wedding -- it's hard to replicate those great things if you go," Lansky says.
Instead, Lansky recommends choosing your next trip by following your own interests.
"If you're a bird-watcher, go bird-watch," he says. "Do your own thing -- you're more likely to find your own adventure."
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