Bøger af Ben Batchelder

Fresh out of college, a lost American despairs of his new career, chaotic life, and diseased family. When an invitation to Scotland falls into the depths of a New York winter, he grabs at the chance to renew himself. On a whim, he decides to save money, fly to Europe, and travel east to the ends of the earth, on $10 a day for a year or more. Here is the story of his odyssey: staying at German castles; losing not one but two passports to thieves; disastrous brushes with lost bags, malicious customs officials, Cairo scam artists, and Thai police; dogged much of the time by illness. It is a tale of a young man losing his innocence, awakening politically, falling in love, and finding the support, and resourcefulness, to pull through the most dangerous miles of his life.

Fresh out of college, a lost American despairs of his new career, chaotic life, and diseased family. When an invitation to Scotland falls into the depths of a New York winter, he grabs at the chance to renew himself.On a whim, he decides to save money, fly to Europe, and travel east to the ends of the earth, on $10 a day for a year or more.Here is the story of his odyssey: staying at German castles; losing several passports to thieves; disastrous brushes with lost bags, malicious customs officials, Cairo scam artists, and Thai police; dogged much of the time by illness.It is a tale of a young man losing his innocence, awakening politically, falling in love, and finding the support, and resourcefulness, to pull through the most dangerous miles of his life.

"When 9/11 struck, Ben Batchelder was living overseas. Dumbfounded, he wondered: How could he help? After leaving his marriage and cozy corporate career, he returns to the U.S. with an outlandish plan: to protect the country by car, driving a silver-plated VW Beetle as close to the remote borders as possible, without getting arrested. Along the way he gets to know his beloved country again and meets many unheralded borderlanders, whose stories of hard work, perseverance, and patriotic hope go well beyond the usual headlines. Instead, he finds that the nation's edges reveal much about its core - and in the process comes home to an overwhelming sense of gratitude."--

Have you ever wondered how to travel with your favorite pet in a huge tropical country where footloose foreigners are suspect?Author Ben Batchelder abandoned a cozy corporate career and, instead of returning to the U.S. like a normal re-pat, moved deep into the interior of Brazil.Here, he drives his two-wheel drive station wagon into the Amazon, on the notoriously dangerous Belém-Brasília highway, and back along Brazil's endless Atlantic Coast, on roads few if any Brazilians brave. Hence the need for such a ferocious breed as Labrador: for protection.Along the way, humorous encounters with countless locals help him to plumb Brazilian culture and history, in many aspects the flip-side of the American experience, and reveal how he fell in love with Brazil's beguiling warmth in the first place - along with black Labs.