This month the first issue of AFAR was launched. I haven’t read it, but in the quest for pr, editor-in-chief Susan West did a little interview with the Frommers, meaning Arthur and his daughter Pauline. The results were quite interesting.

Pauline, you see, was quite gracious, admiring the breadth of a magazine that covers “Experiential Travel”, you know, where you go and actually interact with the folks at your destination.

Here’s what Susan from AFAR says is covered in the premier issue:

Todd Pitock’s journey to find authentic Berber culture in Morocco’s Anti-Atlas mountains, Sam Fromartz’s apprenticeship with a Paris baker, and Lisa Katayama’s inside look at Tokyo’s “maid café” culture. I described how we make sure to include resources with each story to help readers take a similar kind of trip—outfitters in Morocco, cooking classes in Paris, English-language tours of Tokyo’s fantasy-play cafés.

Oddly, at the end of the interview, Arthur Frommer sorta had what my mother used to call a “conniption fit”. I’m guessing people don’t have those any more, or they’ve become so ingrained in political “argument” that folks don’t try diagnosing them. In any case, in a gruff and gravely tone, Arthur called AFAR the most absurd publication he’d ever heard of.

Why? Well, because the travel experiences being written about weren’t, as Aurthur put it, “available to everybody”.

Poppycock, Aurthur! Being held hostage in a big tin can full of ruffians from my own country floating in a foreign one is available to all. It’s called cruising. I’m not going subject myself to that just because it’s “available to all” (folks who have money, that is). I’d take experiential travel any day.

I’d add that I suspect there are quite a few people who like reading about travelers who’ve had extraordinary experiences. Sure, not everyone who goes to Paris could possibly apprentice with a one man bakery operation, but that doesn’t mean a person passionate about learning something that happens outside one’s comfort level and language skills should just give up trying. Besides, even those who can’t afford to get to Paris could afford to read about it.

I’m no outgoing hunk of aggressive yet charming travel writer, yet—on my own, mind you—I’ve cooked in a Sardinian restaurant, I’ve helped with the olive harvest in Tuscany, I’ve excavated a cave on a Greek island and I’ll be helping to “break down a pig” into (hopefully prize-winning) salami and other delectables soon in Italy. It’s not rocket science. It’s work.

It’s not like experiential travel isn’t available to everyone. You have to express an honest interest in what’s going on, then prove yourself worthy of the time of others. Then you ask. Here’s another thing moms tell you: the worse that can happen is that they say no.

Worse than the depiction of far-out travel experiences are normal ones embellished by travel writers on press trips as if the writer had connections that you couldn’t possibly have. I can smell press trip a mile away in some people’s writing, and it happens way too often. Here’s a made-up sample:

“I’ve persuaded lovely acquaintance Silvia Bartollini, the director general of the culinary branch of Piemonte tourism, to join me for a leisurely drive through vineyards bursting with the plump grapes Piemontese alchemist turn into heady Barolo wine, which we’ll sip at our first stop, a traditional osteria that has been serving staunch Piemontese farmers since the middle ages.”

Translation: Silvia, who has drawn the short straw that makes her our escort for the day, is smashed into a minivan crowded with a whole bunch of journalists just off their 12 hour flights from heaven knows where and smelling like it. We’re on our way to lunch where we’ll get a free meal at a place that charges 30 euro for a plate of pasta because the chef got a Michelin star last year. There are some kinda grape vines zipping by our windows but I couldn’t write down the name because the road is rough and the driver crazy. I’ll Google it later.

Now that experience isn’t available to everyone either. It just takes advantage of a thing good writers do much better than non-writers: Lie on paper.

Anyway, I hope you’re interested in experiencing things on your travel. Otherwise, hey, Arthur can likely advise you on where to go.

Listen to the Susan, Pauline, and Arthur: interview with Susan and the Frommers’ discussion (Click on “The Travel Show – August 23, 2009 – Hour 2”, it’s the first 15 minutes.

Bagnone is a beautiful city in the Lunigiana. I’ve taken photos and written about it many times. It’s close to my Italian vacation home, so I go there quite often. It’s quite pleasant sitting in one of the bars and listening to the water of the Torrente Bagnone rushing over the rocks below the medieval city and castle.

But then the 147.8 million euro lotto ticket was sold in a bar in Bagnone. Now Bagnone is the hot place in travel. Everyone’s gotta go there.

I just don’t understand it. I mean why should a city get famous for a machine spitting out a piece of paper on a particular day?

I understand local folks celebrating though. Sure, someone among them is richer than anyone can imagine. They (we) all hope we know him or her. It’s not that we’ll have our palms out anytime soon, of course. It’s just that we’d all like to see how someone changes when they get unimaginably rich. Might they buy a few television stations and whisper horny nothings to large breasted women all day while hoping for a government office? Who knows!? That’s the fun of it.

But, you know, you tourists: just don’t wreck Bagnone, ok? Here it is, by the way:

The main part of town is to the left, the brooding castle sits above.

And here’s a Map of the Lunigiana showing Bagnone. Just so you know where it is.

I thought it would be fun to introduce Wandering Italy readers to some of Italy Travel’s movers and shakers—you know, the people who have a passion for telling you about the joys of travel. Jessica Spiegel is one of those passionate people who is quite happy to answer travel questions you might have about traveling in Italy on her site Why Go Italy, sometimes even before you think of asking them. Jessica will soon be on her way to Milano for a few weeks.

My silly questions are in bold. Jessica’s erudite answers are not.

Why would anybody even try relocate to Italy? After all, the US has the best health care system and the best automobiles in the world, according to its politicians.

Ha! Good question. I’ve been asking that myself lately, every time I have to fill out another piece of paperwork in the relocation process.

In all seriousness, though, I love where I live right now (Portland, Oregon). I love being an American citizen. There are many things I love about my country – and plenty of things that annoy me. I’m convinced that no place is perfect, and I’m certainly not motivated to move to Italy to run away from a flawed country. I mean, let’s face it – in some departments, no one holds a candle to Italy when it comes to being flawed.

But I think that’s one of the things that I find sort of reassuring about Italy and the Italians. Yes, the country has problems – some of them big. Yes, the politicians are often untrustworthy and sometimes corrupt. There’s an honesty about that, however, that’s missing when I look at my government in the U.S. We like to pretend our government is perfect, even when we’re complaining about it. In Italy, they know their government is screwed up and yet they don’t let it impact their daily lives much. Of course, this is also a kind of apathy that I find rather unappealing, but as a non-Italian I’m not comfortable calling them on it. Yet.

On the question of “why Italy,” I love to travel and I’ve fallen in love with a few places in my life, but once I got to Italy that was kind of it for me. I blame the Italians, really. I just want to live there so I can be surrounded by them at all times. And while I’m not sure I’ll still think this a year after I finally make the move, I surprised myself recently by responding to the question, “What do you love most about Italy?” with the words, “The chaos.”

Favorite region, city in Italy?

This is, of course, the most difficult question I ever have to answer – partly because I haven’t been everywhere in Italy, so what if my favorite is still out there somewhere, waiting for me to arrive? Of the places I’ve been, however, one place continues to cause me to do the most sighing:

Venice.

I have a mad crush on Venice, and I’ve spent untold words trying to define exactly why. I’m very much a planner by nature, and always want to know where I’m going. Ordinarily, I hate being lost. In Venice, all that changes – I become someone else, someone who lives to get lost. I don’t think I could live in Venice, however, because I’m pretty sure I’d get so lost as to forget my own name – and be completely happy to do so.

From a completely practical perspective, Venice is also a photographer’s dream city – it’s really easy to take gorgeous pictures there. And, since I’m the world’s laziest photographer, I appreciate a city that makes it easy on me.

Most frustrating question you get about Italy?

A question I got once (and only once, thank goodness) was about whether Rome had an open container law or could you just carry around a bottle of booze during your night of drunken partying? I’m not sure it’s actually possible to re-train someone who asks a question like that with an answer via email, but I did my best.

In general, though, I get several emails a week asking for my input on travel itineraries – and while I’m happy to share my opinions, (a) I’m not a travel agent, so I’m not able to spend time hunting down specific hotels or finding information on train tickets for everyone, and (b) I’m not into hand-holding.

I’m very much in the “teach a man to fish” camp of travel assistance. It’s one of the reasons I don’t do many specific restaurant reviews on the site. I’d rather give people tips on how to find a good restaurant in Italy and then they can make their own discoveries. They’ll find excellent places to eat that I’ve never heard of or seen, and that they wouldn’t have found if I’d just given them a list of restaurants I know personally.

Still, I really do like sharing my general thoughts on a person’s itinerary, and I love that people trust me enough to value my thoughts. I hope that by pushing people to make more of their own discoveries that I’m helping them travel better, too.

What big lie or lies do people tell about Italians?

The things I hear most often about the Italians are things that are true in my experience – that they value life more than work, that they’re extremely forgiving when non-Italians make mistakes with the language, that they’re very family-oriented, that they tend to skirt any laws they think they can get away with skirting (or that they just think are silly), that they display sometimes fierce allegiance to the region of their ancestry, and that they are (unfortunately) pretty xenophobic.

None of these things are true of every Italian, of course, but they’re true more often than not. There’s a reason for stereotypes, after all.

When I hear people associate what I call “Sopranos Italian” stereotypes to Italy Italians, however, that’s when I jump in to the defense of the Italy Italians. New Jersey Italians (or Philadelphia Italians, take your pick) are not Italy Italians. Sure, there are some guys in Italy who wear their shirts open one button more than you’d like and display both copious amounts of chest hair and thick gold chains in the process. But those same guys are probably also wearing Prada jeans, carrying “man purses” (which no New Jersey Italian man would be caught dead carrying), and spending more time on their hair than I do. So the similarities only stretch so far.

Jessica Spiegel’s Bio

Jessica Spiegel is a travel writer for the BootsnAll Travel Network who loves Italy enough to want to move there. She writes BootsnAll’s Italy Travel Guide WhyGo Italy, and also contributes to several other websites in the BootsnAll universe. She’s a Twitter addict (you can find her there as @italylogue), amateur photographer, and is happily owned by three lovely cats