Judith Works, Indie author of Coins In the Fountain, the memoir of the
her adventures while living and working in Rome, shares anecdotes from her travels to over 100 different countries.
1. Judith, after completing one career you decided to go to
law school, became a traveler and now you’re a writer. Are you enjoying
yourself? How are you combining the two?
I hope to keep combining the
writer and traveler bit for the next number of years although the time has
passed when I would zip off to Zanzibar alone. Yes – I’m enjoying myself,
planning travel, packing, looking around for new sights and food experiences,
unpacking and writing. Just bought a new suitcase to replace one that wore out.
It’s purple. I hope to take it for its maiden voyage to Rome this spring.
Between these activities I’m
very busy with volunteer work so there is little time for boredom.
2. You’ve visited over 100 countries. In June you’re adding
Ireland, Iceland and Norway to the count. Do you have a favorite country; a
favorite part of your traveling adventures that you could share?
Of course my favorite country is
Italy but the lure of the new is always there – too many countries and not
enough time as the saying goes. My favorite time of every experience is having
an afternoon glass of wine and some snacks in a square, piazza, plaza, praça, place or some site where there is an ancient
monument just waiting for me to explore.
3. Besides the entertaining tales you share with readers in
your memoir, Coins In The Fountain, do you have any amusing anecdotes
pertaining to your travels you’d be willing to share with us? Maybe an
interaction with a flight attendant, a shop owner in one of the countries
you’ve visited or a docent or tour guide encounter.
We hired a guide in Shanghai – a
young woman who was a stock broker during the week but worked on the weekends
as a guide to practice her English. She wore a beautifully carved dragon
pendant. After I admired it she took it off her neck and handed to me for a
closer look. She said that it was her good luck charm and that she would never
let her clients touch it. Then she added, “Look, no asshole so my luck won’t
run out.”
In Morocco I got tangled up with
a man with a camel who convinced me that I should take a ride. Glenn was smart
enough to refuse after taking a look at the beast. It took days before my flea
bites stopped itching. On the same trip one of our traveling companions got
caught trying to steal luggage by putting smaller cases inside the largest. He
was chased around the shop by the proprietor until he gave up and handed over
the luggage.
We had a marvelous tour guide in
Egypt but it was April and Ramadan. The temperature was about 120 F, the sands
burning hot. Our guide, Zenaib, was showing signs of heat stroke. My husband
and I poured our water bottles over her head because she was not allowed a sip
until sundown. “Shokran” she said,
“thank you.” And then in English: “you have saved my soul.”
An interesting interaction was
with a man whose last name is Christian, as in Fletcher Christian the
instigator of the mutiny on the Bounty. We were anchored off Pitcairn when the
islanders came on the ship because it was too rough for us to get on the tiny
island. I had recently come across an article in Vanity Fair about the lengthy
trial of 4 island men accused and then convicted of incest and rape. I struck
up a conversation with a man who told me that he was a descendant of the
original mutineer. When I looked at the article again later I realized that he
had just been released from jail after serving his sentence for rape. He had
claimed that his activities were based on Polynesian custom and I wondered
later if he may have been right but missed the fact that 200 years had passed
since the mutiny.
In Otaru, Japan a smiling man
came up to us and tried out some sign language which we interpreted as wanting
to know how we liked the city. We said “Otaru nice.” He smiled and said “ah” Trying
to dredge up another subject we hit on “Ichiro” (the Japanese baseball player
in Seattle); our local responded with, “AH”; then we said “Tokyo”; he said “AHH”;
finally we tried “Kyoto”; he said, “AHHHHHHH” while bowing practically to the
ground and smiling. I guess he was from Kyoto.
One of our most cringing events
took place on a cruise. We were seated at dinner with a very dour ship’s doctor
and an overbuilt young woman who was with her mother. The mother kept trying to
learn about what ships do when someone dies on board and the daughter kept on
the lookout for the ship’s photographer. When he started towards us she grabbed
her breasts and put them on the table so the photo would show off her greatest
assets. We skipped dessert. This was the same cruise where the captain, having
had a little too much wine, became overly friendly as he tried to arrange a
scarf I was wearing over a rather low cut dress.
4. Having visited so many different countries you must have
sampled many different foods. Do you have a favorite cuisine; a least favorite;
a food adventure to share?
My favorite cuisine is Italian,
especially the myriad kinds of pasta and their associated sauces. My only
unpleasant choice was trippa alla
fiorintina – tripe Florentine style with a sauce of tomatoes, celery and
onions. It tasted like rubber tofu to me. A food mistake I mention in the book
was instructive: I never got the word for cauliflower, cavolfiore, mixed with caviar, caviale
a second time after reviewing the bill for our delicious dinner.
An especially appealing experience
was a simple lunch at a country hotel in Tuscany: we were friends who agreed
that it was too lovely to leave the hotel for sightseeing. We asked the owner
if we could have lunch under an old olive tree in the garden. Even though the
kitchen was closed until dinner he brought out platters of salsiccia, sausage, tomatoes still warm from the garden, grilled
peppers and eggplant along with a pitcher of wine made from their own vineyard.
Our feast exemplified the reason people love Italy.
Goat stew on the Sudanese border
in northern Kenya was interesting for the setting and the company – aid workers
but the experience at the Emerson Hotel in Zanzibar has never been equaled. We
climbed to the rooftop to lounge on pillows under a silk canopy as the sun set.
Mozart was on the CD player. The scent of cinnamon from nearby warehouses
filled the air. As we sipped cocktails and started on samosas the bells from a
nearby Hindu temple started clanging, then the more mellow bells from the
cathedral built over the former slave market rang in an invitation to evensong.
Finally a muezzin’s ancient call from the minaret of a nearby mosque floated
over the tropical air. The fresh caught grilled fish served with coconut curry
over rice completed the idyllic scene.
5. You are working on your first book of fiction. Would you
give us a brief synopsis?
I’m working on the plot now – a
story of a young couple who move to Rome on a whim and find that expatriate
life can have unintended results. I’ll work in some art theft and a few
infidelities too. (And no – it’s not autobiographical.)
Read more of Judith's travel adventures on her blog http://alittlelightexercise.blogspot.com/ or visit her website at www.CoinsInTheFountain.com for 'book bites' from Coins In The Fountain
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