As if it weren’t indulgent enough to post a personal blog that is disseminated through the business newsletter I write, I have published a book too. This work is four years in the making, though for most of that time the project sat idle, and is a different sort of travelogue that both details my experiences in the moment and my reflections on those experiences over the subsequent years. It isn’t a long work, but I am proud of most of the prose. It also contains some of my photography. The entire work is available HERE. The introduction is reproduced below as a teaser:

Travel has already been several things for me—a way to expand my horizons, a celebration of achieving milestones, a desperate attempt to outrun the thoughts inside my own head. This trip was about none of those things. The purpose of this trip was gluttony, a full portion of selfish indulgence. I stood on the precipice of a time when I would have no control over my schedule and would be unable to have a true vacation. I wanted to experience as much as possible before that happened.

Between finishing a job as a law clerk for a federal judge and starting as an associate at an international law firm I embarked on the expedition detailed in these pages. It involved four overnight flights with several others besides, five foreign countries spread over two continents, and different tour groups in each main destination. It was really three trips, each of which might be atop the wish list for some, crammed together with a few bonuses on the front end. So disjointed was my planning that the middle portion of the itinerary was chosen as much for its relative location as for its own sights, sounds, smells, and tastes.

The travel detailed in these pages was not even the full extent of my wanderings that summer. Without a journal, I took a bus tour with my brother and an amalgam of Aussies and Kiwis twice our age through parts of Central and Eastern Europe, throwing in short stays in Vienna and Budapest to introduce him to some of my favorite cities before we rode south and east. It is the absence of contemporaneous written reflections that led to the omission of that trip from this work as my memories lack the visceral feel I strive to communicate here. Besides, that trip was about bonding with my brother more than anything else.

I did not set out to write a blow-by-blow description of what happened each day though this work is chronological. This is not a guidebook. I took inspiration instead from great travel writers of the past and, though my writing is more myopic than theirs, it is my hope that in this work you will see at least a penumbra of what they achieved.

Completing this project was more of a personal journey than I anticipated. I expected to publish this back in 2017 in the months following the trip itself. As I settled into my new reality, I allowed this work to slip down my list of priorities. It stayed there for far too long, gnawing at me whenever I thought about how I had left a promise to myself to publish this work unfulfilled. Thanks Dad for continuing to pester me about when I would finish. I have had no editor other than myself, so any errors are mine and mine alone.

—James David

Raleigh, North Carolina

Again, the e-book is available for order on the Kindle Store HERE.