The Turk Who Loved Apples
And Other Tales of Losing My Way Around the World
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
While writing his celebrated Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times, Matt Gross began to feel hemmed in by its focus on what he thought of as “traveling on the cheap at all costs.” When his editor offered him the opportunity to do something less structured, the Getting Lost series was born, and Gross began a more immersive form of travel that allowed him to “lose his way all over the globe”—from developing-world megalopolises to venerable European capitals, from American sprawl to Asian archipelagos. And that's what the never-before-published material in The Turk Who Loved Apples is all about: breaking free of the constraints of modern travel and letting the place itself guide you. It's a variety of travel you'll love to experience vicariously through Matt Gross—and maybe even be inspired to try for yourself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gross once hopped between cities as The New York Times "Frugal Traveler", and here the Brooklyn resident mulls an affinity for travel that began when he was a child, "sitting in the backseat of the fam-ily station wagon, looking out the window." Rather than simply rehash pieces from over the years, though, Gross gets introspective. He recalls foods consumed in Southeast Asia, for example, and the items that wreaked havoc on his digestive system. He had taken medication beforehand. "But none of those had protected me from the shrimp curry I'd eaten... Or the pho... Or the tap water I used to brush my teeth. Or the fat chunks of ice in my beer..." But he also wonders if a "giardia-free world" "would mean a life of eating without consequences, and that felt far too easy." Gross talks about the 55-year-old Turkish farmer in whose apple orchards he volunteered for several days in exchange for food and lodging. Their meeting affected him tremendously, giving him greater confidence. Reflections and ex-periences like these keep Gross's work from getting too self-involved and add substance to what could have been one travel writer's self-indulgent catch-all.
