Most of the eyes scanning across this sentence probably don’t belong to people that have gone snorkeling; even fewer to people who’ve gone snorkeling in the Red Sea on the coral beaches of Eilat, Israel. It’s a rare opportunity, but one that I was recently privileged to experience.

Apparently gardens make really good zoos, though that’s no excuse to let the neighbor’s pets run through your flowerbeds. In the case of the Wilhelma Zoological Botanical Garden in Stuttgart, Germany (we just call it Wilhelma), it’s very true!

You probably haven’t spent much time at any abandoned coal mining facilities in the Czech Republic, unless you’re a former Czech Republic coal miner, of course. You may never go to the Czech Republic at all. It’s not the first place on your bucket list when you’re planning your family vacation.

So I’d been wanting to create a trailer for a while. Not just any trailer. One starring animals as the main characters. But assets are scarce in Germany, and the only real option I had was the cows down the road. The problem is, how do you make a quartet of cows lounging in a shack of rotting hay remotely worth watching?

It was sitting in a European airport cafe, sipping on a strange brew of coffee, that I realized there was a difference between myself and the perfidiously bouncy siblings around me.

For me, travel is like a quest.

I think we can all agree that, although reading about easy, predictable travel experiences can be okay if you intend to have a similar one, the most entertaining travel articles are the one where things don’t go as planned. It’s true!

Ever since my siblings and I first started performing small plays for our parents, I’ve wanted to make an adaptation of the opening to Shakespeare’s classic King John.

Germany is known by most people for a few culturally biased things. Beer, pretzels, cuckoo clocks, and those glorified knee-length overalls known as Lederhosen. And most importantly, the German Christmas Markets.

Travel is bad.

There are thousands of websites that will do their absolute best to tell you that this isn’t true, but you can’t shake the fact: travel is bad.

A Fan-Filmed Book Trailer: An Experience in Collaboration