Episodes from a 20 Year Vacation (Paperback or Softback)

"Why squander your life away in your own hometown,

when you can do it in London, Paris and Rome?"

Eight months after landing what many had considered to be a plum job with the Federal government, Fred Z. suddenly realizes that his safe and secure position is rapidly luring him towards an insufficient destiny. Abandoning his home and native land, Fred heads for Europe, only to be faced with the even greater challenges of a new language, new culture and a new life. After six months spent exploring the continent and a year-long respite in Cornwall, he returns to Germany and is immediately thrust into an array of lurid, sublime and downright ridiculous situations in the on-going struggle to establish himself as a freelance cameraman. Plagued by uncertainty whether he's made the right decision, it's through a chance meeting with a fellow North American that the doors to real opportunity fling wide open. From that point on, whether it's dog sledding in the Yukon, getting mugged in Naples, removing land mines in Cambodia, tracking Dracula in Romania, interviewing Hitler's telephone operator in Berlin, chasing cheetahs in Vienna, flying in a Black Hawk over Bosnia, or replacing a cancerous esophagus in Hamburg, to name just a few, all play a part in providing for eclectic glimpses of just how the world works, laying the groundwork for what would become a twenty year vacation.

Retired Canadian/Irish freelance cameraman living in Germany