The long-winded-niest travelogue on the internet!
For up-to-the-minute, giddying detail on all my various foibles, please refer to my blogs:
Killing Batteries | This Is Why I Love Minneapolis
Welcome travel junkies! If this is your first visit, you'll be delighted to hear that you have just found the web site of the world’s luckiest, drunkest, hilariousest travel writer, yours truly, Leif Pettersen.
I have returned to my home town of Minneapolis after four and a half years of vagabonding to settle down and continue conquering the travel writing world from a more familiar location.
Having been fortunate enough to have non-stop paying work for nearly three years now and, with more tantalizing offers rolling in, it seems very unlikely that I will be making meaningful updates to this web site in the foreseeable future. Or ever. That said, my full travelogue will remain as your irresistible productivity distraction until such a time when my publicist tells me to get rid of it, which won't be happening any time soon since I don't have a publicist.
In other news, like everyone else with a butter knife to grind, I have finally wholly submitted to the blog-sphere (although, in reality, I've been 'blogging' online in one form or another since 1997, so screw you blog-bandwagon accusers!). Killing Batteries is dedicated to the trials and tribulations (and the occasional romantic intrigue with eccentric, blog groupies) of a freelance travel writer, hauling around a sack of battery-driven tech that makes the job possible. I write a lot and I write often. Read it and refer it to your five best editor and publisher friends. Do it today!
As for this aging, butt-ugly piece of cyber-clutter, this site is a place for me to park - and for you to bask in - my uncut, raw travel journal (or “travelogue” as we say in hungover, freelance travel writer circles) which is merely a very detailed journal that I later use as a base to write articles, hence the sometimes absurdly lengthy anecdotes. Word on the street is that I am “edgier than Rick Steves, crankier than Paul Theroux and cuter than Bill Bryson” (thanks mom!). Very little time has been given to research, accuracy, grammar or even spelling for the material in this travelogue. All that comes during editing. The material here is just my on-the-fly impressions and experiences, enriched by amateurish photos. That’s the gist. Here’s my bio if you’d like more gripping information about how much I rule, otherwise let the travelogue begin!
Leif
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©Leif Pettersen 2008
Updated March 12, 2009
Destination Tally: 318
cities/islands in 45 countries |
The Travelogue
(kiss 30 hours of your free reading time goodbye) Want the travelogue in chronological order? Go here. |
Andorra-
Andorra la Vella |
Moldova
- Chisinau, Orhei, Orhei Vechi, Soroca, Rezina, Saharna, Tipova, Vadu
lui Voda, Cricova, Cojusna, Ialoveni, Milestii Mici, Tiraspol (Transdnistria),
Bendery (Transdnistria), Comrat (Gagauzia) |
Random BabblingRed
Bull
Caffeine, Therefore My Life, Just Got Better Posted on Apr. 15th, 2005 Packing List What I've Learned Updated on Aug. 4th, 2004 Open
Letter to Lonely Planet
Posted on Aug. 4th, 2004 The Last True
Adventure in Europe The Don't
Go There Series
Don't Go to Berlin Sugra
Morley
Posted on 3/22/04 My
Brain Is Oatmeal
Posted on 3/10/04 I
Rule!
Posted on 1/30/04 Clean
Underwear: Or the Secret to Backpacker Ecstasy
Posted on 1/30/04 The
Road
Posted on 10/8/03 Confessional
Posted on 9/24/03 Notes
From A Lonely Traveler
Posted on 8/3/03 I'm
Afraid of Americans
Posted on 7/18/03 Norwegian
Unicycle Tour
Posted on 6/26/03 I’m
Aging and I Don’t Like it
Posted on 6/22/03 Random
Musings on Being Unemployed
Posted on 6/20/03 |
My third-person bio is as follows:
In 2003, Leif Pettersen was "Kramered" by an unbalanced friend into leaving his idiot-proof career with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and embarking on an odyssey of homeless travel writing. Despite no leads or training - and a dubious grasp on grammar - his "unhinged contempt for reality" drove him onward and he somehow managed modest success by deluging hapless editors with material so raw and protracted that a tri-continental international support group was formed to cope with the situation.
Leif writes a wildly popular blog about life as a travel writer at KillingBatteries.com. He is also the sole webmaster/researcher/editor for the Romania and Moldova Travel Guide, the most complete online travel information source for these two countries.
His resume can be found here (pdf format). A summery of notable experience can be found here.
Assignments, offers of lavish payment and general fawning can
be directed to: ![]()