Hey there! I am really happy about the third episode of the Taste of Prague podcast, a podcast by Taste of Prague food tours about travel and food in Prague and the rest of the world, because it’s a great one: I had the pleasure to have a chat with the one and only Mark Baker.
Mark who? Yeah, while he may be invisible to many, Mark is a writer of guide books for the Lonely Planet, Fodor’s and Frommer’s, covering mostly Central and Eastern Europe. So if you’re walking past the Charles Bridge and can’t get through because of the crowds, well, that’s kinda Mark’s fault. No, really, he wields a lot of invisible might, steering travelers in the right places and making sure that they enjoy the destination to the fullest. We see his guides in the hands of the guests of our Prague food tours all the time. Let me put it this way: the man who covers Slovenia for the Lonely Planet got „knighted“ by the Slovenian government. I will make it one of my top 2020 priority the same thing happens to Mark in the Czech Republic.
Mark is a fascinating guy. Hailing from Ohio and having majored in politics at the Miami University (the one in Ohio), he worked in Vienna for The Economist group when the Berlin Wall fell. Then he got to Prague on a writing assignment and… well, never left would not be entirely correct, but he’s still here 28 years later. He was one of the founders of the iconic Globe coffee shop / book store that was the ground zero for the exact community and young local intellectuals (heck, I was one of them) in the Holesovice district. He is also the author of multiple articles about Central and Eastern Europe for the likes of the BBC, the Wall Street Journal or the National Geographic. Finally, he has a fantastic website with long-form posts about his experiences living in and traveling through Central and Eastern Europe. It’s a true wealth of information and great writing: don’t blame me if you spend long minutes or hours browsing through the posts.
But back to the interview. When you think about it, writing guide books seems to be the perfect job: somebody pays you to travel and you write about it. But of course, on second thought, this ain’t no vacation. So this episode of the podcast tries to look into the mechanics of writing a guide book. Who is it for, how is it researched, what is the brief, and how do you write it. And also, we look at the future of the printed guide book in the age of the internet and the smartphone app. Mark also has a few comments on the Czechs and Czechia, having lived here - on and off - since 1991.
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