Amateur Traveler Podcast, I'm your host Chris Christensen. Today on the show

we'll be talking to Andy Levine, the president and founder of Devine Adventures which

does bike tours in Europe and has for the last decade.

This episode is brought to you by Hotel Book.com, the official site of independent hotels worldwide.

Hotel Book.com, stay your way, stay independent. Today in the news section of the show I have three stories for you one you've

probably already guessed which is I do have my first sponsor the second one is not exactly a news story but it's news to me.

There's a guidebook out for the country of Mulvania. And the New Yorker had this to say about the guidebook.

The Republic of Mulvania, known as the birthplace of whooping cough and the Mulvanian sneezing

hound, has been largely ignored by the backpacking set in its sweep through post-communist Europe.

This may have something to do with the country's miserable landscape,

miserable weather, miserable food, and miserable surly populace.

On the other hand, it may have something to do with the fact that Mulvania doesn't exist.

In the format and page layout, this inspired send-up of a travel guide looks exactly like the real thing, and it displays an acute feel for all the cliches of the genre, including testimonials that instruct how to have an uncomfortable authentic experience

rather than a bland westernized one.

The nation's new national anthem is set to the tune of what a feeling from the movie

Flash Dance.

Useful phrases include the Mulvanean for please thank you.

May God send you a sturdy donkey and what's that smell? So check that out. I have links to that in

the show notes as well as a link to another fictional country that they did a sequel to. The guidebook. I haven't read it so I don't

promise that you'll enjoy it but I can tell you that the travel writer Bryson

finds the book hilarious.

The third story I have for you, if you happen to be in the market for a

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