So my guest today, you could describe her as a travel writer. She's certainly not one in the conventional sense.

Her books do not contain any restaurant recommendations, no cafes in Paris or

walking tours of New York. But if you do want to know about the vet clinic treating

Donkeys in Fez or the origami lab where a professional paper folder

creates elaborate little creatures, writer Susan Orlene is a pretty good travel guy.

I'm a terrible tourist, you know, I get somewhere if I'm a tourist and I feel like, well, what am I supposed to be doing?

I don't get it.

When I'm traveling for a story I'm on a mission. I'm looking for something

I'm pursuing something and it makes the trip so much more interesting.

I'm Dylan Thuris and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

And Susan Orlene has an eye for strange, wonderful, and incredible places.

She has this way of digging and digging

until she finds a detail that makes you see a place in a totally new way.

She's also sort of answering the question about why we live the way we do.

Susan has traveled all over the world searching for stories and today she is taking us to a few of the places

that helped shape her work and her life. She talks about throwing out the guidebook,

letting herself find whatever it is that is waiting out there for her. You did not grow up gallivanting around the world. I think we both share

Midwestern roots. What was your sort of life like as a kid? Where were you growing up?

My parents didn't put us in the back of a van and moved to Morocco and travel with us through

Africa. We did a lot of more traditional

conventional family vacations to warm places to the Caribbean, to Florida, to Hawaii, not so much adventuring around the world.

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