WELCOME TO MY BLOG

Dear Readers,
Thank you for looking at my blog and reading the many upcoming pages of informative,sometimes sarcastic,happy,sad,witty(so they all tell me!) but most of all, REAL daily events in the life of this humble raconteur.
I hope that you will enjoy each article as much as I enjoy composing them.
In the upcoming months, I'll be mixing stories of today with many of yesterday, in the broad sense of the word!
To give you just some insight about what I will be writing, I only feel it fair to tell you a bit about myself.
My name is Steven,Esteban and Stefan.No I don't come such a wealthy family that I was given 3 first names, but I use them all because I have a life quite equally divided amongst three countries,3cultures and 3 languages which have seen me become the person I am today.It's a life which is equally divided between 3 very diferent countries:Argentina, the Czech Republic and the USA; countries where I have spent decades of my life living,loving,learning and also laboring. I wanted all four to start with L.
(and don't forget for those of us not from families who can afford the 3 names, labor ..aka..work is an essential evil!)
At the present time and for over the past last decade , I have been living 6 months in Buenos Aires and the other 6 months in Prague.Obviously, I'm not stupid so I spend the summer months in Prague and then the other 6 summer months in Buenos Aires...remember hearing about northern and southern hemispheres and reserve seasons?
Although I have had many "careers', the one which I loved the most and still practise is that of being a multi-lingual travel director and tour guide. What does that mean? A tour guide is self explanatory; he or she is the person who walks around cities or sights most of the time with a larger following than the Pied Piper,often holding an umbrella or some other means of protection so that not only the tourists with me actually see where I am but also to protect myself against an angry mob of people who don't want yet to see another church ,synogogue ,mosque or temple or who aren't happy about the lack of toilet paper in public toilets(not to mention lack of toilet seats!) or the fact that the snail's pace at which one is walking seems to be that of a marathon for many of the dears.Normally the job is a full morning or afternoon or both or 2 or 3 days.That's it.Hope that they remenber at least what city they have just visted with their guide Steve or Esteban ,not Tom or Diego, that they have enjoyed it and hopefully will at the end of the tour show their gratitude in the form of a tip; no. not a tip on how where the stock market is going or how to losse those extras pounds you have recently put on and the excellent diet they have for you...I mean a monetary tip.GRATUITY,PROPINA,SPROPITNE,GORJETA,TRINKGELD all currencies accepted!
And at the end of the day as a local guide , one returns home to sleep in one's bed and has a definte cut-off time.
The role of a Travel Director ,aka Tour Manager,is a totally differnt ball game.The Travel Director is with the group from the arrival of the tourist at the airport,train station or seaport until the very end of the tour.And the jobs is a 24/7 one not 8/7 or 10/7; it's from before breakfast until the last guest arrives at the hotel after an exhausting day or touring,dining or some never-ending culture event which I as the tour direcrtor have seen more times than "The Sound of Music",TV shopping and all the episodes of "Friends "combined!
The positive aspect of the job is that one is not limited to one city or sight but travels from place to place,country to country and continent to continent with the group. In my 22 years of experience as a Travel Director, I have lead more than 200 tours to more than 100 countries on all 7 continents.
The Travel Director is, in the eyes of the tourist on the tour,expected to know every details about every place visited(then why the local guide???) every CLEAN public toilet between Vladivostok and Luanda(both of which have NO clean public toilets!)and the small Lithuanian village from which their grandfather fled 100 years ago( and never spoke of so they have no clue either!)
The Travel Director is the guide,organzier,administrator,mother,father,new best friend,analyst,shopping consultant, mind reader,mediator just to name a few of the hats worn.
In the upcoming months , I'll be realting some of the highlights in my over 20 years of this fascinating,rewarding and exhasting career or damnation.
I also am an intrepid traveler on my free time... I get paid to travel and I also pay to travel.But not London,Paris and Rome, all of which I love and return often but off the beaten track destinations where most travel companies do not dare to go, In 2010 I began the travel season falling victim to the 8.9 earthqauke while in Chile; I returned to, as I call it ,Chavezlandia or better known  as Disasterlandia or Venezuela en route to Guyana,Surniname and French Guyana. Septmber saw the likes of me backpacking through Azerbaijan,Georgia and Armenia as did October in Algeria. Other memorable trips of non-memorable places included Cuba,North Korea, Trandniester and Sudan just to name a few.Traveling to such places is also facilited by the fact that I speak 7 languages fluently on which I worked dilligently to obtain fluency, and still do. One doesn't just swallow a pill that reads DEUTSCH on it and you sound like Marlene Dietrich.
It is a never -ending challenge which the only way one masters is like a baby begining to walk  but falling down on a pile of irregular verbs or trying to spit out a word with no vowels that makes you sound as if you might be a "bit challenged or downright dumb!"
I could go on but this is only the introductory first writing and I don't want to scare anyone away from its length.
I sincerely hope that we will both enjoy the future blogs together and promise to relive the best and worst of my fascinating path down this wonderful thing called travel and my life between heaven and hell.
Thanks for reading.
SES ..... remember Steven ..Esteban...Stefan?