Last week’s review of the South Africa Traveler’s Literary Companion led me both into some of the best short literature I’ve been able to read in a while, and into one of my favorite neverending debates: whether novelists or travel writers are better writers of “place.”

Reading the collection, as I mentioned in the review, made me rethink the balance of travel writing versus literature in whetting one’s appetite for a place.

Whereabouts Press wrote an excellent response in their blog, on the subject of armchair travel literature versus native literature and what best brings a place to life. And — for all you eager readers and travelers — they offered a free copy of this particular literature companion to one of Perceptive Travel’s readers.

While it would be fun to push our readers into a hot debate about the merits of fiction and travel writing, it seems a little extreme. So in order to win, I’d like you to tell us about a piece of fiction that ignited your imagination and inspired you to visit a country, state, province, city, building, park, etc., where you’d never been before.

Think of the hordes who have tramped the streets of Dublin looking for James Joyce’s Ulysses, or the multitudes who’ve fallen in love with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and then traveled to Russia. I’ve read two long essays recently by people who traveled all over America’s Midwest in the tracks of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. If there’s a work of fiction or author that tickled that wanderlust itch on your feet, I’d like to hear about it.

Please write your response in the comments below (try to keep it below 100 words or so. If you have something longer, try submitting it to Literary Traveler!).

We’ll choose one entrant to receive a copy of the excellent compendium of stories in South Africa Traveler’s Literary Companion. I will announce the winner in my next Friday post, November 20th.

On a recent trip to Alva, Oklahoma (home to my Tourism Currents business partner Becky McCray) I slammed on the brakes while passing the local farm co-op store downtown.

Painted on the side of their one-story building was an intriguing mural about threshing; the center part was painted and colored in but the edges were only outlined.

If you looked closely, though, the artist had painted himself painting the mural.

It is supposed to look like a work in progress, but has been finished since 2001.

Becky gave me a little background on the mural, and mentioned that they were “all over town,” which was true – I saw them everywhere.  They really add a lot of character to the place (remember how much I loved the ad art that I found in Atlanta, Illinois on old Route 66?)

A little digging turned up the Web site for the Alva Mural Society (founded in 1997) and a specific page on the Threshing Time mural there at the Co-Op, painted by Roger Cooke.

He advertises himself as “America’s Small-Town Muralist” and apparently goes all over the US painting interesting scenes on otherwise blank, boring buildings.

There is a map on the Mural Society Web site to all the other murals in town, which depict a variety of famous locals and historic events in Alva.

People were bustling in and out of the Farm Co-Op as I was taking photos, and I felt a mite out of place. I am a total city kid and the Obama sticker on my car was rather an anomaly there in the reddest of red states (although I think it is well-balanced by my NHRA drag racing press parking stickers. But still….)

Little did I know until later that a look at the Farmers Coop Association Web site would have shown me not only a continuously updated ticker of wheat, corn and soybean prices (complete hieroglyphics to me) but also links to blogs.

There’s the DTN Production Blog with posts like what to do with wet grain, and a blog named Harrington’s Sort and Cull which I think has to do with raising hogs and other concerns about livestock.

I’d found a bloggy tribe!

Small town charms may require more patience and digging, but they are there to be found if you’re patient.

Meantime, if you visit Alva and want a homey place to stay, the Red Carpet Country tourism organization (for whom I did some speaking and workshops) hosted me at the Honey Wheat Bed and Breakfast.

Owners Grace and John were a down-home delight, the full breakfasts were de-lish and yes, their free WiFi kept me in touch without a hitch while I stayed there.

Morning walks around the nearby town square can get you closer to the murals, too!

(A version of this essay first appeared in Go World Travel.)

Uluru, or Ayers Rock, as non-Aboriginal Australians call it, sticks out of the near flat of the desert, an uncompromising, awesome structure. It and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) face off over the desert like two ancient stone gods, unmoved and unmoving. To my eyes, the huge edifice of Ayers Rock fails to be shocking or beautiful. It’s just big. Even from a distance its presence is inescapable.

Black stripes streak down the rock, the paths of lichen marking the courses of occasional waterfalls. They look like Chinese calligraphy strokes. Over millions of years waterfalls have scooped out terraced basins from the top of the rock to the bottom.

The water lands in waterholes tucked in around the bottom of the rock, only one of which is permanent. Its shady, wet, green presence is a surprising relief from the dry, dusty heat that presses in on us when the sun has risen.

Only two people in our tour group of 18 decide to climb the rock. It is a steep, slippery climb aided by an anchored chain. In our brochures about the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, the Aboriginal people make a compelling case for not climbing the rock. It is sacred to them, they say; even they don’t climb it, except for ceremonial occasions. Most of us have decided to respect their wishes, although refusing to climb the rock gives me the feeling of the proverbial stone holding the sea at bay. My gesture feels flat and useless against the tide of tourists who just want to say they’ve done it.

Hordes of them inch their way up the bare rock while hanging onto the chain, although most of them find the climb too precipitous to go far. The rest of us take the 5.6-mile walk around the base, where we can inspect the geology and learn the Aboriginal stories that surround the rock. Most of them chronicle an ancient battle between two snakes.

It is easy to see why Uluru was a symbol of worship for an isolated people. Its red sides rise suddenly from the desert with no foothills or undulations. The rock is a buildup of sandstone left over from the erosion of a mountain range millions of years ago. It is only the first stop in our guided camping safari of the Outback.

Most people come to Ayers Rock or Alice Springs and take one- or two-day trips in air-conditioned buses. They snap pictures of the rock, then buy Aboriginal paintings, and perhaps a didgeridoo in a shop at their resort.

I signed my husband and me up for a five-day safari because I wanted to do some hiking in the desert. Now that we are away from the busloads at Uluru, onto the unpaved red dirt roads of the Outback, I am continually surprised by the changing landscape. I had expected the Outback to be empty, a flat, red, nearly featureless desert. It isn’t.

Our third day, our guide gets us out of our tents at five in the morning. After we’ve eaten our toast, drunk our tea and emptied the tents, we drive to Kings Canyon. Nearly 370 miles from Alice Springs, Kings Canyon should feel like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but its deep cliff walls and hidden swimming hole host a little microcosm of earth science history. The first 330 feet are a grueling climb up near-vertical stairs, but the rest of the 4.3 miles we meander along the tops of the cliffs.

Halfway through the hike, we peer down into the gorge and see waving foliage marking the entrance to the Garden of Eden swimming hole. After climbing down to it, we dive in. Under the cliff’s rim, protected from the burning sun, plants from 20 to 50 million years ago still grow and thrive.

They are tiny havens of ancient geological history, living fossils. I stroke a cycad palm that’s only four feet high.

By 11 a.m., when we finish our hike, it is already above 90 degrees Farenheit. The heat is burning, but bone-dry and bearable. Then we get into the van and drive another four hours to our next campsite at Ormiston Gorge, a waterhole encased by pocked cliffs populated by black-footed rock wallabies. As everywhere, the white bark and silvery leaves of the eucalyptus trees provide contrast to the red dirt.

Every day we’ve hiked for at least two hours and driven at least four. I can’t believe how big the Outback is. I’ve never seen anything like this. Hundreds of kilometers from any town, we run across herds of wild camels, donkeys and horses. The ancient geology of Australia lifts and spreads around us, ghosts of mountains, rainforests, and the sea, all dry now, weathered down to nubby rocks.

By the end of the safari, I am desperate to stay. I can’t bear to leave the openness and the silence for our cool, clean hotel in Alice Springs. During our last hike, a scrambling climb up Standley Chasm, I touch every rock with care, telling myself I’ll be back.

Related Perceptive Travel webzine story: Uluru from a Different Angle

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and I wish I could have been there for it.  Actually, I just want to go back to Berlin, historic milestone or no — the city took a hold of my imagination in a way that few others have before or since.

I was staying at the Arcotel Velvet, and the city had me smitten within mere moments,  as the Kunsthaus Tacheles was just a few steps away from the hotel’s lobby. At first I thought it was simply a ramshackle building, likely to be knocked down on such a trendy street as Oranienburger Strasse.  But when I wandered through its graffiti’d and fabric-draped gate,  it turns out that this building, which was once a department store, a central SS office, a prison, a television studio, is now an edgy art space/outdoor movie theater/sand box.  The structure sustained heavy damage in World War II bombings and was partially demolished until a group of artists lobbied for a stay of execution.

Although Tacheles is one of the better known of these “hidden” art venues, this experience was something I’d find over and over again in former East Berlin. The art that moved me here wasn’t presented in tidy, easy-to-find gallery, but through alleyways and around corners and tucked into courtyards.

There is a sense that this sort of art is starting to fade. The artists that flocked to East Berlin after reunificaiton  were drawn here by cheap (and to squatters, free) studio space, which are a sure casualty of gentrification.  But of course it wasn’t all about real estate — sudden freedom and the opening of a new frontier smack in the middle of Old Europe yielded a particular creative moment.

And although the 20th anniversary celebrations included some fairly silly artistic expression, I think that Berlin’s brutal past is, in this sense, an asset to the artistic future of the city.  The epicenter of Nazism, the capitol of genocide, the city in the grips of totalitarian communism, uniquely divided — none of these are assets, exactly. But creativity thrives on destruction, and this difficult legacy is useful to artists — especially to those who don’t attempt to gloss over the past, but pulse right through it.

The November edition of Perceptive Travel magazine features three new travel articles that will leave all us armchair travellers wanting to pack the bags and hit the road.

First up is Jim Johnson’s On a Slow Boat down the Irrawaddy River from Mandalay to the temple city of Bagan in Myanmar, a country that many other countries, organizations and individuals recommend that travellers boycott.  But as Johnson points out, while travelling there does pose an ethical dilemma,  there are ways of doing so without your travel dollars end up in the government’s hands. 

Further south, Bruce Northam escapes the tourist treadmill and island resorts and lacing up his hiking shoes, heads for the hills in Fiji. Along the way, he visits with villagers, stops to chat and imbibes in the local kava drink, resulting in Bruce experiencing A Marvelous Trance in the Highlands of Fiji.

Meanwhile, back in the United States Brad Olsen looks at origins of  The Mysterious Stone Chambers of New England. More than 800 of these stone-built chambers have been found around New England but no-one seems to know their origins. Could they be colonial root cellars, native American sweat lodges, or even prehistoric European structures?

Plus, this month’s travel book reviewer, Gillian Kendall, has picked a diverse collection of books to review. And as usual,  Tim Leffel will have you tapping your fingers and toes with his eclectic collection of world music reviews.

Happy reading…