Jacob Resneck

It’s been exactly a month since I arrived in India. By tourist standards, I’ve seen very little as I’ve been focused on some journalism projects. But in the last calendar page I’ve made a few observations, a few friends and continue to be holding my head above water in the loud, crowded and incredibly complex […]

DELHI, India– I’ve never asked for money and I’m not gonna now. Rather this is about my occasional employer, Free Speech Radio News. http://fsrn.org They’re the ones that gave me my first shot at international reporting from Georgia and for that I’ll be forever grateful. http://www.fsrn.org/audio/south-ossetia-refugees-still-displaced/4678 http://www.fsrn.org/audio/newscast-friday-april-10-2009/4524 Now it seems they’re about to go belly-up. […]

BECHARRE, Lebanon – Hurtling down the highway at 140 kilometers an hour, Khaled the friendly taxi driver had an idea. We’d been drinking countless cups of black coffee and choking down innumerable cigarettes: it was time to switch to beer. Khaled didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic. But after a can of syrupy […]

TBILISI, Georgia – My money was no good in this town. I was in Gagra in the northern edge of Abkhazia – that breakaway republic of Georgia that was once the jewel of the Soviet Union. Expansive beaches along the Black Sea and crumbling 19th century hostelries and sanitariums dot the coast line that still […]

TBILISI, Georgia Admittedly, I’ve developed somewhat of a penchant for quasi-independent nation states. In my school years, I was an enthusiastic Northern California secessionist and have long harbored ambitions of one day starting my own country. What better way to educate myself than to see how it’s worked out breakaway republics like Transinistria near Moldova […]

ODESSA, Ukraine It was the most pathetic shake down attempt I’d ever witnessed. It wouldn’t be a bribe, they explained, but I must pay money if I wanted to leave the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. In Transdniestria must give– give geld! the border guard insisted in a mix of tongues. I’d been told to prepare myself […]

Our story so far: After three relatively glorious years in Saranac Lake, New York the author liquidated many of his assets and set off back into the world to claim his fortune or at least stave off boredom as he enters his thirties. After a grueling pace of travel that took him through a half-dozen […]

SARANAC LAKE, New York — Back in June I wrote about getting popped – twice – in Canada. The first time was by a CN railcop in the Charny yard outside Quebec City on my way to Halifax. Second arrest was in St. Leonard, New Brunswick after my 48′ container car was flooded by a […]

ST. HYACINTHE, Quebec — Get caught or get stranded. Neither was certain but I’d have to move soon or else that train would pull without me. No guts, no glory, I kept telling myself. I was in the wrong part of the Halifax railyard when I realized how little time I had. Between me and […]

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A little after 6 in the morning and everything was in place. Ensconced under an overpass in Montreal the tell-tale signs of success surrounded me: soggy cardboard, recent trainriders’ tags and a sleeping homebum told me that the site was well-known as a portal east to the Maritimes. Like clockwork, my […]

VIENNA, Austria Forgive me, gentle reader, for I am about to stray into adult territory. For that is what I did one weeknight evening on a trip through some of the seediest places purely for journalistic reasons. I had made acquaintance with a fellow journalist, whose identity I shall protect, who was investigating the underworld […]

VIENNA, Austria. Journalists in the United States jealously guard their sense of independence. In order to avoid even the appearance of bias, we’ve invented all kinds of rules silly rules for ourselves. One of these cardinal rules is never eat the free food. When going out for a meal or even a coffee we pay […]

VIENNA, Austria After a virtually sleepless flight across the Atlantic punctuated by crying babies, we touched down in Vienna’s international airport. I didn’t blame the wailing children one bit after all, they are merely expressing (loudly) what the rest of us passengers feel inside. Because air travel sucks. My in-flight companion and I only had […]