Just as an uncle's tedious slide show of his family's visit to Old Faithful kills any desire for me to visit, chronicaling a man's travel itinerary with day to day explanations is torture. The Drunken Tourist, is an exception. It is fast reading, and personal; the uncomfortably honest story of one man and his escape to Europe. It is an escape because it seems that Hadrian Santana is continually thinking back to his embattled relationships and other problems with drugs and people waiting at home. Santana seems to know how to have a good time, and through 16 cities he has multiple love affairs, religious transformations, musical escapades, and a continuous buzz.

But what makes The Drunken Tourist stand out from your next Jerry Springer Drunken Tales from the Road is that Santana invites you to enjoy the good, wild times he had in Europe as much as the pain and rejection in his returning to the States. The travel aspect is in some sense a background for his personal exploration. The cities and countries are literal places as well metaphors for his spiritual or drunken state. In a recent interview, Santana spoke about The Drunken Tourist.

Student World Traveler: Briefly explain the The Drunken Tourist
Hadrian Santana: For the reader that is not familiar with the book the Drunken Tourist is a non-fiction travel adventure through 16 cities in Europe and America. The first half of the book is the good times out in the European community and how the reentry back into the States was a shocker. Kind of hard to adjust after all that freedom. The 2nd half of the book deals with travels where I run into more problems, things catch up to me not only my alcoholism but my love affairs gone bad, my family's situations gone sour and my legal entanglements which landed me in jail which got me to write this.

SWT: Why did you write it as such a young age?
HS: When I went to court, the judge doubled my bail. I was sent back to jail and I was scared, and this is the truth. The DA wasn't budging, she was asking four years, and I was just very scared. And I found a pencil and an eraser, and in that jail cell that was not an easy find. The eraser was harder than the pencil. And the pages were the hardest. You only get to go out of the cell at County once a week and you go on the roof. And on the roof they have a set of books, like maybe 40-50 books. Some of the books taht are published have blank pages, and those blank pages are the pages I started writing on. I started writing the forward in very small print and erased and went back again and then started throwing it at my cell mates and they said ok.

SWT: Compare that freedom of getting out of jail to the freedom you felt traveling around Europe.
HS: Physically there is a similarily. There is a link I would call it. Sort of a propensity for positive action compared to an everyday life situation or your everyday doings. It's all about the moment when you're on the road man. It's about what we can suck up from this situation we are in no matter where it is. Some things that are set like the big deals aren't usually the highlights of the trip.

SWT: Talking about the moment of the trip, in your book you basically don't plan any itineraries. How did you decide where to go?
HS: It was easier that way. So many people I ran into were struggling with their guidebooks and their itineraries. But overall I relied on a couple things. I picked up from that first guy at Brussels airport. He had that look that said "how can I help you" and that look was around every time that I could say "hey where could I go to find a really cheap ghoulash and if I had the guidebook I would have been running off.

SWT: So your interactions were key to the trip?
HS: Yes, absolutely. Because you had an excuse. It's a perfect excuse to meet people while you are on the road. Like I mentioned in the book sometimes I knew where the hell I was going I just said it because I wanted to meet them and it was just the easiest way to do it.

SWT: When you wrote this, did you have a certain reader in mind?
HS: I began the work and I realized that I was going to finish it, I wrote it for my queen. I did. I wrote it figuring that some day she would read it and she would be proud of me.

SWT: Where is she now?
HS: I don't know. People tell me that the universe will find a way where the book will get to her and I gotta believe that. I don't think I will ever get over her unless I fall more deeply in love with someone else. I haven't seen her in a year and I'm still broken hearted.

SWT: Without gining out the ending, do you think you deserved your punishment in the last chapter?
HS: Yes. Absolutely.

The Drunken Tourist is published by Santa Monica-based Victor Press and is distributed nationwide.
$15.95

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