John Bermont

Author of HOW TO EUROPE: The Complete Travelers Handbook and enjoy-europe.com.
Photographer and writer. Expert on traveling and living in Europe. Brief travel biography.

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Q. Who is John Bermont?

A. There is no such person.

John Bermont is a pen name.

A travel writer is always at work. Here are part of my credentials.

Photo by my daughter Stephanie. Nova Milanese, Italy, 1998.

Carpe diem. Vivere bene! Gratia Deo.

Borders are meant to be crossed.

TRAVEL WRITER QUALIFICATIONS, BULLET STYLE

1. Lived in The Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland.
   1. Full time jobs in Holland and Germany.
   2. Informal life in France and Confederation Helvetica.
2. Traveled from A to Z throughout the Continent.
   1. Main focus has been Holland and France.
   2. Amsterdam, Antwerp, Athens, Barcelona, Belfast, Bruxelles/Brussel, Constanta, Dublin, Düsseldorf, Edinburgh, Graz, Helsinki, Istanbul, Kiev, Lisbon, Lviv, London, Madrid, Marseille, Milano, München, Narvik, Oslo, Prague, Riga, Roma, San Sebastian/Donostia, Stockholm, Tallinn, Varna, Vilnius, Warsaw, Wien, Zagreb, and on and on and on.
3. Studied Dutch, French, and German in class, and practiced in the cafes and bars.
   1. Dutch at the Talenpracticum Dreefzigt, Haarlem, The Netherlands.
   2. Alliance Française, Paris, France. Further practice in Geneva, Switzerland.
   3. Eurosprachschule, Aschaffenburg, Germany.
4. Train, plane, auto, boat, and bike.
   1. Many rail passes and untold kilometers on trains everywhere.
   2. Crossed the Atlantic so many times that it is not worth counting the flights.
   3. Shipped my Porsche from Long Beach to Rotterdam. Hit the roads from Stockholm to Monte Carlo to Istanbul. Had a company car in Germany. Daily buzz to work on the Autobahn at a lovely 120 MPH, but still the Beemers blew my doors off.
   4. Love the big ferries in the Baltic, Adriatic, English Channel, and Irish Sea.
   5. Owned five bikes in Holland and Germany and used them regularly.
5. Authored HOW TO EUROPE: The Complete Travelers Handbook.
   1. Three editions starting in 1982 and up to date on the Internet.
   2. ". . . an outstandingly practical handbook . . ." Booklist, American Library Association.
   3. ". . . exceedingly complete . . ." Los Angeles Times
   4. ". . . specializes in answering those practical questions that many guides overlook . . ." Publishers Weekly
   5. ". . . the photographs are what sets this book a notch higher . . ." International Travel News
   6. ". . . ideal for the first time traveler . . ." Travel Agent Magazine

THE LONG VERSION, IF YOU HAVE A FEW MINUTES

Quick Intro

OK, here is where I say a few magnificent words about myself. The point of this essay is to show that I know what I am writing about. I do not have a corporate publicity group to scribble this biography. Mine is another DIY job. Bear with me while I toot my own bugle, in moderation. It is sort of organized but needs editing. All feedback and blowback is welcome. For contact information please see NOTE TO READERS.

After taking inventory of my life to date, I describe the person I am as a dauntless traveler, a detailed researcher, a passionate teacher, and an original entrepreneur. My expertise is travel in Europe. Europe has been my home address several times. I re-visit as often as I can afford the time and expense. I take notes and photographs as I survey the scene and chat with the natives and fellow travelers. I love to write about the features of traveling across the Atlantic, the good, the uh-ohs, and the multitude of infrastructure and logistic differences that Americans face over there. On my own dime and time I have researched and written on this subject for 40 years. I launched a publishing company to produce and market my book. Then I started a web site, again a one-man orchestra, stage crew, and ticket agent. Actually that would be content, Photoshop, and HTML5/CSS3 code.

So who is John Bermont?

I invented John Bermont after deciding to self publish my book, HOW TO EUROPE: The Complete Travelers Handbook and get it to market with my Murphy & Broad Publishing Company in 1982. Operating under a pseudonym and a DBA, plus invaluable advice from Dan Poynter, I did an end run around the book establishment and received a number of excellent book reviews. The reviews helped secure a book distributor who placed it in book stores across the country. That went on for two editions and four printings — until I moved to Paris in 1986.

EDUCATION

Chemical Engineer

After graduating from high school in Midland, Michigan, I earned my degree in chemical engineering at the University of Detroit in 1965, working and borrowing to pay for tuition and peanut butter sandwiches. I was elected to the Student Council twice and President of the Young Republican Club during the Barry Goldwater years, at a liberal Jesuit university in Reuther City. I was somewhat controversial. The administration asked me to leave and go to another school but I stuck it out.

Law School, Business School

My first job was in Chicago where I also attended DePaul Law School evenings. Having a full time job and spending another 30 hours a week on torts and contracts was a load. The straw that busted my law program came in the second semester when, at the tender age of 23, I suddenly became a frequent flyer before the term was invented. The company assigned me to projects far and wide. I was in and out of O'Hare airport twice a week, resulting in many class absences. You can't miss class in law school without consequence so I missed the cut after two semesters. Ten years later in another job I started an evening MBA program. It met the same fate. Lesson: jobs which require a lot of travel are not conducive to continuing education.

Languages

I've studied foreign languages on my overseas job assignments, picking up some Dutch in Haarlem, The Netherlands and German in Aschaffenburg, Germany for a couple of years each. I did this while holding full time jobs and reached a passing ability in both languages. The languages are so similar that I get them mixed up now and then, which is not a good thing to do in Holland. Some Dutch people still have bad feelings over the brutal German occupation of the Netherlands during World War Two. Between jobs I have spent about six months in Paris on a couple of my self-made sabbaticals. Life is too short to work all the time, you know. I attended the Alliance Française twice so I can parlay some frahn-say. Having traveled so much I can say "beer" and additional critical words in several other languages. If you can't say "beer" and "toilet" in the local lingo you are in limbo.

Barkeep

Can I say I also attended a bartender school and received a certificate? I only worked one night as a barman, at a Los Angeles charitable millennium event. You learn a lot about people when you have the bottle in your hand. That single night nearly paid for the tuition and I had a kick of a party. Combining this know-how, my half century of drinking the ruby liquids, and my expertise in making my own wine (learned in dry Arabia), I became a wine consultant. And this led to more writing — the article on reading German wine labels which you can find linked on my home page. Actually I prefer pinot noir and several other Burgundy wines, plus my DIY "Chateau James."

TRAVELER, WRITER, PHOTOGRAPHER

Born Under a Wandering Star

What you need to know about me as a travel writer is that I have traveled a lot. I have lived on both coasts and plenty of the middle — New York City (born in The Bronx), Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, Wichita, Newport Beach — and have traveled from Anchorage to Miami and San Diego to Boston, not to mention plenty of Texas, on business and for the pleasure. Internationally I've been to Africa and East Asia on short assignments and to Arabia for a one year assignment.

Of course, my forte is Europe. I've worked, studied, and lived in Europe for a number of years. My travels have taken me throughout the Continent. I have covered the eastern Ukraine to the Algarve in Portugal, Athens, Greece to Narvik in the north of Norway, and Istanbul, Turkey to Reykjavik, Iceland, plus most of everything in between.

Write and Shoot

Fortunately I have always had a less than stellar memory. That forced me to make notes of just about everything, especially my travels. My log books can tell me where and what I ate decades ago.

I became a shutter bug after my Dad gave me a 35 mm range finder camera which he had picked up on a business trip to Japan. Later I invested in a series of Olympus OM cameras and lenses. These lasted me into the digital revolution. I shot a zillion pictures, B/W and color slides, and processed the film in my kitchen. About ten years ago I switched to Nikon DSLRs and zoom lenses, plus a few pocket point and shoot cameras. I never go anywhere without a camera.

GETTING STARTED

My initial landing in Europe was in June 1975. I had a few hours layover in London's Heathrow Airport so I hired a taxi to give me a tour of the city. Then I caught a connecting flight to Rome. After an overnight in a supposedly upper rank hotel, I flew on to Beirut, Lebanon for a flight to Dammam, Saudi Arabia and a brief engineering assignment, 22 days and ten hours.

Later that year my boss asked if I would accept a two year transfer to the company's office in Haarlem, near Amsterdam in The Netherlands. This is something that doesn't happen every morning so I had to think it over for a few days. It came down to a "what the heck" decision. I voted go. I found an apartment in the center of Haarlem and settled in for daily life among the Dutch. Besides Holland, I made plenty of trips around Europe in the Porsche that I shipped over from Long Beach. Driving the German Autobahnen at 120 MPH was a thrill. I also drove up to Stockholm, to the East German border, and to the Riviera. That East German border was dicey. I was alone out in a deserted forest shooting an East German guard tower with my telephoto lens, across mine fields, barbed wire fences, and warning signs. I was a duck in a tub for a sniper.

MY BOOK, HOW TO EUROPE

Cutting the Mooring

Shortly into another job after returning to California, my wanderlust took over. I quit the new job, bought a three month Eurail Pass, and went back to travel on the trains darn near all over Europe with pen and cameras in hand. After three years of toil, another trip around Europe, and a lot of support from friends, I self published the first edition of HOW TO EUROPE in 1982. That sold out so I did the second edition in 1985 which was in print through 1987.

A Move to Paris and Bavaria

In the meantime I moved myself to Paris for the spring and summer of 1986 where I fell for Elizabeth, a fellow student at the Alliance Française. In 1991 I landed another company job transfer, this time a family move to Germany for a few years with wife Elizabeth and daughter Stephanie. Living in Bavaria opened up opportunities for additional travel, including a drive around Poland and straight into the Ukraine just a couple of years after the fall of the wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union. Good riddance, commies.

We finished off the German job transfer with a month on the road, driving south and east through Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Greece, and Turkey, then returning from Istanbul through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and the Czech Republic to Germany.

On the Loose Again

The late 1990s saw me in Saudi Arabia again and Nigeria, bringing down the marriage. This was followed by more Eurail Pass travels throughout central Europe, a couple of months living in Geneva, Switzerland, and finally a couple of years back in my "home town" of Haarlem, The Netherlands to finish off the century. Going back to Europe in 2003, I noticed that the only thing that had changed significantly was the money. The euro has had a profound impact, making it much easier for travelers in the original 11 countries, now 17, where it has been adopted.

I've been back to Europe for short and long visits several times since then. One was a major circuit with a Eurail Pass on night trains scooting around Europe from Holland to Portugal to Austria, ending in Finland via Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. From there I took a ferry over the Baltic Sea and traveled by bus through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Poland where I was able to use the trains again.

In April 2008 I went back for a week to help the Dutch celebrate Queen's Day and the blooming of the tulips at Keukenhof. These are very different events but are both spectacular in their own way. Click the links to see my photo logs. In December I had to satisfy my Paris need again with a week in THE city. I love Paris.

Most recently I spent half of the summer of 2015 hanging out in Haarlem again. I never tire of Holland. I came back with many gigabytes of photographs and my log book of notes. It will be a 2015-16 winter of assembling and editing while the snow falls in Michigan.

THE NEXT GENERATION

My daughter Stephanie has been over the Atlantic more times than I can count. She attended kindergarten in Germany so German was her first foreign language. She made her initial solo Unaccompanied Minor trip from Los Angeles to Milan, Italy when she was seven and continued to do that nearly every summer for 20 years. Fortunately she has an aunt and family near Milan who say her Italian is prima.

In 2008 I gave Stephanie a camera and sent her to Europe to help research my site and provide a next generation look at things. She spent 6 weeks at Universidad de Salamanca, Spain, and another month in Italy, all sandwiched in between a few Dutch days at each end at B&B Paula in Haarlem. Many of her photos help illustrate my web site enjoy-europe.com. One of my favorite photos of that trip is Bull Flight.

The following year Stephanie spent a month studying at the Alliance Française and exploring Paris. Her blog is at O hey Europe. The banner photo on the home page of enjoy-europe.com is from the hands of Stephanie.

After earning her B.S. Nursing, Stephanie went back again for a two month post-graduation trip in 2015. With a Eurail Pass and her friend Chelsea they covered the Continent and then some. Travel must be in the family DNA, near the top.

NOT FINISHED YET

There is quite a bit more but I think you get the idea. I love travel and adventure, and writing about it to encourage others to get up and go. I've spent a significant part of my life overseas, mostly in Europe on job transfers, personal moves, or just vagabonding around. My book and website are the result of these experiences, all produced in my spare time at my own expense. This was not my day job. It is now my obsession.

Have a good trip in life.
James Broad a.k.a. John Bermont.

This looks like me at work in Bloemendaal, Nederland, September 2015. I am enjoying an espresso at an outdoor cafe near the conclusion of a beautiful 5+ weeks centered in Haarlem. Using Paula's bike I toured the city and the villages west — Bloemendaal, Overveen, and Zandvoort. We trained to Amsterdam and Leiden. I should mention, beware of the #%#@**& OV-chipkaart which is valid for public transportation in Holland. It is OK for buses and trams, but a rip for the trains.

This was the day of the annual street fair, a robust afternoon. The live music featured a number of female singers, one of whom was belting it out like Janis Joplin. She was great. I found that Italian wool fedora here. It is the twin brother of one I accidentally left on a train in Edinburgh a few years ago. I brought the scarf from home but I lost it on a plane or in an airport coming back. My favorite scarf is now making someone else look good. Drats.

Photo by my friend Paula, owner of B&B Paula, a short bike ride south from here.

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NOTE TO READERS

I welcome questions, comments, complaints, and compliments. If you have any concerns about your trip to Europe that have not been covered well enough on my web site please do not hesitate to write. Ask, cuss, discuss, or whatever. I read every email and update my pages when I see a question repeating, Then I will not get that question again, hopefully. In some cases readers have been so generous with their time and talent that I have included their emails verbatim, e.g. chapters 22 and 25.

I do not open attachments. I do not click links to web pages of any kind. I will reply in a day or two, usually.

My email address is [email protected].

At your leisure scroll through the Table of Contents of HOW TO EUROPE: The Complete Travelers Handbook and read all 30 chapters, FREE on line. Good deal! You'll probably find the answers you seek, and some you didn't know you needed.

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FREE

This web site is totally free for everyone, and a labor of love for me. To keep it afloat I receive a commission from Amazon.com for all goods purchased through the adverts I have selected, and any other products you might buy when you are on the Amazon site. Amazon has almost everything for sale, except the Brooklyn Bridge and Mount Rushmore.

Please visit my on-line store at . Your support is most gratefully appreciated. TIA.