Jim Gladstone, the book guy for one of America’s top gay travel mags, weighs in on our new series of phrasebooks in the February 2008 issue of Passport. Check it out:

“Miami-based…specialty publishing company BabelCom provide conscientious travelers embarrassingly thorough gay travel phrasebooks. Whether you choose Gay Italian for Love and Hookups or comparable volumes for French, German, or Spanish (Portuguese and Chinese are on the way), you’ll get just what it takes to be explicitly specific with newfound foreign friends. After preliminaries such as “What’s your name?” and “Let me buy you a drink,” things quickly get busy with turns of phrase for turns of tricks that would definitely make Rick Steves blush. Here’s the practical: “Are you a top or a bottom?” and “I’m only into safe sex”; the ridiculously practical: “Do you have water-soluble lubricant?” and the full gamut of good times: “Get on all fours” and “Play with my nipples.” While flipping through them with friends will certainly elicit a few chuckles, Appell’s pocket-sized books are not intended as novelties. These phrasebooks are smartly structured for real-world use that will benefit any adventurer. Pages are designed for two-way translation, so that English and non-English speakers can browse together and find exactly what they want to say to each other, and excellent phonetic guidance is provided to help with pronunciation. Even unadventurous travelers who remain caught up in the web when an exciting new country is just outside their hotel door are accommodated here, with appendices that translate online lingo and abbreviations. To help address the question that knows no geographic boundaries, Appell kindly provides a U.S.-to-metric penis length calculator at the end of each volume. ($9.95 each volume; www.gaybabel.net).”

Merci kindly, Jim! Though I wouldn’t necessarily call “Get on all fours” and “Play with my nipples” the full gamut of good times (well, to each his own, I guess). And the water-soluble lubricant thing, it should be clarified, is in the sex-shop section — I for one have never put a question like that to any prospective bed partner. But these are tiny quibbles — obviously the dude gets it. And like Passport, you’ll see lots more media following suit in the coming months, so stay tuned….

yours truly,

Dave

An early candidate for homo headcase of the year, from Paul V. in Coral Gables, Florida:

Hi, I’m a “gringo” living in Miami, the capital of Latin America, and last summer my Cuban boyfriend and I meet this guy on Manhunt, a doctor from Naples, Italy, early 30’s. I’d been out for most of the day so didn’t get to see the guy’s profile (I generally trust my BF’s judgment). So we get in the car and drive out to this guy Vittorio’s place in South Beach a block below Lincoln Road, and as he opens the door we see he is indeed a hot little fucker, with a tight, defined, lightly furry bod and really piercing blue eyes. Nice — but I think, “hmmm, I’ve seen this dude somewhere before.” Anyway, pretty soon we’re down to business, taking turns screwing the shit out of him to the strains of Carmina Burana on his stereo — I mean, hot-and-heavy sex to the max. Then, as I’m watching my BF give him a good rear-ending, it hits me.

Turns out I’d been chatting with this same guy online a couple of months earlier, and it was going super well until I mentioned that I have a very nice Cuban boyfriend and maybe we could all get together. Whoa — you’d think I’d said I like to deep-throat leprous iguanas. He goes into this rant, and I was so flabbergasted I copied it down. Stuff like: “I don’t do latins and I’m not into guys who likes latins…I thought you were a different and selective white american man but in the end it is always the same story, and I’ll never understand why u americans get so crazy with those people — sorry but I’m not into unselective guys who hang out with latins or cubans, I’m more for quality people…In Italy we definitely do not mix with those people from third world countries like u americans do…I’m sure he is a well-educated cuban but in the end of the day he is still a cuban.” There was lots more, but you get the picture.

So in other words, this Neapolitan terrone (southern Italian, who themselves are looked down on by many northern Italians) who’d been giving me major racist attitude about Latins is at this very moment here getting brutally cornholed by a big Cuban pinga and loving it big-time — not only that, he approached us online knowing my BF was Cuban! Later as we we’re walking to our car, I turn to Rafa and say, “loverboy, have I got a story for you…”

Nothing like a little wacko wop for a bracing change of pace, eh?

In this forum we’d like to hear about your hottest, most memorable or romantic, funniest, strangest, or otherwise superlative date, love story, or just good ol’ sex, with someone(s) from another culture–either abroad or in your home country. Got a tawdry tale of your own? Do tell!

Ahoy, mateys! “Wave season” (aka peak cruise season in the Western Hemisphere) is upon us, and in fact just today Atlantis set sail on the biggest all-gay cruise in history (a whopping 3,750 fags, O…M…G) on Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas. But if you haven’t yet tried a gay cruise, it’s not too late to sign up for some this year’s batch — especially summer’s Europe and Alaska sailings and this fall’s to Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean.

But is steaming off on a boatload of homos really for you? Is it little more than than a queer version of the “Love Boat,” awash in sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll? Is it just a bunch of rich old queens (or dykes), hormone-addled gym bunnies, or some kind of mix? My take, like that of others I’ve spoken with, is that first of all the mix varies but tends to lean toward roughly half singles and half couples, agewise thirty- something on up with a decent smattering of younger folks either on their own or traveling as significant others (Atlantis seems to skew a little younger and RSVP — bought out by Atlantis in late 2007 — a little older). And secondly, it’s a cliché to say this but it truly is what you make of it. Yeah, there’s plenty of partying, zany shenanigans like drag queen bingo, and of course bonking (on one ship I heard about, the area way at the front, less well lit, became kind of a late-night hook-up zone). Says my friend Ian Snelson, who does a lot of rah-rah for Atlantis on Facebook and his own web site, and just left on today’s sailing, “if you’re hoping to find ‘action,’ you’ll probably find it, but it’s not a floating bath house; you won’t find guys relentlessly cruising the corridors looking for open stateroom doors, though at times certain areas of the ship do tend to turn into cruising areas.”

And since launching in the early to mid 1990’s the offerings in gay cruises are getting more varied, more sophisticated, and sometimes more specialized every year; you can also choose between all-gay charters and GL groups on mainstream cruises. Here are some places to start checking…and happy sails to you!

Major All-Gay Players:

Atlantis (800.628.5268)

Olivia (lesbian; 800.631.6277)

RSVP (800.328.7787

TravelPride (877.774.3342)

Examples of Top (So to Speak) ’08 Sailings Still Available:

February 3-15: Attend the world’s most famous party with the “Rio Carnival Cruise” on Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Seas, run by Altantis with stops in Brazil not just at Rio de Janeiro but also Búzios, Parati, Porto Belo, Florianópolis (there’s a visit to São Paulo, too); in Uruguay you’ll see the capital, Montevideo, and the chichi beach resort Punta del Este. Cabins still remaining start at $2,050.

March 2-9: MIM Travel’s (866.749.7354) co-ed “Ebony and Ivory Gay Black Cruise Group” on Royal Caribbean’s Legend of the Seas; the itinerary’s out of Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic), and includes St. Martin/St. Maarten, Dominica, Grenada, Aruba, and Venezuela’s Margarita Island (from $755).

July 5-13: Also from Atlantis, a Mediterranean sail from Barcelona to Rome, also on the Navigator of the Seas. It calls at Marseilles, Capri, the Greek islands of Santorini and (of course) Mykonos, and includes a visit to Florence (docking in the Tuscan port of Livorno); rates start at $1,500.

July 6-13: TravelPride’s South of France river cruise in Burgundy and Provence on the 132-passenger River Royale, starting at Marseilles and ending in Paris, with stops in Lyon, Avignon, Arles, Châlon, and Mâcon. A lot lower-key than the big boom-boom “fun ships.” Rates from $2,900.

October 9-13: “Lift the Ban Cruise” from San Diego to Los Cabos (877.269.0272): remember Reichen Lehmkuhl, the blond stud who word-processed a book, Here’s What We’ll Say, about being a gay marine? Well, on this four-nighter on the Carnival Elation (starting at $600 per person) you’ll get a chance to rub shoulders with him and support the campaign to lift the ban on gays in the military.

November 23-30: On Olivia’s 35th-anniversary cruise, 1,800 lezzies plus comic Suzanne Westenhoefer will hit the Turks and Caicos, St. Thomas, and St. Martin/St. Maarten on Holland America’s MS Westerdam; starts at $1K.

November 27-December 4: Star Clippers Star Flyer, a 170-person “mega-yacht,” plies the islands of Tahiti for RSVP; sailing out of Papeete; fares start at $3,000 and ports include Rangiroa, Bora Bora, Moorea, and Huahine.

Hi kids! I thought it would be a good idea to follow up our first six-city look at gay saunas in Europe with a rundown of the traditional Big Three: London, Paris, and Rome. So without further ado, check out these good spots to find tail of three cities:

London, England Liz Windsor ain’t the only queen who gets her London derriere steamed a good bit — there are over a dozen saunas to choose from. Half a dozen belong to the Chariots chain, the most elaborate being Chariots Shoreditch (1 Fairchild Street, 7247.5333), about 3 1/2 miles east of Picadilly circus (with an Underground stop nearby, of course). This, Britain’s biggest bent baths, boasts a boffo pool, gym, large sauna/steam, and various other frisky facilities. Another good and good-size one with a nice crowd (not to mention a little closer to the parts of London you’re most likely to be) is the Pleasuredrome (Arch 124, Cornwall Road, 7633.9194), right by Waterloo Station; it’s pretty cool and atmospheric, with lots of brick arches, and has a stainless steel hot tub that’s almost big enough to be a pool.

Paris, France The City of Light in the Loafers sports one of the biggest rafts of sodomitic sexpens of any city in the world, I’d have to say—including close to 20 bath houses, five of which are particular standouts. Univers near the Louvre is gone, but not to worry. The new kid in town, Sun City (62 Boulevard de Sébastopol, 01.42.74.31.41) is one of the best not just because it’s right near Les Halles (an easy walk to the gay village in the Marais), but it’s enormous 3200m2, has a great pool, can get a super-hot mix of dudes, and to boot has the most elaborate décor I’ve ever seen, an exotic Indian motif — and it seems they’ve spared no expense to put elaborate art and sculpture all over the place. At the 9th arrondissement’s four-floor IDM (4 Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, 01.45.23.10.03) keeps going strong; the crowd is young and the décor kinda hip-hop flavored (if that floats yer boat). Also four floors that make for a more interesting-than-usual circuit, the logrunning but recently renovated Key West (141 Rue La Fayette, 01.45.26.31.74), between the Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est train stations. Another très exotique spot that evokes not India but Morocco and North Africa, is Riad (184 Rue des Pyynées, 01.47.97.25.52), out in the 20th near the Père Lachaise cemetery, to try some of those hot Arab garçons.

Rome, Italy In spite the fact that the Vatican is right here (or who knows, maybe because of it), the Eternal City has come a long way homo-wise in recent years. Of the half-dozen saune here, one of the top two is just a hop and a skip from the Termini train station and the Piazza Repubblica. The two-level Europa Multiclub (Via Aureliana 40, 48.23.650) is Italy’s biggest, its centerpiece a big, sprawling whirlpool that runs through several rooms. Meanwhile, the other, Mediterraneo (Via Pasquale Villari 3, 06.77.20.59.34) is a cool three-floor bit of business down near the Colosseum with a neat “labyrynth” to help make the hunt more interesante.

Happy New Year! Here are some of the top upcoming travel packages and escorted tours available this year. And please tell ’em you saw it on GayBabel.net!

Tunisia (specifics TBA). Mar. 15-23; from $2,999 (excluding air) with Douglas Easton Travel.

Sicily, Italy (specifics TBA). March 29-April 7; from $2,999 (excluding air) with Douglas EastonTravel.

Scuba Diving in Curação. April 5-12; from $2,295 (excluding air) with Alyson Adventures.

Bulgaria (Sofia, Plovdiv, Kazanlak, Nessebar, Varna, Madara, Arbanasi, Veliko Turnovo). May 22-June 1; from $2,595 (excluding air) with Toto Tours.

Iceland (Reykjavík, Seljalandsfoss, Skogarfoss, Dyrholaey, Kirkjubaejarklastur, Skaftafell National Park, Lake Jokulsarion, Hofti, East Fjords/Egilstaddir, Lake Myvatn, Akureyri, Langjokull Glacier, Gullfoss, Blue Lagoon). August 4-12; from$4,295 (excluding air) with Toto Tours.

Tibet & China (Lhasa, Tsetang, Shigatse, Shanghai, Yangstze River, Lijiang/Yunnan Province, Chengdu/Sichuan Province). September 10-24; $4,995 from Toto Tours.

Prague, Czech Republic/Budapest, Hungary/ Vienna, Austria. September 18-28; $3,595 from Toto Tours.

Provence, France (Avignon, Isle sur la Sorgue, Roussillon, Chãteauneuf du Pape, Aix-les-Bains, Annecy, Chamonix, Mont Blanc, Chanaz/Lac du Bourget, Lyon). October 2-12; $3,595 from Toto Tours.

India (Delhi, Agra, Sikandra/Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Varanasi). November 17-30; $8,000 (excluding air) with DavidTravel.

India (Delhi, Agra, Sikandra/Taj Mahal, Fatehpur Sikri, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Varanasi). December 22-January 14; (excluding air) with DavidTravel.