Seeing Bruce Springsteen perform live in the 1970s and early '80s, pre–Born in the U.S.A., could be a life-changing experience. Bruce was the hungry leader of a relentless, turn-on-a-dime R&B band. A burning star streaking across the rock'n'roll sky, he threw his fiery young self into maximum shows full of urgency (to invoke one of his best rhymes) and those wordy, anthemic pleading/strutting urban fairy tales. He was leagues beyond almost everything and everyone else in those days.
It was supposed to be so simple, a well-trod path I've followed almost every May for the last decade: A six-day trip to Munich to attend the final Munich High End Show before it decamps to Vienna next year.
During the past decade and a half, the trips I've taken have tended to be for magazine stories. I love to travel, but as a New Yorker living on a writer's income, I figure it makes more sense to do it on someone else's dime and stay in nicer places than I could afford otherwise. The downside is that these trips don't feel like vacations, or even particularly restful: My time tends to be taken up with interviews, overly elaborate meals eaten (or tasted) in the company of chefs and winemakers, weeks when I sometimes stay in four hotels, and (gratefully infrequent) run-ins with publicists.
