State Power Crisis Could Give O.C. Static

I can get sick just thinking of Sofia, Bulgaria.

It isn’t the city’s fault. Seven years ago, I spent an interesting week there, touring museums, mosques and mausoleums before flying to Istanbul for a few days, where I saw Topkapi Palace, took a boat ride on the Bosporus and had a fried fish sandwich at a stand near the wharf. The sandwich tasted delicious, but in a few hours, I felt as though I’d washed it down with a bottle of bleach. That fish sandwich is at the heart--or more precisely, the gut--of my problem with the Bulgarian capital.

My intestinal troubles came on at the Istanbul airport as I waited to check in for a flight back to Sofia, where I was to spend the night before catching another plane to New York. I remember sweating, feeling dizzy and finally slumping over my baggage cart while people behind me whispered and pointed.

When my plane landed in Sofia, I let a taxi driver take me to the hotel of his choice because I felt too awful to consult my guidebook. His choice turned out to be a big Soviet-era cement block on the outskirts of town, where the rooms reeked of cigarettes and the beds were covered by army blankets. I was road-weary and weak, all my clothes were dirty and the cheerful pink Pepto-Bismol tablets I’d been popping weren’t working. I spent the next 10 hours crumpled on the bed, moaning, or in the bathroom, dozing on the cold tile floor close to the toilet.

Is there anything worse than being sick while you’re traveling? I’m not talking about dire, life-threatening illnesses but about the flu or a bad stomach ache, the sorts of afflictions that keep you away from work for a few days, sipping soup and watching “Oprah.” At home, it’s relatively easy to handle such troubles, particularly for women who learn how to take care of others as they grow up and can apply the knowledge to themselves when they get sick. (In my experience, men tend to tough it out or turn completely helpless when their health fails.) But on the road, far from your doctor and pharmacy, heating pad and herbal tea, teddy bear and Mom, getting even a little sick can be sheer misery.

I know a woman who got so sick to her stomach in Spain that she wrote her name and address on a piece of paper and put it on her pillow so whoever found her body would know where to send it.

When my dad got the flu in Venice, Italy, he was luckier, because he had my mom along. She put him to bed in a peaceful little pension and, being the never-say-die traveler she is, went out and saw the sights because, after all, she didn’t know whether she’d ever be back in the city known as “La Serenissima.”

A friend in New York tells a harrowing tale about getting dysentery while riding from northern India to Nepal in the back of a truck for two days with a group of Polish backpackers who spoke no English. Things went downhill from there. Her hotel in Katmandu lost all her clothes when she sent them to the laundry, leaving her with just one red dress; she fainted in the lobby of a bank while trying to cash a traveler’s check; and when she tried to get her visa renewed at the Indian consulate in Katmandu, no one would help her, until a nice man at a soda stand nearby told her it was because she looked like she was on drugs. She made it home eventually, 30 pounds thinner than when she left.

Worse yet was the sound of my sister’s voice when she phoned me several years ago from a hotel in Paris, where she was on business. She was so hoarse that at first I thought she was an obscene caller. But she was just sick with a flu she caught the first day of her stay, when she pushed herself to visit Giverny immediately after her arrival. After that, she dutifully attended her meetings during the day, then went back to her top-floor room at a little hotel to sleep. In her comings and goings, the owner noticed she wasn’t well and gave her a small jar of honey that he advised her to take during the day. It made her feel better, especially when she found out later that he was a beekeeper.

I tell these stories in all their gruesomeness because they teach travelers several lessons:

* Though the food usually looks and smells lovely at street stands, eat there only at your stomach’s peril.

* Get yourself a medical kit and stock it with remedies you use at home for common illnesses. I always carry antibiotics when I travel in the Third World, but I’ve found that natural remedies like grapefruit seed extract for stomach trouble and echinacea for colds and flu work for me for mild problems. In fact, whenever I’m traveling and feel a cold coming on, I drink a cup of echinacea tea and go to bed for as long as I can sleep. Usually, I wake up feeling like a million francs.

* Know that planes can be hotbeds of germs, and be wary. Lots of people work like demons before going on vacation, then fly, exhausted, catch a bug on the plane and start feeling bad on arrival, spoiling the trip. Others go nonstop while touring and get sick on the flight home. Think of long flights as marathons: You have to be rested and prepared for them.

* Take good care of yourself on the road. Being sick in a nice hotel is a lot more tolerable than in a crummy one; if you have the strength, it might help to move. Buy flowers, orange juice and fruit, and pack decaffeinated tea for the bad times. Push to see Topkapi in Istanbul and Alexander Nevski cathedral in Sofia, but not to the point of depleting yourself. And if you don’t start to feel better in a day or two, seek advice from your hotel or the U.S. embassy on where to get reliable medical help.

I learned these rules the hard way. Still, I know there’s something worse than being ill while traveling: not being able to travel at all.