Adam Fletcher

Your mother met your father. It went great. Alcohol was probably involved. You were the delicious result.

Congrats, but enough about you…

Because over in England, my mother was meeting my father, in a tax office by the sea. It went great. Alcohol was involved. I was the delicious result.

Time passed as it has such a stubborn habit of doing. You grew up. You were scared of clowns.

I grew up too. I was also scared of clowns. We were entirely unaware of each other for a really long time. It was rubbish.

Then, however, our orbits grew slowly closer. That happened first because in 2007, I think, I was offered a job in Leipzig and moved to Germany.

That was fun, for a while. I met Annett who would be my girlfriend for nearly a decade, and is probably the reason I never left. Apart from all the times we left together.

Somewhere around 2009, I quit my job. It was not a sensible move. Most people in my life were against it, and they were probably right.

Annett and I relocated to Berlin and I suddenly had a lot of free time, and dwindling savings. With them, and a few friends (Andreas, Pete, Rob and later Manuel), I started a business called The Hipstery. It was a mystery e-commerce experience in which you answered a funny survey and then had to buy a product without knowing what it was.

It was a not a sensible move. Most people in my life were against it, they were definitely right.

The business was a press darling but a spectacular financial failure. To say it was ahead of its time is to suggest there is a time in which it belongs.

There isn’t…

I learnt I was good at marketing and little else. The best thing about the project was that Andreas brought a delicious cheeky man onto it called Robert M. Schöne; our designer.

The Hipstery limped along for a few years in which I still had lots of free time and ever more dwindling savings.

It’s my theory that if someone has enough free time, they will eventually write a book. It’s the ultimate indulgence. A great fuck you to the Reaper.

So somewhere around 2012 I wrote a book. I think it was called The Importance of Low Expectations, or something like that. I was very excited about it. Expectations were high. I gave it to friends who politely told me that it was rubbish.

I discovered it recently in my bookshelf. It is rubbish.

So I wrote another book. This one was called A Picnic for Perverts. I gave it to friends who less politely told me that it was also rubbish and I should stop writing books. I ignored them and self-published it.

I discovered it recently in my bookshelf. It is rubbish.

A shorter and so slightly less egregious version of it is available for free to newsletter subscribers. Don’t read it. Seriously… don’t.

In order to promote both The Hipstery and A Picnic for Perverts I started writing funny articles and posting them on websites that had traffic I wanted to steal.

That went well. Then I wrote this one about becoming German. More than two million people read it. To put that in context, it was 1,999,990 more than all my other articles combined. I got my first book deal for a dual-language book called How to be German, based on that article.

Rob stayed involved. He did the book’s cover and illustrations. As he has for every book since. He’s wonderful and you should hire him.

I wrote more articles. I got more book deals. I made a website called TheGermanQuiz that got another two million visitors and rocketed that first book onto the bestsellers list where it sat for years.

Everything was going great. My savings grew. I still had a lot of free time. I was a full-time Author, a job people said doesn’t exist. It does, and it’s really, really great.

Many more books followed. I would write them and different people would translate them to German and they’d be published, either by C.H.Beck or Ullstein. I had a small but devoted following.

How were things with you? Pretty good too, I think. I mean, you had that issue with your back, your boss kept failing to recognise your abundant genius, and you didn’t do enough sport. But otherwise? You couldn’t really complain.

But anyway, enough about you…

I started getting a little bit tired of my books only coming out in Germany, and in German. And because I’d had success with funny gift books, my publishers mostly wanted more funny gift books, which got a bit boring to write.

So I convinced Ullstein to let me write a book about weird countries. I’d been to many of them anyway, since I travel for at least two months of every year when Berlin gets cold. I go to strange places, mostly, they have the best stories. I had a lot I could use. It would be the first book with a proper arc and characters who go on a quest and learn something, or not, before returned home changed, or not. It was very nice of them to let me.

It was a huge commercial failure. It sold maybe 1/4 of the next least succesful book.

I think we got a lot of things wrong with the branding and marketing and ran into the usual issue of it being in German, a language I speak only crudely, and coming out in a country whose media I know poorly. One that only knew me as that guy that writes funny books about Germany.

I wanted to be published in English. And to brand and price and promote my books exactly how I want. But I was also tired of asking people for permission for things. And self-publishing was maturing as an option. So Ullstein kindly gave me the English rights back, and I rewrote the book and republished it as Don’t Go There.

It’s a good book, I think. It sold well. I learnt a lot about self-publishing and online advertising. Four more travel memoirs followed. I call the series Adam’s Adventures. As of 2025, I have sixteen books, mixing traditional and self-publishing, depending on the story I’m writing. I’ve also became a father, and write about that a lot too.

And that brings us back to you, buddy…

You’re here, probably, because you read one of those Weird Travel books and either liked it or hated it.

Great, welcome. Thanks, I owe you.