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My super-helpful, likely-painfully obvious-travel tips blog!!

Your humble blogger has been on an airplane twice in the past week on separate trips — which, over the past year, was a depressingly common occurrence. Indeed, since December 2010, I’ve been to Mexico City, Dubai, Geneva, Basle, Montreal, Lisbon, Brussels, Beijing, London, Berlin, Shanghai, and Toronto. That was just the international travel; between ...

By Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

December 25, 2011, 10:29 PM

Your humble blogger has been on an airplane twice in the past week on separate trips -- which, over the past year, was a depressingly common occurrence. Indeed, since December 2010, I've been to Mexico City, Dubai, Geneva, Basle, Montreal, Lisbon, Brussels, Beijing, London, Berlin, Shanghai, and Toronto. That was just the international travel; between business trips, promotion for Theories of International Politics and Zombies, and an actual vacation, there was a lot of domestic transportation as well.

Your humble blogger has been on an airplane twice in the past week on separate trips — which, over the past year, was a depressingly common occurrence. Indeed, since December 2010, I’ve been to Mexico City, Dubai, Geneva, Basle, Montreal, Lisbon, Brussels, Beijing, London, Berlin, Shanghai, and Toronto. That was just the international travel; between business trips, promotion for Theories of International Politics and Zombies, and an actual vacation, there was a lot of domestic transportation as well.

With so much sojourning, I’ve managed to pick up a few impressions and pointers. So, in honor of this period of relatively intense travel for many newcomers, this week I’ll be offering some useful tidbits of advice. Note: I have received no promotional considerations for the commercial endorsements and disses.

Let’s start with a simple one:

Best Travel Aid for Avoiding Illness: For me, travel + alcohol + lack of sleep = guarantee of getting sick. I used to get sick quite a bit after travel, because such trips usually combined my three trigger mechanisms. For conferences, travel and drinking are pretty much essential, so the key thing for me ito avoid getting sick is sleep. Which is tough for me, as I traditionally have not slept on planes.

Despite this travel, I didn’t get sick once during this past year (with the exception of Friedman’s Disease, of course). I attribute this to taking melatonin as a sleep aid. It does make me feel drowsy, but it doesn’t make me feel drugged.

Melatonin plus Vitamin Water Zero appears to have kept me virus-free for the year. Well, that or I’m now old enough to have been exposed to every travel bug out there.

More advice and tips to follow, including best and worst airlines, etc. Commenters should feel free to place requests in the comments.

Coming next: the best and most overrated pieces of travel luggage.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner