When I visit a foreign city, the first thing I look for is the sex shop. Depending on the nation, the shop may be behind an unmarked door, in a desolate neighborhood, or above a travel agency. No matter; I ferret out the shop, memorize its coordinates, and make a beeline for it.

Once, in Dublin (where you can't even buy Playboy ), I had to ask several newsstand clerks where to find the porn store. They directed me to a bare storefront, far from the town's center. Inside, there were some leather tchotchkes and a thin selection of illegal publications. Fortunately, one of the mags contained photos that were totally taboo. These photos showed women being dominated, and I don't mean just in conversation. I bought the compendium of tortured colleens on the spot.

Rifling through foreign video porn always yields rewards. I can find, for example, films of Russian women being spanked by the KGB, Persian women being humiliated by religious fanatics, and Mediterranean women being kidnapped by mad Phoenicians. Among the Kremlin, Iranian and classical Greek kink, I might see a shocker, a video titled The Mistress From the United States , starring the eponymous dominatrix and her stable of slaves. One of the slaves, a flexible woman with braidable, bindable hair, might rivet my attention, and I might wonder why I've never heard of this mistress back home. While I marvel at her skill, I might consider defying customs laws to re-import the grainy scenes.

Of course, if I am traveling with someone, my life partner say, I have to keep my sex-shop visits secret.

One time, in Athens , I claimed I was going to a discount store to buy a comb for my hair. Out on the street, I raced through alleys, past an olive display, up some stairs, and into porn heaven. (Actually, the place was called Porn Olympus.) There, I whipped through a catalog of chastised Greek-ettes, raced out, retraced my steps, and returned to my room with a plastic fine-tooth, still in its package.

"What took you so long?" my partner asked.

"Language barrier!" I replied. "The alphabet is Greek!"

The greatest tragedy in visiting foreign sex shops is that European-format videos won't play in the U.S. No matter how persuasive the porn purveyor is, I know that when I try to watch the sex practices of the KGB, Savak, or the Islamic Jihad at home, all I will see is static.

But I often wonder, how much would it cost to have PAL transferred to VHS in my local video lab? No more than a few drachmas, I'm sure.