Buckle up for a first-class ticket to the unexpected.
For Valerie Dost von Dostenberg, travel isn’t just about the destination—it’s about the glorious, wine-stained, and often humiliating collision between a Type-A soul and a world that refuses to follow a plan. From the champagne-soaked cabins of international flights to the damp foxholes of the Ardennes, Passport to Chaos is a witty, irreverent, and deeply human masterclass in the art of the "scenic identity crisis."
The journey spans continents and emotional landscapes, beginning with a first-class ego in Sydney that quickly dissolves into the "survival-based physics" of an Austrian après-ski. In France, Valerie navigates the high-stakes social minefields of the Cannes Film Festival and the refined judgment of Parisian waiters, while in Cambodia, she scales the 900-year-old stairs of Angkor Wat only to be mugged for her designer sunglasses by a "Monkey King" in a tuk-tuk. Between the "Nuts!" moments of defiance in the Belgian woods and the "Gross National Happiness" of the Bhutanese mountains, she discovers that the most profound travel stories happen when you finally stop trying to control the itinerary.
Whether she is being judged by a Lipizzaner horse in Vienna or receiving a new name and a Christmas miracle from two local guides in the Himalayas, Valerie’s adventures are a heart-swelling reminder that travel is as much about the internal shifts as the external miles.
Passport to Chaos is a celebration of the unplanned, the uncomfortable, and the undeniable beauty of finding oneself home within oneself, even when sitting in a puddle at sunrise.
The Wildly True Adventures of a Woman Who Refused to Sit Still
From the glittering hills of Switzerland to the dusty construction yards of the U.S. Navy Seabees, from Malibu mansions and billionaire estates to a run-down cottage on five acres in Colorado, Valerie Dost von Dostenberg has lived a life most people couldn’t invent—even with a very active imagination and a bottle of wine. Along the way, she traveled to 76 countries, collecting stories, scars, and moments of wonder that only a life lived everywhere can hold, while also enduring numerous tragic losses that shaped her resilience and heart in ways adventure alone never could. In Borderless, Valerie takes readers on a brilliantly chaotic, heartwarming, and laugh-out-loud journey through the many lives she has somehow managed to fit into one.
Raised among lakes and mountains with a name that no American airport employee could ever pronounce, she found herself ricocheting between worlds: one moment managing celebrity households where scented candles were considered emergencies, the next navigating Navy boot camp fields where sweating was practically a spiritual practice. She has sprinted through the hallways of billionaire estates trying to locate misplaced remotes, marched across military training grounds beside warriors who eat grit for breakfast, and stood on Coronado Beach in steel-toed boots, wondering how, exactly, she got there. She has crossed continents, oceans, and cultures—76 countries in total—while carrying both the thrill of discovery and the weight of losing many of the people she loved most.
Along the way she became “Just Dost” to a grim-faced Petty Officer who couldn’t wrestle her name into submission, lived in more places than she can count, and mastered the fine art of driving U-Hauls across state lines with her dog Duke as her unimpressed co-pilot. But the heart of this memoir isn’t just the wild backdrops—it’s the courage to leap without a plan, the humor required to survive absurdity, and the quiet moments of unexpected tenderness that kept her moving. Whether she was handling the emotional meltdowns of the ultra-rich, digging trenches with Seabees in the California sun, or finding unexpected peace in a slightly run-down Colorado cottage with two mismatched rescue dogs, Valerie learned—again and again—that home isn’t a place. It’s a feeling, a breath, a pause before the next adventure calls.Told with razor-sharp wit, disarming vulnerability, and an eye for the absurd details that make life unforgettable,
Borderless is a story for anyone who has ever reinvented themselves, lost themselves, found themselves, survived heartbreak after heartbreak, or packed up their belongings in a U-Haul and said, “Alright, universe. Let’s see where we’re going now.”Funny, fearless, and profoundly human, Valerie reminds us that life is too unpredictable to cling to one version of ourselves and far too beautiful to ever stop exploring.
Where to next?
She’s listening—always.
