Tag: travel

The Cost Of Travel, Part I: That Ain’t Luck

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe16 Comments

This post might offend a few people, but this has been grinding my gears for a while.

Whenever I talk to people back in the US about the stuff I’ve done here, the places I’ve gone, the things I’ve seen, and the train rides to nearby cities and countries, a lot of them say, “you’re so lucky!”

I immediately want to stab them in the ear with a ball point pen.  It’s not luck.

It’s not luck that got me to agree to sign two contracts, one in German and one in English, to stay here for three years. Luck had nothing whatsoever to do with my decision to pause my entire life back home for a then-uncertain time-frame while I came over here and did my company’s bidding. Luck didn’t get me to store my stuff, sell my car, and completely uproot my entire universe for a span of years.

Luck has nothing to do with missing three years of the lives of my family and friends.  My newest niece will be four years old a month after I return.  That’s 75% of her life so far.   My parents are both in their 70s, with various competing health issues.  My father has multiple myeloma in remission- he’s healthy right now, but there’s really no cure.  I wonder often how much time I really have left with him, and I worry that I’m squandering it by living over here.

My friends back in the States have found significant others, moved in with one another, changed jobs, changed homes, moved between cities-  time kicks along without me in it, and by the time I get back, the world I left will be irrevocably changed.

That ain’t luck, and it pisses me off immensely when people think it is.

I was talking recently with a local friend about all the travel that I do, and it became clear that she doesn’t travel. Not to the things that are just a few hours away, like Neuschwanstein or the Zugspitze. Not to slightly further places like London or Paris.

I asked if she wants to see those places, and she said “of course.” I asked why she hadn’t, and she was immediately full of rationalization- she always has boyfriends who don’t like to travel, for example.

My perspective is this: If you want to travel, you will travel. 

If you want it badly enough, you’ll find a way to make it happen.

For years, I waited for the right combination of money, free time, and a good travel buddy. As I worked my way up in the company, my vacation time increased and time stopped being a problem. Then my salary got better, and suddenly I could afford to go places if I wanted to.  I just had the lingering problem of needing a travel partner. I got my passport in 2006, thinking that I would be able to go to London soon. I just needed someone to travel with.

I wanted to see the city of London with someone I loved.

2006 became 2008, and my girlfriend at the time wanted to go with me.  The timing was bad though.  She had just started a new job, and she couldn’t take that sort of time off.  She and I managed to take a few trips within the US, but we never left the country together.

If you look for a reason not to go, you will always find one.

Eventually, I figured out that if I wait around for a travel partner, I won’t ever go anywhere. I’m glad I realized that before I moved to Germany, because I’ve been to fourteen countries now, and I traveled to most of them entirely on my own.

If you really want to travel, you’ll travel.

Luck has nothing to do with it.

Do you want to travel?

August Break: Bad Timing In Wuppertal

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany38 Comments

We started a fairly large project at work recently which has been eating a lot of my time.  It’s a fairly complicated thing, and I’m the lead kitten wrangler for the whole shebang.  For the last several weeks, I’ve been spending a lot of time working from home, and even doing conference calls from midnight to two or three in the morning a few nights a week.  This schedule is likely to keep up until late September or October.

When I read Mandi’s post about taking an August Break this morning, the idea settled into the back of my head and wouldn’t shake loose.  With the work stuff invading my time outside of the office, I’ve been a little concerned about my ability to keep up my usual two-post-a-week pace with worthwhile new material.

Enter Susannah Conway’s August Break 2013.  I don’t usually do this sort of blogging community thing, but this one actually solves a problem for me.  It actually solves several problems.  Here’s Susannah’s explanation of AB13:

Each day, for the whole of August, take a photo and share it on your blog. You can add words if you want — or not. You can use any camera. You could share a series of photos, or miss a day out, or just post on weekends. There are no real rules, basically. This is all about being present and enjoying taking photos just for the hell of it. And perhaps reinvigorating your love for blogging, and/or taking a break from writing.

I can do 31 smaller photo posts much more easily than I can do nine full length posts in the month of August.  As my friends are well aware, I take pictures of just about everything, constantly.  I have tons of pictures that I thought were neat, or that I thought might be good for some future post that are just sort of languishing.  This gives me a chance to show off some of those.

While I’m going through the month of August, I might have time to work on some longer post ideas that I’ve been back-burning for a long time.  This would give me a head start on September’s blogging.  Besides, a little variety might be a good thing for my creativity in the long term.   I’ll start off the August Break photos with three pictures from Wuppertal, and a brief explanation of the photos.

The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is the world’s oldest suspended train system, with public routes open as far back as 1901.  It covers a route a little more than 13 kilomters (just over 8 miles), mostly along the river Wupper.  (Of course I have to pause for a moment to reflect that Wupper is a fabulous name for a river.  It’s awfully fun to say.  Wupper! Wupper! Wupper!)

The Schwebebahn is an important part of Wuppertal’s public transit system, with regular routes every day.  Since it’s a train suspended on arched rails over part of a city, I had to see it in operation.  I was in nearby Essen with a friend for Star Wars Celebration Europe (more on that in another post), and we made a 46-minute S-Bahn ride to Wuppertal for the express purpose of photographing and riding on the Schwebebahn.  I may have mentioned this before, but I love trains.  Even weird hanging ones.  Or maybe especially weird hanging ones.

If only we’d been there three days earlier.

The Schwebebahn was shut down for maintenance and improvements on the lines.   From three days before we got there until about two weeks into August.  There are handy shuttle buses that run the length of the Schwebebahn tracks to take up the slack during the maintenance.  You can find them by looking for the signs with the adorable elephant in a construction hat.

wuppertal02

The line is really very impressive.  This is a section that runs along the river right near the Zoological Gardens.

wuppertal03

We did finally manage to find one Schwebebahn car, hanging motionless at the Vohwinkel station.  ::sigh::

wuppertal01

Have you ever been on the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn?

500 Days Of Steven

On By StevenIn Life In Germany5 Comments

Today marks 500 days until the end of my time in Germany. On the 31st of October, 2014, my residence permit expires and my employment term wraps up.  That’s a little over one year and four months from now- it turns out I  actually passed the halfway mark back in May.

So, 500 days.  I’ve got a lot to do in that time.

I’ve got a lot to do.  I’d better get started.

Guest Post: Confessions Of A Bad Traveler

On By StevenIn The U.S.44 Comments

This is the first-ever guest post on Ye Olde Blog.  I’d like you to meet Rarasaur!   Rara is one of my favorite fellow bloggers.  She’s funny, she’s smart, and she’s a wildly prolific blogger.  We have a standing appointment for coffee or tea or something if I ever make it to Southern California. (I’m thinkin’ 2014, Rara.)  I originally asked her to write a guest post for my travel-crazy May, but due to a series of hilarious e-mail malfunctions and one good old fashioned sitcom-style misunderstanding, she sent the draft to me over a month before I actually received it.  Yay, technology!

Her blogging topics are wildly disparate, ranging from pop culture to health to, really, whatever she feels like writing about.  Here’s a handful of her mostly-recent posts that I quite like, just to give you a sampling:

And now, without further adieu, I yield the floor to the inimitable Rarasaur.

I confess– I’m a bad traveler.

You’ve met me before. I’m the person crying at the airport, arguing that the scale must be wrong because my case is perfectly okay for carry-on. I’m the person who drives to an event that everyone else flies to. I’m the one you see on the flight the day after Thanksgiving because I don’t like to be away from home for more than a few hours. I groan whenever the plane shifts or is delayed for a second. I complain about the weather.

I know I’m annoying, so I restrict my travel to necessary moments in order to make sure that real travelers can enjoy their experience in peace.

I don’t think I’m wrong though. The reasons I am a bad traveler are so reasonable to me that I call them mantras.

So with no further ado, here are the Top 5 Mantras of Bad Travelers:

#1 – Things are good.

This is not my car, but it looks about ready for 12 hours away from home.
This is not my car, but it looks about ready for 12 hours away from home.

One thing I hear a lot from my traveling friends is how little importance they place on things.

One good dress that you can wash in the river, and they’re happy. One duffel bag full of necessities and they’re set. They have packing for various trips down to an art form and they use baking soda for more things than you could ever possibly imagine.

I don’t know what they do with their childhood toys, favorite books, and paintings– but I am sad without those things. It’s less about the materialism and more about the fact that they ground me. I’ve whittled my life down to just precious belongings and I don’t like to be without them.

They keep me calm, happy, sane, and focused on the positive.

Believe me– you want me to have things. I like things.

#2 – Clean is nice.

I make a similar face when I'm forced to be dusty.
I make a similar face when I’m forced to be dusty.

I have a North American, suburban definition of clean. If there’s a fly on my food, I’d rather not eat it. If I see someone rolling a tortilla on the floor, I’m suddenly not really that hungry.

I know. I’m perpetuating the American stereotype and probably making myself sound like someone who has never known hunger, seen starvation, or experienced hard times. My parents grew up in third world countries, and even here in America, I’ve seen true hunger. I don’t point at the food and say it’s disgusting and I don’t judge people for eating it.

I just don’t understand why I should pay several thousand dollars, and days of my life wedged in a tiny flying metal can, in order to experience it. I can eat dirty food here, without flying to New York City.

#3 – Stuff is the same everywhere.

buildingsThis is a consequence of too many geek movies and too eclectic of a family, but I believe it to be the truth. People are the same everywhere. Their goals and dreams are the same. They like to build big things and impressively tiny things. They have families that they love, and celebrations that are important to them. There are mysterious parts of their past that fill them with glory, imagination, and wonder. There are parts of their future that they are certain will exist soon, maybe even in their lifespan. They are proud.

Sure, the details are different. The buildings have different purposes and are different shapes with different names, but the awe-inspiring factors– the imagination, wonder, and community– is the same. Someone dreamed of something huge, and made it happen.

That’s beautiful but again– something I don’t need to go anywhere to see.

#4 – Airplanes are terrible.

Say Ahhhh!
Say Ahhhh!

Sure, they’re not dentist-terrible, but they’re certainly not fun.

If I want to be patted down, drooled on, and annoyed by strangers– well, I could come up with several far more interesting scenarios to accomplish that dream.

If I wanted to be locked into a building that only has overpriced food and bestseller books, well, I’d go straight to Hades and hang out there.

It doesn’t help that they restrict the number of things I can carry with me at all times. Did I mention that I like things?

#5 – I worry.

panic, worry, hitchhikers guideIs my car locked? Is my oven off? Did I mail my brother’s birthday card? Did he receive it? What if I find a stamp and forgot my stamp book and have to carry it in my wallet– except then my wallet gets stolen and I lose everything? What if I find a pet that I really want to take home with me, but custom forbids it? Will I mourn forever?

What if all flights back are cancelled and I don’t make it back in time and I’m late for work and I lose my job? What if I eat something that my body is not used to and my eyelashes turn green?

What if I look like a famous serial killer and am arrested on suspicion?

THEN what?

No answers? That’s what I thought, Traveler.

Let’s see a towel get you out of that sort of trouble.

So why do you travel?

What would you say the mantras of a Good Traveler are? Do you think there are such things are non-travelers and travelers, or have I just not been converted yet? (Have you come up with a scenario where a towel could get you out of the serial killer mix up? Seriously let me know. Now I’m worried about it.)