Another Year – 58!

Caroline Wise and John Wise driving to Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Woke just before 5:00 a.m. without the assistance of an alarm and got to preparing a hot breakfast prior to a short walk. After a stop for a latte to go, we are heading south in the direction of Tucson. Our destination is Saguaro National Park. Along the way, we return to one of our favorite pastimes, reading out loud. Caroline is closing in on finishing The Greedy Queen: Eating with Victoria by Annie Gray, which is taking an inordinate amount of time due to us not being in the car all that often.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

The particular reason for this day out on the road is that it’s my birthday. Not only are we traveling, but Caroline baked me a cake; well, bread to be more specific although a dessert bread for sure. What kind is it, you ask? Almond, dried apricot, and orange, a yummy favorite of ours from the Moosewood Cookbook.

We were supposed to be heading into New Mexico back on Friday, but after weeks of dithering about where exactly we’d end up, I lost the enthusiasm to pick a place. So, at the last minute, as just this past Friday, we decided to drive to Saguaro National Park.

Caroline Wise at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

It’s been years since we stopped at the closest national park to the place we call home, though we’ve been meaning to do this for years so Caroline could collect a Junior Ranger badge from here. Today is the day. And it was also the day we forgot our park pass so instead of paying the entry fee, we just went ahead and bought another yearly pass, knowing that the money goes to one of our favorite causes, the preservation of America’s beautiful wildlands.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

After checking in at the visitors center and confirming that someone would be able to accept her workbook we printed at home, we took off for a loop drive down a dirt road so my wife could gather the depth of knowledge about this park that might qualify her as Senior Junior Ranger Woman.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

We intended to take two short walks from the road, but at the first small pullout, seven other cars were parked with absolutely nowhere else to park nearby, so we continued our slow eight mph crawl up the road. We didn’t drive that slow due to the poor conditions of the road, nor did we drive that slow to piss off the people coming up behind us on this narrow path; we drove this slow because under 12mph in our Kia Niro, we are only using electricity and with the windows open the quiet is more befitting the environment.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

I took five shots to get this one reasonable image, but what’s missing is the grand vista stretching for miles with a million cacti between us and the mountains in the distance. This could have been remedied by switching to my 10-22mm wide-angle lens, but I should know better than switching lenses on a dusty road. By the way, how do you like how I coordinated the color of my shirt with the color of my beard?

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

We don’t know which plant this skeleton is from, though it’s obviously not from one of the nearby saguaros but we thought it beautiful enough that it was worthy of snapping an image of. Maybe this will be the photo that propels me virally into social media fame, though that would mean I have to throw it up on Instagram, and well, I’m just about too lazy to even try that.

Caroline Wise at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Truth in advertising admission, I’m standing behind Caroline, holding her purse while she goes ahead so I can snag a more “natural” image of her ascending the stairs on this short trail to view some petroglyphs. You might think that it’s no big deal that I’m holding a purse, but do some math regarding today’s birthday, and you’ll see I was born in 1963, and I obviously do not have the DNA to be comfortable holding a purse. As soon as I get the photo I want, I will yell at her to rush back to fetch her purse so I can maintain my illusion of what it means to be a man.

Petroglyphs at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

There were more approachable petroglyphs at the top of Signal Hill, but this abundance from below was more appealing to me, so here they are.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

I can’t help but wonder if Phoenix and Tucson once looked like this. Meaning a wide-open desert covered with cacti of a number of types but especially saguaro. These sentinels of the Southwest have been known to stand for up to 300 years with one particular now dead specimen having reached a height of over 40 feet with 52 arms. Evolution works by bringing ecosystems into harmony, and so I tend to believe that there’s likely a very good reason why these cacti have these characteristics, and while they are protected today, that doesn’t diminish that we’ve cleaned millions of them off lands where we built houses.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Sure, it’s great that we at least have pockets of them on lands forbidden to be developed, but what have we lost in our efforts to replace nature with concrete, cinderblocks, and asphalt?

Caroline Wise becoming a Junior Ranger at Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Poems, puzzles, drawings, and questions across ten pages are now complete and Caroline is being sworn in yet again and awarded a Junior Ranger badge, quite the honor.

Longhorn Grill in Amado, Arizona

For 20 years, we’ve meant to stop in here at the Longhorn Grill so we can claim our bragging rights to having eaten under the world’s largest fossilized steer skull ever found, and now, here on my 58th birthday, which is also the same day Caroline has earned her dozenth Junior Ranger badge, we’ve finally done it. Was it worth it? That depends. Was the food amazing? No way, but we didn’t expect it to be, considering it’s midway between Tucson and Mexico, meaning it’s in a relatively impoverished area of the state, and there isn’t anyone passing through these parts looking for gourmet food. Can I recommend it? Absolutely, because these cherished icons sitting roadside across America won’t be there forever, and often, you meet some amazing fellow travelers who contribute to making our days memorable.

Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Arizona

Earlier, as we drove south out of the national park, I noticed on the GPS a northern section of this western branch of Saguaro that had a road passing through called Picture Rocks Road that we’d never been on. Seeing it had been so many years between visits, there’s the chance we may never pass through this area again, so I figured we should take the detour and check it out, just in case.

We arrived back in Phoenix before 5:30 p.m., which was a lot earlier than I thought we’d be home, but I don’t feel like we diminished our experience of being out for a Sunday drive on Easter during my birthday. As a matter of fact, I’d say this was a gloriously beautiful day that once again presses on my mind to come up with the superlatives that might convey a hint of how perfect this was for Caroline and me, but I guess the old saying, “You had to be there,” rings true and will have to suffice.

Big Plans At The End Of 57

Monterey Bay Aquarium Map

Today is the last day of my 57th year; tomorrow, I’ll be 58. But this wasn’t just any old day closing out another year of life. I was working to clean up the grammar of older blog posts when I came across one about the Monterey Bay Aquarium we last visited in 2017. That triggered me to wonder when the aquarium might reopen; well, today was my lucky day as they are making that splash on May 1st to members only and then on the 15th to the general public. If you think that just because we are 700 miles (1,137km) from Monterey, we aren’t members, you are wrong.

Here, just before my birthday, I worked out a nearly 10-day trip and already booked our lodging reservations in the sincere belief that when the aquarium opens reservations on April 26th at 9:00 a.m. PST, I’ll be right there to book our entry for a 10:00 a.m. entry for one of the days we’ll be up there.

Note left at Treebones Resort in Big Sur, California

If that wasn’t exciting enough, I also have us booked at the Lover’s Point Inn in Pacific Grove, just down the street from the aquarium, along with two more unbelievable nights in the Human Nest at Treebones Resort in Big Sur. From there, we’ll head down to Cambria to stay at a place across the street from the ocean. While I still have some details to figure out, the frenzy of having worked all that out requires me to take a break and allow my brain to stop sizzling. This kind of excitement is taxing on old men’s brains, NOT! The photo above is the note I wrote and the drawings Caroline made back at the end of 2010 when, for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, we stayed in the nest but were nearly blown out of our perch; click here to see that post!

Octopus at Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California

While it feels like we’ve been to the aquarium dozens, if not hundreds of times, the truth is more modest. This is our 11th visit in 29 years or hardly enough when I see it this way. Our first time ever in Monterey back in January 1992 included the aquarium and then in 1997, after we’d moved to America, we took my mother-in-law Jutta with us to visit this magic place. In 2001 and 2002, we visited once each year, but in 2004 and 2005, we visited twice each of those years. This was followed by a six-year pause, and we didn’t return until 2011. Another six-year break ensued that culminated with our last visit in 2017. Now, in 2021, seeing this on our horizon, it almost feels like there should have been five or six other visits thrown in there over the years, but obviously, there were other places on the map we wanted to visit, too.

Maybe we’ll make it an even dozen times we’ll have visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium come 2022 when a new “Into The Deep” exhibit is scheduled to open.

Once We’re There or Getting Lost

On the streets of Frankfurt, Germany

The breadth of how much planning is required to not have a happenstance journey into Europe, should we figure out the digital nomad thing, becomes extraordinary. Knowing that I’m already set on 13 base destinations over the course of a year, we have to maximize this opportunity to make the best of our circumstances while still allowing a healthy amount of serendipity to enter our adventure. I suppose what I really need is the knowledge of what our options are before arriving in any given city and having a familiarity akin to already living in each place for some period of time. As I peel the layers back, I find it daunting, and this is just as I’m checking our options in Vienna, a city we’ve already visited.

Biking, hiking, walking, trams, trains, subways, and occasionally boats will act as our modes of transportation. Open-air markets, museums, dining experiences, bakeries, churches, coffee shops, cooking classes, and events will all have to be mapped. Some of this planning will happen more than a year out, while some of it will have to occur in situ as there’s only so much one can glean on the horizon when looking from so far away. The point will be to arrive with a routine ready to be established where we don’t have to wonder daily what we might be doing.

I can already hear the voices of my past who lament that I’m killing spontaneity, but I have to insist that we enrich our experience by shoving two or three times more activity into a precious travel day. While it’s been said here before, we rise with the sun and venture into our world in the quiet of the day as the places we visit are stirring back to life. The rare nature of being able to carve time out of one’s routine to explore faraway destinations should never be taken for granted. We do not invest the time and money to gather popularity or bragging rights that we’ve collected another trophy; we intensely desire our visit to enrich our knowledge and pique our curiosity about the history and cultural amenities that may be unique to a particular destination.

As I write this, I realize how old-fashioned I must sound to those who pass through a location with no other need than sharing a fanciful photo that exemplifies the photogenic qualities of the influencer who’s popularising a particular corner or view. So, are we immune to chasing down the hot and trendy places? Heck no, we’ll gladly pounce on visiting Hotel Sacher in Vienna for a second slice of that famous 189-year-old recipe used for making Sacher Torte. And Horseshoe Bend up near Lake Powell in Arizona? Well, millions now grab selfies from the overlook; look closely at some of their photos, and one day, you spot us, waving from down on the river to those above who are spending 30 seconds up there.

Bitterness is the next realization I recognize, squeaking out my words, but am I bitter? I think I would have to admit that I am. Silly huh? What kind of unrealistic expectations do I have for people to travel with noble ideas of enriching their own lives instead of putting their egos on display? Didn’t I once want my own ego to shine through? Actually, no. There was no platform in the 1970s through the late 1990s that would allow the average person to put their vacuous experiences and fashion choices on display to build a cult of personality around. Well, there was, but not everyone got to be a rock star or famous actor.

I suppose that, to an extent, what I’m complaining about is a nascent change in an economy where social media allows participants to create new avenues of value while I remain on the sideline without the mindset that would allow me to benefit financially from my own exploits.

Well, this went off the rails of the original intent of writing about what we’d be doing once we landed in Europe to live there instead of just visiting. Such is the nature of the old man’s mind grabbing at straws to make sense of the world where NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are driving the price of crypto-art to levels that are making millions for their creators. Maybe I should just focus on the travel planning?

Where Might We Go?

Nomads across Europe

*** Yes, this is one super long wall of text, but in it is my sketch of a 1-year journey living and working across continental Europe. Should you invest the time to read this lengthy entry, you might learn something about how inexpensive such an opportunity would really be. Of course, tourist visas could present certain issues, but if you can get past that (such as being married to a German), you might be able to explore an angle on traveling you never thought affordable. 

So, beyond the obvious need for love, I also require food, sleep, and shelter, the essentials that we humans require. Beyond that, it’s all luxury. Being fortunate enough to explore a life of incredible circumstances in a world of so much suffering is beyond my ability to comprehend, but here I am at the cusp of turning 58 years old. Caroline and I are seriously entertaining the idea of taking this remote working gig on the road to join the world of Digital Nomads.

As you’ll hopefully have read in the previous blog entry, I’m disillusioned with the price of moving somewhere else in the United States. While we’d thought for a long time that we’d retire in Oregon near the coast, we’ve been priced out of that potentiality. Researching costs for near-coastal lodging, aside from being there for a limited amount of time on vacation, something became abundantly apparent: we could better afford to become wanderers across the European landscape.

But then the really hard part of this equation strikes my mind: Where to start and where to go from that point? If we considered a month per city, choosing 12 locations is no easy feat until I consider a conversation Caroline and I had back in the summer of 2018. We were in Vienna, Austria, falling in love with the city. We spoke of how incredible it would be if we could live here but thought it was likely too expensive. Never in our wildest dreams back then did we think it would actually be possible. The next best thing to putting down long-term roots would be to spend an entire month in this beautiful historic city. Sure, we could stay longer, but why not see more?

How would this all work? It’s 4:00 p.m. in Europe when 8:00 in the morning rolls around in Arizona. Caroline could be available Monday through Friday from 4:00 p.m. until midnight, allowing her to have plenty of face time with her coworkers. We’d be able to sleep until roughly 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning Central European Time and have the first 7 or 8 hours of the day exploring our environs.

Logistically, there would be a lot of preplanning, so once in Europe, we could hit the ground running and fall right into getting to work. Many of our belongings would have to be placed in storage, while we would be carrying only the essentials. Effectively, this would be a long river trip with us camping along the trail, so to speak.

Part of the planning is booking places to stay over a year in advance in order to be as mindless as possible once underway. I already know that there will be a certain amount of regret that instead of staying in one place, we could have stayed in this much more scenic place, but such is the price of making up your mind and enjoying yourself with where you are. Initially, I thought I’d run us ragged with taking off for three weekends per month and only dedicating Monday through Friday in each of our locations, but the more I thought about it, I realized we enjoy nesting, so hanging out at least two weekends would be important. Dwelling further into the possibilities, I think we’ll aim for one Friday a month of vacation time so we could leave that morning for a more relaxed three-day weekend once a month where we return Monday afternoon.

By the way, we will not rent a car during this year, unless we need one for a particular opportunity. Apart from that, we are doing all of our travels by train. This just makes a lot of economic sense. Consider a train ride from Bordeaux, France, down to Bayonne. By car, it would take nearly three hours, while the train would have us there in just under two hours. First-class roundtrip tickets leaving on a Friday morning and returning on Monday afternoon would cost us only $23 each. I’ll go further into these economics later.

John Wise and Caroline Wise in Vienna, Austria

Okay, back to Vienna (by the way, that’s us in Vienna a couple of years ago). Well, actually, we need to get down there first. Travel from Frankfurt, Germany, to Vienna on the high-speed ICE only takes 6.5 hours and costs $60 each in 1st class. Check into our apartment, which is looking to cost about $1,140 for four weeks. On our previous visit, we didn’t have enough time to head over the Danube to Bratislava, Slovakia; we’ll fix that with a long weekend over there via a short 1-hour train ride costing $27 each for the roundtrip. We’ll also need to pay a visit to the Vienna Woods with a train ride out to Baden bei Wien before grabbing a couple of bikes to ride into the hills to see the Cistercian Abbey Stift Heiligenkreuz aka Abbey of the Holy Cross. We’ll leave Vienna via train for a 4.25-hour journey west; the cost of this next long haul is $82 for 1st class.

We are staying in German-speaking Austria (one of my wife’s favorite dialects) a bit longer as we head west into Innsbruck, where I’m finding rentals for an average of $1,404 a month. This begins a 56-day stay in the mountains. In one iteration of my planning, I thought we’d go from Vienna deeper into Italy right away, but the train ride was quite lengthy, so why not break it up? First up is obviously Innsbruck, and then 111 miles south, but still in the Alps, we’ll pull into our next location. While in Innsbruck, we’ll take a 16km roundtrip walk over to Hall in Tirol. Our long weekend will involve a dramatic train ride through the mountains up to Mittenwald, Germany, for a $24 roundtrip. Finally, we’ll try to squeeze in a weekend visit to Kufstein, Austria, which is an hour east and costs $44 each for a roundtrip. The train to our next destination requires a 2.5-hour ride deeper into the mountains, costing $70 each.

Trento, Italy, sits high in the Alps on the Adige River at the western end of the Dolomites. Getting out for a hike in the mountains might be a chore, but we have plenty of time to plan things and figure out the bus schedules. While in the area, I have a short weekend trip down to Brescia on the itinerary that’ll cost $38 for the train down. While researching some of these details, I came across a blogger who wrote of his full-day train ride from Trento down to Lecce near the bottom of the boot of Italy. While a 14-hour train ride sounds a bit excessive, we’ll be traveling the length of the eastern coast of Italy, and Lecce itself is an amazing-looking place. Roundtrip tickets are as little as $82, while 1st class tickets are $222 each! Our stay in Trento might be one of the more expensive at an average of $1,468 for the month based on the places I’m considering.

Regarding rental costs on this trip around Europe, consider this: our apartment in Phoenix, Arizona, costs us $1,032 per month. Water, trash, and electricity add $232 per month, while the internet costs $56. So, each month, we pay $1,320 to live 20 miles north of downtown. If we were living in Scottsdale, that cost would be easily doubled, and even then, we may not be near a place with many amenities. Now that $1,468 doesn’t look all that expensive when you see that I’m looking at staying in central old town areas whenever possible, and that price includes water, electricity, and internet, plus we won’t need a car. Also of note, almost every “home base” along this journey is for 28 days, as that’s the point where hosts on Airbnb start to offer big discounts! After doing all of my calculations, I’ve come up with an average monthly European rent of $1,417, which is $97 a month more than our current rent in a cultural wasteland.

Florence, Italy, a historic city of the Renaissance, here we come. Our ride in from the north will have taken 8.5 hours via Bologna but only costs $46 each. With so much to see and do here, we would likely only spend one long weekend away over in nearby Pisa. But should we feel comfortable with the pace of taking in Florence, we might head into Siena for a weekend, since after recently finishing the book “SPQR” by Mary Beard, it might be interesting to see the statue of the Capitoline Wolf, which is also the symbol of the town along with the wallop of other historical treasures. A day trip over to the town of Montecatini Terme (where Christian Dior died sounds intriguing too, but to be honest, the Terme di Montecatini (thermal baths) might be more interesting with their morning “Hydropinic” Therapy session for only €15.00 each. Don’t try finding a definition of “Hydropinic,” it’s not easy to find and seems specific to Italian; it means; water is to be imbibed at specific temperatures, pace, and times. Lodging for our 28 days of Tuscan indulgence will cost us about $1,330, maybe less.

Turin Italy Travel Map

Turin will be where we conclude our 84-day/11-city journey in Italy before moving on to our next country. Piazza Carlo Alberto will be our first stop here as it was the place in which Friedrich Nietzsche collapsed back on January 3, 1889, at the age of 44, just as he left 6 Via Carlo Alberto where he was living. If we are truly lucky, we’ll take in a performance of Bizet’s Carmen at the opera or Teatro Regio di Torino, while just one street over on Via Po, we’ll be sure to try the gelato. Both were favorites of Nietzsche. To stay in the same area where this famous German philosopher once lived will cost us about $1,100 for the month. I’m certain we’ll spend an equal amount on gelato. While in Turin, I’ve penciled in a 3-day weekend in Ivrea via a 48-minute train ride for $16 roundtrip, a weekend in Susa via a 68-minute train ride for $14 each roundtrip, and a day trip over to Chieri, which takes a quick 20 minutes for only $6 roundtrip. I almost forgot, the train between Florence and Turin takes about 3 hours and costs $104 in 1st class or $78 in 2nd class; this includes Wi-Fi that strangely costs 1 cent per 24 hours while on board.

Annecy, France, between Grenoble to the south and Geneva, Switzerland, to the north, is where we are spending month six. Our apartment should cost somewhere around $1,313 for the month. To travel between Turin and Annecy, we will board a TGV in 1st class for only $63 each. With two weekends available, maybe we’ll take one of them up in Geneva and the other down in Chambéry. A day trip over to Chamonix to see Mont Blanc would give us 13 hours in town for only $13 roundtrip via train.

You might notice that I’m going into a high level of detail regarding this year-long itinerary; well, what you are seeing is my travel planning. Normally, I’d be populating all these elements into a spreadsheet so I could print them out later, but instead, I’m writing up the plan here in my WordPress editor as I go. At some point, I’ll transfer all of this to a document that can be organized, which also means it might change here and there as we approach our departure date which at this time is tentatively scheduled for April 2022. Those changes could involve a change of cities due to fluctuating rental prices, but we’d still try to stay in the same general area due to other destinations on our clockwise journey around Europe.

Who doesn’t want to go to Aix-en-Provence, France? Before you even get to the end of this blog entry, I’ll go ahead and share now, our total time in France during this year will amount to 154 days. You might think that being down here in the Côte d’Azur, we’d head over to Saint-Tropez. Nope, not this trip, as this is also about the routine around working, not an extended vacation. Plus, the train doesn’t go there. The train does go to Arles, which would make for a great 3-day weekend in my eyes, and for $42 each of us roundtrip for the 2-hour trek, we’re on it. Also in Arles is a National Park called Camargue where we can go flamingo watching and maybe see the world-famous Camargue horses. A weekend trip over to Avignon takes only 20 minutes to get there on the TGV, and 1st class train fare is $29 roundtrip each. An interesting day trip could be had at the fishing village of La Ciotat, an hour south on the coast; for a roundtrip fare of less than $30 each, we could have breakfast and lunch on the sea and be back home in Aix-en-Provence for work and dinner. An apartment for the month for us would be about $1,250. The train that brought us here from Annecy will have taken 4 hours and cost $45 each in 1st class.

Albi France Google View

Toulouse, France, is an exception to how long we’ll stay in each location; we are here for only two weeks as we adjust our calendar to make room for a special date in December. No big price break for 14-day stays, so we’ll be putting down about $792, but at only $56 a night, that doesn’t feel bad at all. As for our train ride from Provence to Toulouse, that requires approximately 4.5 hours and costs $29 each in 1st class with free Wi-Fi. The one weekend we have in the region will see us traveling to Albi (pictured using Google Earth), and if we can squeeze in a day trip, it could be over to Gaillac, 45 minutes away by train.

Bordeaux, France, in the Aquitaine region, is next up. The 1st class train travel costs $18 each and speeds us over to Bordeaux in a quick 2 hours. While we are here in the famous wine region known around the world, it is not the biggest draw for us. Alcohol never is; history for Caroline and me holds the appeal. Like in all the cities we are calling home for a month, we’ll need to make some travel arrangements so we don’t get bored and Bordeaux is no different. Our 3-day long weekend is pegged for visiting Limoges, our shorter 2-day weekend trip is to Bayonne, and Libourne is under consideration for a day trip. The adventure in Limoges from Friday morning to late afternoon Monday is handled by train as usual and costs $68 each. Bayonne is near the Bay of Biscay just north of the Spanish border via a 2-hour train ride for only $23. Finally, the day trip to Libourne. Good thing it’s only 22-minutes away as we can leave on the 7:00 a.m. departure to have breakfast in the old town and still enjoy a solid 8 hours walking around before heading back to Bordeaux on the 3:30 train so Caroline can greet her co-workers who’ll be starting their workday. I’m making a note for us to walk over the bridge crossing the Dordogne River in Libourne and think of John Stuart Mill, who crossed over it back in December 1854; he was the author of On Liberty. The average cost for an apartment in Bordeaux during our stay is about $1,250.

Frankfurt, Germany, for Christmas and New Year’s with our family, will require a 7-hour ride passing through Paris, costing $252 for the two of us in 1st class, traveling first on a TGV and then on an ICE, which is Germany’s highspeed train service. It’s a bit expensive as we are traveling on Sunday. And just then, it occurs to me, why not spend a night in Paris? I know one day is not enough in the City of Light, but you can walk and see many things if you have an entire day. Walking out of the Montparnasse train station towards the Eiffel Tower, over the Seine to the Arc de Triomphe, down Champs Elysees to the Louvre, and back to the train station is only 12km, requiring 2.5 hours, easy peasy. Checked on hotels, and we’ll certainly find something for a night between $100 and $150. Leaving Bordeaux on the TGV in 1st class at 7:00 in the morning has us arriving in Paris by 10:00 a.m. for only $39 each; from there, we need to drop our bags at a hotel until we can check-in. The next day, we’ll leave Paris at 3:20 p.m., arriving in Frankfurt at 7:00 p.m. for only $59 each in 1st class, again with free Wi-Fi.

After our holiday celebrations in Frankfurt, we’ll be heading back to France as we move on to Rennes over in Brittany. Seeing we again have to pass through Paris, why not stop once more for a day in this amazing city? If we leave on the 6:53 out of Frankfurt for only $63 each in 1st class, we’ll arrive in Paris at 11:00 in the morning at Paris Est station, which is a 30-minute walk to the Louvre. There are a ton of hotels for between $80 and $120 right near the train station; maybe we should consider staying in this area for our night in Paris. The next day, we have to leave Paris at 5:00 p.m. for the train bound for Rennes, France, arriving at 6:30 for only $33 each, and again it’s in 1st class. Please note that by breaking up the trip and having these Monday travel days, we only spent $194 each to travel from France to Germany and back to France for a savings of $116, easily paying for at least one of our nights in Paris.

Rennes welcomes us back to our 28-day habit of staying in a location. Having left America just nine months earlier and our 50-to-200-year-old cities, we will be getting our fill of 2,000-year-old places. Rennes is one of those cities that promises to deliver. From medieval architecture to a cathedral and many churches, I’m certain will find something here to charm us. An apartment in the old town looks to cost about $1,310 a month, some cheaper, many more expensive. Over the course of the month, I have three out-of-town destinations planned. The long weekend I’m considering takes us to Dinan ($29 roundtrip by train) about 90 minutes away and just south of Saint-Malo. While Saint-Malo is close, it might be better to visit as a day trip as the train from Rennes is only an hour, and it would appear that visiting on a weekday with good weather would be preferred at this extremely popular and often crowded site. A weekend visit down to Nantes takes about 90 minutes and costs $60 each for the roundtrip, or maybe we bite the bullet and book an expensive room out on Mont Saint Michael.

Giverny-10 by shogunangel

Our tickets should have been reserved long in advance for the 4-hour journey to Rouen, France, in Normandy. At the time I’m writing this, the cost for 1st class travel is $52 each. An apartment in or near the old town is averaging $980. Our long weekend here is a special request from Caroline. We will travel to Bayeux to see the famous tapestry with our own eyes. Roundtrip tickets to Bayeux up near the coast are $62 each, with nice rooms on Airbnb for $60 and up. Our shorter weekend side trip will be to Dieppe for $10 each to travel up to the coast; I make note that we must eat at Café des Tribunaux, where famed artists such as Renoir, Monet, and Flaubert were known to drink and also try the local moules Frites (mussels and fries). If we can carve out time on a Saturday or Sunday, we should take a day trip down to Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny (pictured). It’s only 45 minutes away but has a very limited train service, costing $30 each for the roundtrip. Due to the strange schedule, we will be spending the day between the beautiful village of Vernon and Giverny from 8:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. and can only do so on certain days.

Something about transportation costs to consider: we won’t have a car payment, nor are we renting a car for this year of being nomads. Our train travels, mostly in 1st class, will have cost us approximately $2,950 by this time, add in the tickets for Rouen to Bruges, Belgium, and from there to Groningen, Netherlands, plus our return to Frankfurt, Germany, and the cost of the majority of our train travel will amount to $3,130. Does that sound like a lot? Consider that our 2019 Kia Niro costs us $415 a month, add $60 a month for insurance, and outside of pandemic times, we would typically spend about $120 a month on gas or $7,140 a year for our car, not considering any maintenance. For our $3,000, we’ll have visited seven countries over the course of 365 days and taken in at least 46 cities, big and small, loaded with thousands of years of history. Even calculating the airfare to Germany from Phoenix, Arizona, we’ll still have spent less on travel costs than paying for a car in America.

Hello Bruges, Belgium. Instead of traveling on a Sunday, which has been the routine, we are coming in on Saturday as train prices for Sunday were twice as high. By traveling a day early, we are only paying $74 each, in 1st class, of course. Bruges is going to be the most expensive city we will stay in, with a 28-day cost averaging a whopping $1,750, and goes way up from there. Don’t bother suggesting the outskirts of town, as it’s pricey there too. One weekend, we’ll head over to Kortrijk to visit a Flemish city on the River Leie. Train tickets to Kortrijk are only $25 roundtrip, and the ride takes about an hour each way. Another long weekend will see us off for three days of bicycling around Ghent. Train price is $22 roundtrip for the 20-minute ride while apartments can be had for between $60 and $115. If time allows, maybe we can squeeze in a day trip to the coast over in the Ostende area for a re-visit to the Paul Delvaux Museum, one of Caroline’s and my first dates.

Groningen is our last big 28-day stay. For $49 and a ride across the Belgian and Netherlands landscapes, we’ll enjoy our 6-hour journey across some very flat land. If I thought Bruges was on the costly side, Groningen is coming in at a slightly cheaper $1,725 a month, hardly a savings. Caroline and I have traveled many times from Frankfurt to Belgium and Holland in the past, but not a single visit in over 25 years. This month will see me turning 60 as it will be April of 2023 at this point and so a month of cycling in the Netherlands sounds about perfect. Of course, Amsterdam is appealing, but we’ve been there more than a few times, so it feels like we should be checking out new places as much as possible. One of our two weekends out of the city will take us east into Leeuwarden for a couple of days at about $80 a night, and if we are lucky, maybe we can book a few days in the incredibly popular village of Giethoorn for between $90 and $150 a night. The train from Groningen to Leeuwarden takes about 30 minutes each way, with a train to Giethoorn having to detour through Leeuwarden to get down to our destination, and costs $55 each for a roundtrip.

Our return to Frankfurt from Groningen is a mere $89 in 1st class, taking 6 hours to get home with an 8:30 a.m. departure, arriving by 2:30 in the afternoon, leaving enough time for us to go get us some Grüne Soße in celebration.

That’s the end of year one. A follow-up blog entry about our walking schedule will be posted as I make progress on it. Maybe you are thinking, who plans their daily walks? Well, take Vienna for example; we have 28 days there, but we also have about five travel days away from the city. With 23 days left over and the desire to revisit sites and museums we’ve rushed through previously, we have to dedicate time to those activities in addition to seeing new corners of Vienna. We have eight possible spurs where the subway runs that we’ll have to choose from to ride to the end station, and from there, we walk back. This is fairly easy as we are only looking at between 8km to 14km per leg or 5 to 9 miles. This has to be done for all 12 cities, and where we can add bicycles or kayaking to the mix, I have that to figure out, too. Did I share that there are at least a dozen tram lines in Vienna that might have interesting destinations, too, along with a number of dedicated bike paths from the city out into the surrounding nature? And what about a cooking class or two? Which triggers my thinking about must-try dishes in each location. It’s endless.

One year through Germany

This is the map of our encore year where instead of settling down, we’d roam Germany’s corners with 12 destinations that would allow us to explore the far reaches outside of where Caroline grew up in Frankfurt. Of course, none of this is cut in stone, and maybe it all has to wait until we are actually retired, but if you don’t dream of what comes next, nothing will arrive.

Selway River

Selway River in Idaho

Odds are seriously good that next summer, for a short 5-days, Caroline and I will be out on this river. This is the Selway up in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. From Hamilton, Montana, where our group meets up, we’ll have an 82-mile (132km) drive to the Paradise Campground in Idaho, where we’ll get on the river. With Europe looking like a no-go for 2021, we are opting to get uncomfortable once again having to deal with some Class IV rapids. With 1,127 miles (1,813km) to drive to get up that way, it would be a shame to spend two days driving up and two days driving back, so we’ll consider leaving ten days early for some camping and hiking to get into the rhythm of being in wild nature before we put-in on the river. We considered Yellowstone for about 2 seconds until we thought about the summer crowds, and anyway, we’ll be in the vicinity of the Sawtooth, Salmon-Challis, Payette, Lolo, and Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests before heading into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness so we should be able to find some interesting lands to explore. On the other hand, we could opt for a crazy road trip heading up through eastern Nevada, across the southwest corner of Idaho, into Oregon, up through the middle of Washington to Prince George, British Columbia, in Canada before continuing for another 1,400 miles to Dawson City in the Yukon up near the Alaska border. This trip would cover 3,300 miles (4,400km) each way, but here in my late 50s, the idea of a 6,600 mile (10,600km) road trip sounds difficult, but then again, it won’t get any easier as we get older, so maybe we should tackle something like this while we can?

We have a little less than six months before we leave, so there’s plenty of time to mull things over, but this will be tough as the options grow as I write this. I just discovered that we could catch a ferry bringing our car onboard and heading up the Inside Passage of Alaska to Skagway before continuing up to Whitehorse and then heading south to our white water adventure. I’ve got some research ahead of me.

Update: This trip never happened as family obligations in Germany shifted all of our plans in 2021.

The Surrealism Of It All

Sunrise on Highway 138 in California

The act of going on vacation, which I termed Remote Self-Isolation, was fraught with tensions due to the escalating outbreaks and fears that with the colder weather and holiday season that pulls families together, America would experience a massive uptick in COVID-19 infections. For the month prior to our departure, I was never sure if our road trip to the Oregon coast was going to take place. Travel restrictions, lodging cancellations, or lock-down orders were never far from my mind.

When we finally started moving west towards the California border, each mile felt extraordinary because we were actually traveling for pleasure during a pandemic. It felt counter-intuitive. We made it to Fresno, California, over 600 miles from home, back on the first day. I was still incredulous that we’d be allowed to take a room in a hotel, as though we’d be questioned about our travel intents. Maybe if our reason for being on the road wasn’t strong enough, we’d be denied lodging and so I was prepared with some concocted nonsense story just in case we were questioned. That story was never well thought out as I know it wasn’t reasonable that we’d be asked anything as truckers and people moving homes had continued traveling the whole time, but that’s where nine months of self-isolation had put a part of my brain.

Entering Oregon, the place was at once familiar and, at the same time, different. Traffic was lighter; that was probably the first thing you would notice. Restaurants were closed or had prominent signs up telling passers-by that they were still doing takeout or food to go. Sure, we’d known this from our bubble in Phoenix. but this was the distant coast, and for some reason, it felt abruptly different. All the same, this was vacation, and if it only lasted a day or two, we’d try to extract all we could from this opportunity to be out. Staying at locations longer, intentionally booking places with kitchens so we could prepare the majority of our meals to choosing our lodgings, considering that we’d be effectively sheltering in place, so we’d better be prepared to entertain ourselves. While it seemed absurd that we should be doing this during a pandemic, things went smashingly well.

But then it all goes and gets wrapped in the punctuation of surrealism as, about 100 miles from home, our car, with us in it, was hit by someone with no interest in dealing with slowing down and confronting what they had just done. We were already traveling at about 75 – 80 mph when a car came out of nowhere and drifted into our lane doing about 100 mph. That car collided with us (or gently bumped us, I suppose) as they quickly recovered and took off even faster while we continued miraculously forward. It took a second for us to wrap our shocked minds around what had just occurred and catapulted us into adrenalized emotional shock. I hit the gas as our car seemed okay to give chase and try to record the license plate. However, that was futile because the other driver was adamant that today was not the day to swap insurance info. I hit 95 mph and started to realize the other person was not, in fact, going to pull over, so I called 911. I learned for the first time that just talking to the phone in my pocket with, “Okay, Google, call 911,” worked to call some 911 network that quickly transferred me to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, our version of the Highway Patrol. At this point, when I started explaining what happened and what we knew about the other driver, it started to really dawn on me that we’d been in an accident. Emotions started to seep in, and I knew the chase was over and that we needed to pull over; the car was in some state of post-crash status, and me getting wrecked, too, now.

Hit and run of our Kia in the Arizona Desert

We pulled off at Exit 81, the Salome Road offramp. Stepping out of the car we couldn’t fathom how little damage there was to the car, considering how the cars collided.

The DPS officer showed up about an hour after the initial call; we made our report and drove home. The time between was good for the two of us, as it allowed the panic to subside and a sense of normal to return. Getting home, we went through the routine of starting laundry, draining the ice chest, putting stuff away, etc. We’d been home a few hours by the time the last effects of the shock were subsiding. It was then that the whole thing truly seemed unreal, “Had we really been the victims of a hit-and-run accident just before lunch today?” We’d just finished nearly three weeks of travels during what amounts to a plague with people masked up, hurt, and in fear. Food from restaurants is taken home or eaten right in the car in a parking lot. Marijuana can be delivered or picked up in the drive-thru. Limits on how many people are allowed in businesses are in effect, and in some cases, you are greeted outdoors when a person in gloves and a mask comes out to ask what you want to buy. We rarely spoke to anyone, and checking into our lodgings, we never saw anyone other than the couple of times we stayed at hotels. The surrealism of it all was astonishing.

Now stop and think about just how strange the entire phenomenon of traveling is as you course over the surface of the earth at 80 mph. Or maybe you are aloft in the sky, 5 miles over the roads and sea, speeding along at 575 mph before arriving at your destination. A room awaits you with the amenities you desire, most likely with heating and air-conditioning, don’t forget the TV and wifi, but if you are renting a house, you can expect the number of bedrooms you reserved along with a kitchen stocked with the utensils and instruments you are likely familiar with at home. You are at this new location with your smartphone at your disposal, so you start live streaming right away to a friend or relative, possibly thousands of miles away, sharing in your amazement.

We take things for granted, we define our normal by what we are currently doing and we rarely stop to reflect on how peculiar it all is. In some way, we are all playing in madness by doing what we do, unaware of how random it is that we try to create patterns of behavior out of the chaos of any number of directions our lives could be lived. We’ve recently been witnessing a political apparatus in Washington D.C. consume itself with the rationalization that, because things were being done the way they were, that must be the way they need to be in order for things to work. Confronted with a pandemic, we strangely throw our hands up and feign ignorance about what we should be doing when to this lay-person it was obvious that we needed to “Stop, drop and roll,” metaphorically speaking.

In the last few weeks, we ventured out to try and capture a small part of our former normal: vacationing in Oregon. An ongoing pandemic hinted this was insane, but we could justify it by explaining that our current normal had grown stale and that we needed a break from the routine. We’d driven Interstate 10, possibly hundreds of times by now. Our normal was simply driving it; this time, reality crashed into us, reminding Caroline and me that the two bipeds in the steel cage were moving 26 times our normal walking speed while a virus that doesn’t know borders was potentially present in places our eyesight doesn’t have the capability to see. How crazy is all this?

Our limited senses need the occasional reboot, and 2020 is certainly a year where slowly everyone on our planet is getting it that life has variables that are not always predictable. Relative stability has been a luxury for many in the West since the end of World War II, but prior to that, humanity was living every year in 2020.

All of this begs the question, “Why are we not striving to do our best at making life more meaningful and equipping each other with knowledge and tools to have better lives?”

The only answer I’ve been able to come up with is that a downtrodden class of people, unable to question their circumstances, are being led by a ruling class of the privileged, afraid to ask many questions or alter paradigms out of fear of losing their wealthy positions. We are stuck in a primitive situation unable to budge from our Stone Age roots. Yeah, I know that calling us Stone Age is a bit dramatic, so maybe readers would prefer I reference that we are closer to our Bronze Age ancestors. But why would I be so condescending when humanity has made such incredible technological strides?

A subset of humanity has made those inventions, building upon advancements discovered by an even smaller group of highly intelligent creators. While many have benefited from the dispersion of tools of convenience and shelter offered to the masses, we individuals are further out of touch with life survival skills, personal sustainability skills, or even interests not ordained by mass culture that is actually created by a very small population of literate and technologically adept individuals. The average person cannot farm, make cloth, build a home, treat a wound, hunt, fish, write coherently, read at a respectable level, and most importantly, think.

Big claim, huh? If we are thinking creatures, then why is the misery bestowed upon so many? In my own way, I try to think about many things, many esoteric things that don’t impact my own life such as where do newts sleep. Are human networking topologies too rigid, will I ever really understand Gilles Deleuze, and does my knowledge of our environment offer me any insight I could share and inspire someone here on this blog with? In that thinking, I find it repugnant that we have “leaders” who are not, in fact, leaders. Former President Obama nor current President Trump ever took Caroline and me to Oregon or Europe; neither of them is responsible for our passports or our curiosity about places and cultures that inspire our imaginations. They only tend to be distractions for some and maybe attempt for the general betterment of society as a whole, but it is ultimately up to the population at large to want those changes. When a large segment of the population is in fear due to their Stone Age intellect and lack of ability to harness today’s tools, they slip further back into a type of primitivism that is so out of step with where we should be as a society. This begins to appear surrealistic. We are becoming the warped characters and distortions found on the artist’s canvas while not recognizing our role on this stage of absurdity. Collectively, we are the shadow figures on a cave wall, unaware of the others in our proximity. Mentally, we are deficient troglodytes pretending to have a grasp on what any of this is.

Today’s outcome could have been very different. The hit-and-run driver didn’t spin us around, didn’t push us off the road into the gravel, didn’t rear-end us, or shoot us off the freeway. With both vehicles traveling rapidly, we kissed and parted company. Repairing our car will cost us at least $1000, as that’s our deductible. Strangely, this doesn’t seem so horrible considering what the circumstances could have been, and in the end, it offers me something to think about and share nearly 2,000 words inspired by it.

But there’s a larger question that arises out of this episode: At what point in our lives are we shocked by the intellectual equivalent of a hit-and-run driver that leaves us aware that we haven’t recognized our own ignorance speeding along and risking our lives? In being hit, I was jarred by the complacency that I was driving just fine, and while the accident was in no way my fault, it does illuminate that no matter how aware you hope to be, there is always something that comes out of your blindspot and demands you see your limitations. When we come to understand that although we believed we knew how things looked and operated, but are in an instant challenged by our perception of reality, our state of being confounded is what surrealism strove to show us. We don’t really understand all angles, and some things are not as they appear. Do you really know what’s around the corner, or are you just hoping that things will go on as they always have?