Congo Mask Exhibit at The MIM

JWise Photo of the Day

Congo Mask Exhibition at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Last year, we had hoped to visit the Musical Instrument Museum a few miles from home to take in an exhibit that traveled to the US across history from more than 8,700 miles away. The MIM, as it’s known, was featuring masks and some of the musical instruments that are used by the people of the Congo in Africa. The exhibit was supposed to end many months ago, but due to the pandemic, it was extended well into 2021.

Congo Mask Exhibition at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

As a matter of fact, we were supposed to head out of town this weekend, but Facebook caught my eye with a post from the MIM featuring the face of an old friend I used to work with over 20 years ago. His name is Frank Thompson, but more about him in a minute. We’ve been in the rest of the museum enough times that I didn’t really need to spend our morning in the main exhibit and wanted to linger checking out these artifacts from the Congo. You might recognize part of the instrument above as a finger piano, also known as a Kalimba which is from the Mbira family of instruments originating out of Zimbabwe. This particular piece is called a Kisantchi and was used by the Songye people; it’s made of a thin piece of wood as the foundation for the plucking element, while the gourd acts as a resonator.

Congo Mask Exhibition at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

These are some of the memories I’ve chosen to travel with me towards that day when I will have experienced my last moments as a human being in this form. Should I be so lucky, Caroline and I might one day, 20 years from now, go through some of these blog posts and have the chance to celebrate how fortunate we were to have witnessed these pieces of art with our own eyes, and so I continue to blog and share.

Congo Mask Exhibition at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Short of being able to afford the time and money to visit the Congo for ourselves and arrive just as any particular celebration would be happening for us to see these types of costumes used in their native environment, this is the next best thing.

Caroline Wise at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Let’s get back to Frank Thompson and his project AZ Rhythm Connection. Frank’s here today leading a socially distanced drumming session, and the idea of a group activity after our year mostly isolated had us coming to the MIM and skipping out on a weekend trip that would have taken us up near Sedona or down to Douglas, Arizona. Seeing Frank on a glorious sunny day and having him guide us through some drumming patterns was heartwarming. Caroline and I each had a drum supplied by Frank, as did the other 20 of us for the 11:30 session.

Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona

Everything to this point was perfect. While Caroline visited the gift shop, I dipped into the concert hall in which we have seen approximately 70 acts over the years since the MIM opened. This was the first time in a year of isolation that my emotions of loss hit so hard. I took seat number 10 in the fourth row, where we’ve sat on many occasions, and felt the solitude of a place that should be vibrating with life. While the player piano bleated out some crap renditions of pop standards to a weak accompanying track, I thought about the occasions we’d talked with fellow music enthusiasts seated around us. The spotlight illuminated emptiness that wasn’t to be filled with the gongs of some Gamelan music, the cello of Interpreti  Veneziani, or the modern classical sounds of Kronos Quartet. We’ve experienced Dick Dale here, had our first encounter with the throat singing of Huun-Huur-Tu, and enjoyed the Ukrainian folk music group DakhaBrakha, and the Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali known as Tinariwen.

Today, a bit of life is being had at the Musical Instrument Museum, but what it really shared with us today is how empty the void is. Like the masks in the exhibit, there is nobody behind them, and here in the museum, the general public is largely missing. The music echoes out of the past and might tease our memories, but the vibrancy of those who bring us into the ecstasy of rhythmic celebration is sadly not to be experienced right now. And while this has been true for the entirety of the past year, this was our first occasion to confront this reality with our own senses.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head

JWise Thoughts

Can't Get You Out Of My Head

We recently finished watching the Adam Curtis documentary titled Can’t Get You Out of My Head. We almost quit halfway due to a bunch of perceived loose ends that we feared could not be resolved, but we persevered. The six-part series starts off exploring some coincidences that connect various events in our global history over the past 80 years. If it weren’t for this being a recommendation from a trusted friend, I would have given up. There were moments when it felt that the tangents were too tenuous to ever be stitched together in a meaningful way.

This should not have been said with any hint of certainty because in the eighth hour, it all came together for me, and while I never enjoy reading about spoilers, here I am about to do just that. Of course, I can claim this is for my own edification as the number of people who read these missives is small enough that the random chance that I ruin this series for anyone seems infinitesimally small. With that being said, do not read further if you don’t want my half-witted analysis of the documentary before you watch it for yourself.

Part 1 begins by looking at cultural changes that are unfolding on the post-World War II global stage and how politics and power are shifting with the times. We learn of Jiang Qing, who was Mao Zedong’s wife, and how she wanted to perceive herself in a man’s world and how she would set forces into play that would affect the communist state to this day. As the filmmaker takes us on a journey through the evolving world of China, we learn of Ethel Lillian Voynich, who wrote The Gadfly, which was carried around by millions of youth in the communist block. She was the daughter of George Boole, who gave us Boolean logic regarding her married name of Voynich; she was married to Wilfrid Voynich, owner of the famous eponymous manuscript. What’s happening in the documentary (unbeknownst to me at the time) was the role stories play in moving society.

This is ironic as it was just a few weeks earlier that I learned of Jemma Rowan Deer, Ph.D., who had recently published her first book titled Radical Animism, which talks about the role of storytelling in shaping the narratives that influence the direction of humanity, specifically her desire to inspire others to communicate stories that will help protect the environment. With her endeavor ending up as a textbook, it was priced a bit too high for me to delve into, which was compounded by the fact that this is the author’s first commercial effort. So I wrote her, and to my surprise, she sent me a PDF of the book for free. I’m yet to begin reading it as I’m trying to finish a book about the 17th-century French priest and philosopher Nicolas Malebranche first, but that’s another story.

Continuing with Can’t Get You Out of My Head, the filmmaker in part 2 looks at violence, from both protesters and those in power, to affect social change and how these efforts have proven futile. Part 3 pulls back the veil on how money and conspiracy play their parts. Conspiracy and uncertainty are themes that run throughout the series, so I shouldn’t imply that this is specific to part 3, but it was here that I started feeling this was swinging too deeply into conspiracy, and I considered giving up. What kept me going was the thread Adam Curtis was weaving that kept returning to the dissatisfaction and anxiety permeating societies around the earth.

In part 4, we start looking at the psychology of those who are being controlled by the power of governments and politicians. Let me note that finding complete copies of parts 4, 5, and 6 is currently quite difficult due to content that is in dispute with various copyright holders, and even the edited versions you are likely to find are typically of inferior quality. Now with more than four hours invested in the series, we’d slog through the rest regardless if we get dropped off in utter frustration that the work goes nowhere other than posing some questions after observing a bunch of interesting coincidences.

On to part 5 and a look at the “Lordly Ones,” the controllers in the shadows who enjoy their privilege but are afraid that if the masses understood the exploitation and fear that was dictating their situations, they’d rebel. Society around the world is in decay, and all the consumption and attempts to pacify populations appear to end in failure; maybe computers and artificial intelligence can preserve order.

Systems of information play a large role in part 6. Everyone is telling or selling a story, and we’ll come to understand by the end of the series that humanity cannot entrust the mechanics of order to a select group of corruptible power brokers but that the mass of people has to take a role in creating the stories that might influence better personal outcomes. Flirting with nationalism (due to lack of imagination to see better futures) is the least desirable path and not an inevitable way we must follow, and while Adam Curtis offers a glimmer of hope that we might choose a better direction, the haunting notion of a totalitarian society is lurking right within sight.

So, while not exactly an uplifting 8 hours invested in this bit of entertainment, the idea of storytelling being the central pivot point of what directs humanity certainly resonates with me. This then asks the question, when we continue to fail at creating our own fulfilling vision of life, who do we accept as being our storytellers when we are consumed by a steady offering of horror and fear?

Time, A Recurring Theme

JWise Thoughts

Clock

How do you encounter time?

This morning, Caroline looked for a photo to share with a friend in Germany in a long-neglected old Flickr account we used to maintain; we reveled in the old memories that seemed to fall out of ancient history. It turns out that this look into the past was last updated in 2017, so it is not quite all that ancient. So how did so much time seem to pass in only four years?

It’s all about the experiences we had in the interim. With a pandemic year obscuring just what else was done in those intervening years, I had to check on what’s what. I found that since that last addition to Flickr in March 2017, we’ve been to Oregon 4 times, spending 44 days on the coast. We’ve gone rafting in Alaska for a couple of weeks and flew to Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro for more of the same. Strangely, we only spent a total of a few weeks in California; we used to spend that much time over there per year. We racked up nearly 60 days in Europe. Then there was the visit of our niece Katharina, who spent a few weeks with us before returning to Germany to attend university, and of course, we gave her a grand tour of the Southwest. Not counting trips around Arizona and not being extremely accurate in counting our travel dates, Caroline and I were out and about no less than 172 days over the past 1,400 days.

Add concerts, films, talks, seminars, workshops, books, and such, and I’d like to believe we spent a solid 25% of our time during the past four years exploring novelty. While I wish it had been even more, I recognize from many of my conversations and observations of others that Caroline and I lead active lives and are incredibly fortunate when it comes to being able to dedicate so much time to jumping out of routines.

This then has me asking, how do we experience time at home, watching TV, playing video games, and working compared to reading, exploring the world around us, learning, and playing? As we live on a day-to-day basis, it appears that time disappears as though it wasn’t even experienced. Stuck in routines dominated by work, television, and habituated routines with very little else happening in our lives makes time fly with little to no memory of what has passed. I can’t emphasize enough how detrimental I feel that living in a routine blind to new experiences is to the value we are able to draw from life.

But John, you’ve said all this before. That’s okay, this is one of my mantras, and as I age I never want to lose sight of how important my experiential place on Earth is. My diet, daily walks, writing exercises, and making plans that don’t always pan out are all part of the challenge of remaining in a mindset and modicum of health that I should continue as long as possible to be enchanted by the newness I’m able to explore. This is one of those reminders to myself.

The Good Old Days

JWise Thoughts

Coffee Shop

The good old days are dead and gone; as a matter of fact, they never existed. The days I’ve already lived were just days where I found good and bad and not subject to comparison with some mythical earlier times that were somehow exceptional in such ways that I longed for them. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done things and been places that have blown my mind, but they are not from some idealized time in my life where things were occurring in some such way that would imply a miserable present.

Why is this my topic today? I’m once again in a coffee shop trying to get my writing mojo on because I think that when I step out of my routine at home I’m able to turn on some magical skills that come to me when I’m elsewhere. Well, here I am at the place that is still my favorite nearby java bar, and I’m on the verge of panic, not inspiration. If you are reading this near the day I’m publishing this blog entry, you’ll know we are still in the pandemic days, and at this moment, with me at “my” spot at the counter, there are 11 people in this place without masks forcing me to ask myself, “Why am I here?”

I’m here because somewhere in the back of my mind is the thought that I can visit the good old days. Is this a recurrent theme on my blog? I can’t know without checking previous entries, but I don’t want to be bothered either about how much I repeat myself here. Anyway, I’m not one to want to self-critique during this writing exercise when I should be allowing words to flow. Here, though, is my problem at this moment: flow is difficult in a panic, and when combined with distractions from those who’d like to talk for a minute due to my lengthy absence, I end up elsewhere instead of here on the page.

If this was a routine like it was back in those days, my title references, I would ultimately eke out enough words that I could justify hanging out for hours, but after three hours here today, I’m just now at 370’ish words while remaining in constant vigilance about my distance to others and skeptical of those who are without masks. These are certainly not the good old days, but they are different days, which, in my book, are great days.

Once We’re There or Getting Lost

JWise Thoughts, Travels

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?

JWise Thoughts, Travels

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.