When I returned from Ireland in 2012, I wrote a series of posts titled "Travel Lessons," touching on topics like living with less and letting go of control (all of which were posted to
my old blog here if you are interested). These posts aimed at sorting through the many thoughts I had while living and traveling abroad for eight months, and I probably could still come up with a half dozen more posts that I didn't even touch on in that series.
Traveling with my family this September was a much different, shorter experience, but I had no lack of thoughts about this trip. Rather than creating a series, I'm going to use this post to collect my random snippets and memories, much in the style of my Five Thoughts blog posts.
I had a wonderful time on this trip, and I'm am so grateful that my parents wanted to bring us along. We'd talked about going to Europe together since my brother and I each finished grad school, but now—something like six years later—was the first time we could coordinate our schedules. It was a rare and special experience, and I know I will enjoy the memories and the photos/videos for a long time.
I do have several reflections and lessons from the trip, though I worry that some of my thoughts might be construed by others as negative, overly critical, or being ungrateful. That's
really not the case—I'm a thinker, and I can't help but reflect on what I learned about myself and how my future travels might be shaped by this experience. A large part of travel is learning about yourself and growing, and writing through the highlights and challenges is a way for me to do that.
At this point in our travel lives, Mark and I have tried just about every style of trip there is. In Italy and Switzerland, we self-booked an ambitious city-hopping trip where we spend a day or two in each spot before jumping on a train to the next city. We've spent quick weekends in Edinburgh and Paris. We parked ourselves in an apartment in Barcelona for an entire week. We had a month-long stretch in Ireland where we road-trip to a different location every weekend. With Costa Rica, we purchased a flexible, non-group tour package that let us pick our hotels and duration of stay in several cities and arranged transportation for us. We have stayed in B&Bs, Airbnbs, hotels, hostels, apartments, and crashed with friends. We've even hosted couchsurfers, though we never tried it ourselves.
With this trip, my parents wanted the five of us to have little to worry about, so they used a travel agent to book a group motor coach-style tour. There was a set travel itinerary starting in Vienna, Austria, and ending in Lucerne, Switzerland. In between, everything was taken care of, from our hotels to our transportation to several of our meals. There were about 45 people on the tour, and the average age was probably 65-70; Mark, my brother, and I were affectionately referred to by our guide as her kids.
This was Mark's first time on a tour, and while I've never done a proper motor coach tour, I did a 2-week study-abroad program back in college with 25 people where we traveled as a group through Western Europe. Setting the age difference aside, these two tours were quite similar, sometimes surprisingly so.
It drove me effin'
crazy on my college trip that so many of my classmates looked for signs of America in Europe: cheering when they spotted Wal-mart from the train, going out to the "American bars" in the evenings, singing along (loudly, of course) when they heard a Top 40 song in a restaurant. It goes without saying that I tried to separate myself from the group whenever possible.
So, on this trip, when the older couples seated both in front of us and behind us on the bus separately declared that they'd gone to McDonald's for dinner—in a large Swiss city no less—because they "couldn't find anything they wanted to eat," I first wanted to cry, and then to laugh. Ten years since my last trip and a forty-year difference in the ages of the groups, and I was still traveling with people reluctant to leave their comfort zones and embrace the experience of other cultures.
But what has changed in 10 years is my method of reacting to these kinds of situations. It took a bit of yogic strength, but I reminded myself that
their experience is not
my experience. I may not understand their choices, but I was already out there butchering the German language trying to order
ein Speckkuchen, bitte from a food vendor in the train station. I'm not making the choice to eat at McDonald's and Starbucks or shopping at H&M when there are two locations within 10 miles of my condo back at home. My way is not superior, it is just the right way to travel
for me.
***
One of my favorite moments was while we were in Vienna. Mark and I managed
to escape the group for the afternoon, and I dragged Mark to the
Austrian National Library to visit the State Hall. I think I first saw
it on one of those "20 Most Beautiful Libraries" kind of lists. After
crying at the sight of
Trinity College's library in Dublin, I decided to
make it an official unofficial quest of mine to seek out beautiful
libraries on my travels. The State Hall did not disappoint. I wasn't
moved to tears this time, but I was utterly enchanted and felt like I
was in
Belle's library from Beauty & the Beast.
After
the library, we crossed the street and popped into a traditional Viennese cafe whose name
now escapes me. The Julius Meinl logo on their awnings drew me in, as
that is one of my favorite coffee brands at home that just happens to be
headquartered in Vienna. And when in Vienna...
The cafe had a single velvet-lined bench running the length of one wall, following the recessed window notches to create little booths. The floral pattern on the red velvet fabric had been worn down to pale, shiny rounds, the imprint of the thousands of people that sat there having their cafe melange and strudel. The rest of the cafe was filled with marble-topped tables, black wicker chairs, and tall glass cabinets full of pastries.
As we were having our coffee and snacks, it occurred to me that the cafe looked quite similar to the cafe where Jesse and Celine spent their late-night hours talking in Before Sunrise. When I mentioned it, we both looked at each other and said, "Wait, did Before Sunrise take place in Vienna?!" (Yes, yes it did.) Later Googling revealed that we were not in the same cafe as Jesse and Celine, but the atmosphere was so similar. Mark then told me he wishes we would have realized earlier that Before Sunrise was set in Vienna because he would have encouraged us to spend a late night evening roaming the streets and talking. Did I marry a romantic or what? For the record, he's far more romantic than me :)
***
Returning to the topic of group motor-coach tours, this trip reminded me how much of a highly-sensitive introvert I am. The nature of the tour meant that at least half of my day was spent with 45 people, either on the bus or touring around a city together, not to mention all the other tourists and citizens in the cities. I have no trouble managing that for a few days, but 12 days straight of making small-talk, exploring, constantly seeing new things, navigating unfamiliar places, attempting to speak a different language, and jumping to the next place every two days WORE ME OUT. I felt it more on this trip than any of our others; I had to take 72 hours of total silence when I got home to recover. I could tell it was affecting Mark too (a fellow introvert); my family and I would often catch him staring off into space at dinner, lost in his internal world somewhere.
I personally get choice-fatigue when I travel: Which way to go? What to do? Where to eat? What to eat? What's next? I love it, but it's exhausting, and this trip was particularly fast paced. I ended up appreciating the group dinners included in the tour for no other reason than I didn't have to think about it. I knew where to go and was given a choice between two meal options. I can deal with either/or scenarios.
But I don't think it was the people or the constant choices that affected me the most; it was the lack of time and solitude to reflect upon my experiences. I wasn't able to open my journal once while we were on the road. I'm so grateful that Mark and I had our afternoon in that cafe in Vienna, and that we spent much of our last day of the trip sitting on a bench on Lake Lucerne. It makes me think about a blog post I read recently (I'm sad to say I don't remember which blog) that described how the best bits of travel are sometimes the simplest moments, likes slowly sipping a cafe au lait at a sidewalk cafe in Paris while people-watching, not seeing the Eiffel tower or the Mona Lisa. I wrote about similar feelings in
this post. The fact is that the scheduled nature of a bus tour doesn't leave as much time for quiet, reflective moments like that.
Now that Mark and I have done so many different kinds of trips, I've determined that my favorite kind is probably what we did in Costa Rica, where we booked a package but got to select our own hotels and lengths of stay, and the company arranged our transportation for us in small vans with only a few other people at max. We were able to explore on our own, and pick and choose the additional tours and sites we wanted to see in each city. It was a perfect balance of independence and ease.
This bus tour was a great option for us as a family of five traveling together since the majority of the details were taken care of for us, but this style is just too much structure for Mark and me on our own. At the same time, Mark is happy to take trips where he figures out everything on the fly, and that's just not enough planning or structure for me pesonally.
***
There's so many different ways to travel, and the important thing is to just get out there and do it if you have the opportunity and ability to do so. It doesn't have to be an international, country-hopping tour. I've been pondering how so many people put European travel up on a pedestal, and I don't think that's fair. While the culture and history of many other countries is so much older and richer than the United States, there is so much value in domestic travel as well. I love learning and listening to stories about how people in other places live, whether that be another country or just another town nearby—and truth be told, stories are often easier to convey when you share a common language, so I quite enjoy my US-based trips for this reason. I'm truly grateful for however and wherever we get to travel.
***
So those are my excessively rambly thoughts on my recent trip. Part one of my
travel vlog is up on my YouTube channel now, and I hope to have more photos and videos coming soon. If you read this far, thank you :)
