SUMMING UP
I leave Poros for Athens on the Blue Star Ferry Saturday morning. Efi won’t let me take the bus and is going to drive me to the port after a great last farewell meal of snails last night.
It is time to sum up my trip so far. I have been on the road for one month and am about to start my second month. I started out by buying a ticket to Athens on a whim. That led, under the influence of Scott’s Cheap Flights and Scott’s book, Take More Vacations, to extending my Athens ticket a month more in Germany, daring to change my unrefundable, unchangeable economy light ticket with Scott’s advice, which led to buying tickets to Barcelona for a month in February and just yesterday extending it to five weeks because Scott said I could, so that I could include a month in Morroco (or somewhere else) with a week in Barcelona. And that led to a six week ticket to Paris (free since I am finally using travel rewards points I didn’t know I had) in April and May. All the time I was going farther and farther out on a limb without knowing if actually traveling like this would be fun or not. What if I discovered that I was getting cold feet through sensing that I was running out of money or that I was feeling lonely and I suddenly was searching for a way to get off the limb without breaking the bank or revealing my vulnerabilty, to mix a few metaphors. What, after buying all these tickets, I wouldn’t be willing to use them?
So I am ready now to report on the first month of travel.
1. Safety. I talked myself into thinking that I would be just as safe from Covid and thieves in Greece as I would be in Swannanoa. And now I can report that this is true. I will be careful in big tourist cities but here in Efi’s rooms and in Winsen I will be with people in their comfortable surroundings who don’t feel any fear at all about Covid or being robbed. I feel completely secure. In Sri Lanka during all the times I visited with students when there was a civil war going on and bombs going off, I felt the greatest danger was getting into a traffic accident and not a random untargeted bomb. I was right. The biggest danger here is falling down the steps and landing on my head. I can avoid that by moving slowly. People are masking up here more than in Madison County and I am safer here.
2. Expenses. The temptation in a new exotic place is to eat out, spend money and do the once in a lifetime thing. Visitors to Asheville feel that way and Asheville is raking it in these days. But by staying a month in a place that yearning to do exotic things begins to wear off. I’ve lost interest in eating at fancy places and find it easier to buy inexpensive but delicious carry out food or to cook for myself or to eat where locals who need a quick cheap meal eat. I think I can eat on about $10 a day, which is about what I do in Swannanoa. And since I can only have 18 pounds of baggage I can’t buy anything tangible. My biggest entertainment cost is continuing to buy $2 or $3 books on Amazon Kindle, which I also do when in Swannanoa. I carry dozens of bookshelves of books along with me along with a huge library of magazines and music. And I am saving money by suspending Wifi and streaming television at home.
I have also begun to pay attention to credit card offers and have used travel rewards points for the Paris trip, have enough Amtrak points for a $95 yearly fee to travel all summer, and am about to get enough Amex Delta points at no cost to make a trip to Europe in the fall, if everyone keeps their promises. So I am cutting the cost of getting to places and have discovered that inexpensive Airbnb’s with people like Efi and Wolfgang can be great fun, even in an expensive place, which gives me some hope for April in Paris. All of this depends upon staying a month in a place and not making side trips.
3. Loneliness. Traveling is more fun when traveling with someone else. I learned that long ago and on almost every trip over the years I’ve been with a group of students, or middle aged travelers, and for the last 15 years with Susie and Todd. So I wondered if being by myself in Paros for a month would make me feel lonely and homesick.
But it turns out that I am not alone. First Susie was here and by the time she left I was friends with Efi and Wolfgang. This morning we exchanged Viber contacts so we can stay in touch. But in addition, every day I talk with Susie on Facetime and I’ve talked with my son, Tom, again and again and to my brother Richard. But I’ve also discovered that I like writing letters to people who make me feel alive by their presence when I am writing to them. And in addition to that, I find that writing these daily accounts of my trip like this one gives me the feeling of being in the presence of people that I care about. I don’t want tens of likes or thousands of views, I simply like feeling connected to people I like by sharing my trip with them. They, you, are in my presence and I am in theirs, yours, at least from my perspective. Writing a daily account puts me in the presence of people I care about daily whether they know it or not or even read what I write. The daily report is a way of avoiding loneliness completely. And I can do this without pushing anyone to respond, which is a relief, although I do like email responses. It is a solitary occupation that for me isn’t solitary at all. I am traveling every morning with a host of people. I didn’t foresee this. I thought I was keeping people who are anxious about me informed, but have discovered that once I vanished from sight no one was anxious about me at all. I was forgotten. Instead, what has happened is that the feeling of being alone has vanished with the sharing of my trip. I am not alone, so I can never be lonely. In fact, I was more alone in Swannanoa than I am here. And that means that I don’t have to worry about being lonely in Barcelona or Morocco or wherever I go in February, or Paris. So I am having the best of both possibilities, I have a great time when someone physically travels with me, as Susie has done and will do, and anyone else who wants to come along, and I have a great time when friends are here vicariously, whether they are actually paying attention to me or not. So thanks to anyone reading this and anyone not reading this for being an audience.
4. Baggage. There are all kinds of baggage which you bring along on a trip, almost like the teddy bear a child sleeps with every night, weighable and unweighabler. I fretted about that constantly before the trip, weighing and reweighing my stuff as I tried to stay below the 18 pound limit. And what I have discovered is what every traveler discovers, that even what I brought was too much and that I could have left another five pounds behind. Most of what I am bringing along that matters to me is virtual, in the cloud or on a device, photographs, letters, stories. It is very easy to get along with one change of clothes even if you are traveling in two climates, Greece and Germany, as I am. I did forget a few small things which Susie will bring me next week, but I am also leaving just as much behind in Paros, toiletries and an itchy, tight shirt (tighter because of Efi’s constant feeding). And I will send back even more with Susie from Germany. It is not so much that I needed things, it is that it is so hard to let go of things that you actually don’t need which for me is a whole house full of stuff. The dislocation of travel makes you rethink or refeel everything. It is a little like entering a monastery must be. You find out what really matters.
One of the things I have left behind is sports and news. The World Series is going on without my caring, the shrill cry of Democrats to be involved and fight the good fight falls on deaf ears, American politics is suddenly no more crucial than Greek politics, which seems irrelevant, or German politics or Indian politics. All of these forms of combat seem to be simply a way of using up testosterone, a way of energizing people, a form of tribal warfare. It is a relief to leave sports and politics behind although I admit being seduced at times by Apple News and the teeter tottering that Biden is doing.
Leaving all these forms of baggage behind gives me a sense of freedom.
So that is my report after a month. Everything is fine and I am having a great time, although for unexpected reasons. My only concern now is what I will write about when I get back to Swannanoa. But I don’t think I should worry about that either. The greatest culture shock I have felt in my life has been in fitting back into the conventions of the United States of America. And I expect it will be no different this time. I will have a couple of months to write about the culture shock of returning to America after which I will be off to Barcelona with as little baggage as possible and somewhere else to write about.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 