There is always a lot to do before traveling.
You have to make the plans, for one thing. Where will you go? How will you get there? What will you do once you’ve arrived? All those details that make or break a trip.
I’m not good at those details, to be blunt. I tend to get overwhelmed by it all fairly quickly and then throw up my hands and decide that my nice comfortable home is perfectly acceptable and I can continue to live in it just fine. I’m not really much for FOMO and I have never understood the whole idea that you’re obligated to get out of your comfort zone – comfort is a rare and precious thing in this world, and it should be savored – but I also know that I will have a lovely time once I get wherever we’re going and I will not regret being uncomfortable for a while if it means traveling to new and interesting places.
You should travel, in this world. It is a big, fascinating place full of interesting and lovely people, many of whom are happy to sit down with you and share a conversation or a meal. There is no better way to understand how constructed your own worldview and experiences are than to go to a place where people construct those things differently.
Travel takes money, of course, and in an age where people are often struggling it can be out of reach. But it doesn’t take as much money as most people think, and you’d be surprised at what you can do for the money you have. I always am, anyway.
Fortunately Kim is good at the planning side of things. She enjoys it, in fact – “the thrill of the hunt” for airline tickets, things to do in new places, and so on – so as someone who is not stupid I simply leave most of that to her and am glad for it.
We had a few guideposts for this trip. First, we wanted to go to Ruoti for the Émigré Festival that Felice was organizing. Second, since we were going to be in the country, we wanted to see if we could stay at the apartment in Testaccio in Rome that we’ve stayed at before – it’s a lovely apartment, and Stefano is a gracious host – to see new things in Rome and visit some previous favorites. I also wanted to see if it would be possible to catch up with my friend Anita, which worked out in a brief but lovely way in the end, and Kim (and Lauren, when it still looked like she would be able to come with us) wanted to go to some new places as they are the adventurous ones in the family.
And in the end, we were able to do it all! And then some!
We try not to check bags when we travel because that way madness lies. If you can do everything with carryon luggage you can skip the wait, avoid having your bags lost, and have a convenient excuse not to buy any big things to lug back home. I have reached the point in my life where I am mostly deaccessioning stuff so I am less tempted to bring big things home than I was in my wayward youth anyway, though I did end up bringing a few such things back because they were gifts given to me with affection and for such things the rules don’t apply.
But the airlines have caught on to this carryon trick, and now they’re cracking down on what you can bring inside the plane too. Aer Lingus, the carrier for three of our four flights on this trip, has a 10kg (22lb) limit on both personal items and carryon bags, and their personal item dimensions are tiny. We hit the weight limits, but not quite the dimensions. They never checked, though. As long as we could stuff them under the seat in front of us they were happy.
We were supposed to check our carryon bags for the flights that weren’t transatlantic, but both times we ended up taking our bags onboard with us which made things so much easier. For the first one, the gate attendant simply noted that since we hadn’t left the secure area we could just slide right on and nobody would care. For the second one, the baggage system died and eventually they just told us that if our bags fit the carryon dimensions they’d be happy not to deal with us at the check-in counter so off we went.
Packing is a bit of an art, really. You have to take clothing, and the first rule of packing for trips is that you don’t need half the clothes you think you need. You may have to do laundry, but that’s relatively simple. And as for having room in the bags, I bought some inexpensive plain t-shirts for this trip and if necessary I could have just left them there without any real loss. You have to bring toiletries, but there are places to buy those where we were going so that wasn’t a huge issue. You have to bring adapters and chargers because in this connected, digital world you simply have to do that. Most things can handle multiple voltages now, though, so you don’t need the old transformers to step down from 220 to 110 anymore. And three cheers for that. Those things were heavy.
For us, we also need to bring food allergy cards, and in our late capitalist era people will sell these to you. And here let me offer an unsolicited and unpaid endorsement for the Equal Eats company who – for the princely sum of $9 – will sell you digital cards explaining your food allergy in a wide variety of languages. You can get similar cards from FARE for free, but the Equal Eats cards are more specific and list examples – “tree nuts” is not really a mental category in Europe, so having the examples helps a lot. You can download them and (if you’re like us and happen to have the laminating machine that Home Campus got rid of twenty years ago) laminate them for your wallet in whatever quantities you want, and when you are in a place where you don’t speak the language you can just hand one to the cashier or waitstaff. In my experience they tend to prefer to have something in their own language rather than you imperiously expecting them to speak English. They also take this very seriously and were uniformly happy to work with us – often more so than here in the US. We didn’t always get the answer we hoped for, but that’s okay – we got the right answer, and then we could either stay or move on.
For this trip we decided not to get the international data plan from our normal cell carrier (a prohibitively expensive option and very limited in capacity) so Kim found eSim apps online that allowed each of us to purchase whole number multiples of GB of data compared to what we had collectively last year, and for a combined fraction of the cost. It was a bit of a struggle getting set up and eventually I had to give in and set up Apple Pay, which I had avoided until this summer, but I have to say the eSims worked pretty well. Oliver had a different carrier than Kim and I did, and that was a good thing – that way one of us always had service even in the mountains of southern Italy.
I also downloaded a pile of books onto my phone, which you can do for free with your local library card and either Libby or Hoopla. I tend to read travel memoirs on these trips, which is a fun genre anyway. Last year I blew through five books so this year I borrowed seven and only managed to get through two of them. But they were fun books, and that has to count for something. I generally prefer paper books, but when you are limited to 10kg and you are schlepping things on your own across the ocean on your own back, saving the weight is worth putting up with electronic books.
We left on Wednesday, July 24. Grandma came down that morning to housesit while we were away, which both we and the cat and the rabbits greatly appreciated. We no longer have chickens, which is one less thing to figure out on these trips. Lauren arrived a bit later and drove us down to O’Hare for our flight. We got through security pretty easily, all things considered – not something we can say about other flights on this trip – and found some lunch before heading off to our gate.
I bought some snacks just to get the nice heavy-duty bag they come in, which I used as my personal item bag until it died in Naples and Kim replaced it with a much better bag while I was in line to not check bags. The snacks were also much appreciated.
The flight was delayed a bit because they had to check everyone’s passports and for some reason this European airline running a transatlantic flight from the US hadn’t factored that into their plans, but eventually we got on.
Airline seats keep getting narrower, even as I get wider.
I have always been wide from side to side – I inherited my dad’s shoulders, which make great shelves for carrying things like backpacks and roof ladders but which become troublesome in seats designed for the modern preschooler. And as I have gotten older I have started to get wider front to back, which I really should do something about but nearly everything I enjoy doing involves sitting still in a room so it has been a bit of a struggle that way. I squeezed myself into my assigned microspace and resigned myself to the unhappy toddler behind me, and in a shockingly brief time by historical standards we were in Dublin.
It was Thursday morning there.
This was not the end of our traveling. This was simply a layover, and we’d come back to Dublin on the way home for a more extended layover but this time we simply found our way down to the bus which took us to the subterminal where we waited for our next flight along with several vast and happy groups of students on school outings of some kind. There was also a vending machine for drinks, and thus was our first purchase in euros made for this trip.
Also, the reflections in the windows made the airport look like an alien invasion site, which we appreciated.
You have to make the plans, for one thing. Where will you go? How will you get there? What will you do once you’ve arrived? All those details that make or break a trip.
I’m not good at those details, to be blunt. I tend to get overwhelmed by it all fairly quickly and then throw up my hands and decide that my nice comfortable home is perfectly acceptable and I can continue to live in it just fine. I’m not really much for FOMO and I have never understood the whole idea that you’re obligated to get out of your comfort zone – comfort is a rare and precious thing in this world, and it should be savored – but I also know that I will have a lovely time once I get wherever we’re going and I will not regret being uncomfortable for a while if it means traveling to new and interesting places.
You should travel, in this world. It is a big, fascinating place full of interesting and lovely people, many of whom are happy to sit down with you and share a conversation or a meal. There is no better way to understand how constructed your own worldview and experiences are than to go to a place where people construct those things differently.
Travel takes money, of course, and in an age where people are often struggling it can be out of reach. But it doesn’t take as much money as most people think, and you’d be surprised at what you can do for the money you have. I always am, anyway.
Fortunately Kim is good at the planning side of things. She enjoys it, in fact – “the thrill of the hunt” for airline tickets, things to do in new places, and so on – so as someone who is not stupid I simply leave most of that to her and am glad for it.
We had a few guideposts for this trip. First, we wanted to go to Ruoti for the Émigré Festival that Felice was organizing. Second, since we were going to be in the country, we wanted to see if we could stay at the apartment in Testaccio in Rome that we’ve stayed at before – it’s a lovely apartment, and Stefano is a gracious host – to see new things in Rome and visit some previous favorites. I also wanted to see if it would be possible to catch up with my friend Anita, which worked out in a brief but lovely way in the end, and Kim (and Lauren, when it still looked like she would be able to come with us) wanted to go to some new places as they are the adventurous ones in the family.
And in the end, we were able to do it all! And then some!
We try not to check bags when we travel because that way madness lies. If you can do everything with carryon luggage you can skip the wait, avoid having your bags lost, and have a convenient excuse not to buy any big things to lug back home. I have reached the point in my life where I am mostly deaccessioning stuff so I am less tempted to bring big things home than I was in my wayward youth anyway, though I did end up bringing a few such things back because they were gifts given to me with affection and for such things the rules don’t apply.
But the airlines have caught on to this carryon trick, and now they’re cracking down on what you can bring inside the plane too. Aer Lingus, the carrier for three of our four flights on this trip, has a 10kg (22lb) limit on both personal items and carryon bags, and their personal item dimensions are tiny. We hit the weight limits, but not quite the dimensions. They never checked, though. As long as we could stuff them under the seat in front of us they were happy.
We were supposed to check our carryon bags for the flights that weren’t transatlantic, but both times we ended up taking our bags onboard with us which made things so much easier. For the first one, the gate attendant simply noted that since we hadn’t left the secure area we could just slide right on and nobody would care. For the second one, the baggage system died and eventually they just told us that if our bags fit the carryon dimensions they’d be happy not to deal with us at the check-in counter so off we went.
Packing is a bit of an art, really. You have to take clothing, and the first rule of packing for trips is that you don’t need half the clothes you think you need. You may have to do laundry, but that’s relatively simple. And as for having room in the bags, I bought some inexpensive plain t-shirts for this trip and if necessary I could have just left them there without any real loss. You have to bring toiletries, but there are places to buy those where we were going so that wasn’t a huge issue. You have to bring adapters and chargers because in this connected, digital world you simply have to do that. Most things can handle multiple voltages now, though, so you don’t need the old transformers to step down from 220 to 110 anymore. And three cheers for that. Those things were heavy.
For us, we also need to bring food allergy cards, and in our late capitalist era people will sell these to you. And here let me offer an unsolicited and unpaid endorsement for the Equal Eats company who – for the princely sum of $9 – will sell you digital cards explaining your food allergy in a wide variety of languages. You can get similar cards from FARE for free, but the Equal Eats cards are more specific and list examples – “tree nuts” is not really a mental category in Europe, so having the examples helps a lot. You can download them and (if you’re like us and happen to have the laminating machine that Home Campus got rid of twenty years ago) laminate them for your wallet in whatever quantities you want, and when you are in a place where you don’t speak the language you can just hand one to the cashier or waitstaff. In my experience they tend to prefer to have something in their own language rather than you imperiously expecting them to speak English. They also take this very seriously and were uniformly happy to work with us – often more so than here in the US. We didn’t always get the answer we hoped for, but that’s okay – we got the right answer, and then we could either stay or move on.
For this trip we decided not to get the international data plan from our normal cell carrier (a prohibitively expensive option and very limited in capacity) so Kim found eSim apps online that allowed each of us to purchase whole number multiples of GB of data compared to what we had collectively last year, and for a combined fraction of the cost. It was a bit of a struggle getting set up and eventually I had to give in and set up Apple Pay, which I had avoided until this summer, but I have to say the eSims worked pretty well. Oliver had a different carrier than Kim and I did, and that was a good thing – that way one of us always had service even in the mountains of southern Italy.
I also downloaded a pile of books onto my phone, which you can do for free with your local library card and either Libby or Hoopla. I tend to read travel memoirs on these trips, which is a fun genre anyway. Last year I blew through five books so this year I borrowed seven and only managed to get through two of them. But they were fun books, and that has to count for something. I generally prefer paper books, but when you are limited to 10kg and you are schlepping things on your own across the ocean on your own back, saving the weight is worth putting up with electronic books.
We left on Wednesday, July 24. Grandma came down that morning to housesit while we were away, which both we and the cat and the rabbits greatly appreciated. We no longer have chickens, which is one less thing to figure out on these trips. Lauren arrived a bit later and drove us down to O’Hare for our flight. We got through security pretty easily, all things considered – not something we can say about other flights on this trip – and found some lunch before heading off to our gate.
I bought some snacks just to get the nice heavy-duty bag they come in, which I used as my personal item bag until it died in Naples and Kim replaced it with a much better bag while I was in line to not check bags. The snacks were also much appreciated.
The flight was delayed a bit because they had to check everyone’s passports and for some reason this European airline running a transatlantic flight from the US hadn’t factored that into their plans, but eventually we got on.
Airline seats keep getting narrower, even as I get wider.
I have always been wide from side to side – I inherited my dad’s shoulders, which make great shelves for carrying things like backpacks and roof ladders but which become troublesome in seats designed for the modern preschooler. And as I have gotten older I have started to get wider front to back, which I really should do something about but nearly everything I enjoy doing involves sitting still in a room so it has been a bit of a struggle that way. I squeezed myself into my assigned microspace and resigned myself to the unhappy toddler behind me, and in a shockingly brief time by historical standards we were in Dublin.
It was Thursday morning there.
This was not the end of our traveling. This was simply a layover, and we’d come back to Dublin on the way home for a more extended layover but this time we simply found our way down to the bus which took us to the subterminal where we waited for our next flight along with several vast and happy groups of students on school outings of some kind. There was also a vending machine for drinks, and thus was our first purchase in euros made for this trip.
Also, the reflections in the windows made the airport look like an alien invasion site, which we appreciated.
For our next flight we boarded from the tarmac, which seems to be a much more common thing in Europe than in the US. We also got to board from the back as well as the front, a much more effective and efficient process. And the plane was much nicer – it’s astounding how much two extra inches for seating can improve your day.
We landed in Budapest, a place we had never been before and where none of us even remotely spoke the language. By the end of our stay there I’d figured out precisely one word – “kijárat,” which means “exit,” a handy word to know in museums and subway stations even if I never did learn how to pronounce it – but since English is still, at least for the moment, the international language of travel, most of the airport signs were also helpfully in English for us.
We decided to take a taxi to our apartment, a nice little luxury after a long day or so of traveling and not all that much more expensive than three airport bus tickets when you do the math. You don’t just go out and hail a cab at the Budapest airport, though. You go to where the taxis congregate and there you will find a little kiosk building with a couple of people working inside. You get in line and when you get to the window you tell them you want to go to Budapest center and they enter it into their system and hand you a receipt with a big number on it, and in a couple of minutes a taxi shows up with that number and you climb in.
It was an interesting ride, seeing a whole new place for the first time.
The driver let us out about a half block away because our apartment was on a pedestrianized street and that was as close as he could get.
Welcome to Budapest!
And... this is (one of) the reason(s) why we often opt. to fly expensive when we can now. Coming back from France we checked 6 (!) 'bags' of which three were boxes of wine - and all of that was included in the tickets. [Also, the Boston passport guy was apparently just *amused* at how much wine we had and declined to either (i) charge us duty nor (ii) ask any of the other customs Qs. Win.]. But as I was saying before I distracted myself: arriving and needing to drive a rental is much easier if one has actually slept over the Atlantic.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this is why we don't check bags - so we can't bring that much stuff back with us. ;) Although three cheers for the Boston passport guy for understanding the assignment and not arguing with anyone who would bring back three suitcases full of wine. Give that man a raise.
ReplyDeleteWe waited a week before actually renting the car - a saga that will no doubt be told in more detail than necessary but so it goes. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. :)