eThoughts : August 1, 2008: Wanderlust Begins Again: Random Musings Before a Journey

Vacations are important, but getting ready to leave the home fires and returning to see if all is well can be very taxing—that to-do list can be quite an alpha in one’s life. However, this particular vacation is significant as I’ve not been back to Europe since my wandering days, during which I spent about five months traipsing around there in 1972. Recently, my youngest daughter asked me to go with her and I happily accepted. And my son—her brother—will meet us in London. She and I will move on to Paris and he will return home to his business. I leaned on her a bit to not set up a schedule that had us on the run for the entire time—that sort of schedule can become another to-do alpha that is not the point of vacations or wandering. So London and Paris is it, this time. In 1972, it was London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Pisa, and Munich, interspersed with trips to Portugal, Belgium, and Holland. And it was a magical trip for a person whose budget was $6 dollars a day. Heck, it was a magical trip regardless—free room in London, free room and board in Paris and free room in Munich. I just lucked out. There was that head-on collision in Italy that took some wind out of my sail for a bit. But considering I was driving a 1960, 2-cylinder Citroen—an official tin can on wheels—I was lucky to be in one piece. I picked up the Citroen from a French farmer in a village near Paris for the equivalent of $100—with help from the son of the people whose abode I stayed at while in Paris. It blew a spark plug before I’d left Paris for Southern France, but, again his help, I found a mechanic that fixed the problem for the equivalent of $30. But my $6-a-day budget was fairly intact because I’d been getting a free ride for a bit. In the next 4,500 kilometers (about 2,800 miles), I had no problem with the car. I had fixed it up so I could sleep in it, which was great—not to mention cheap. In fact it was good on gas, even if it was slow building up speed. And it had a cloth “sun roof” that I could roll back and enjoy the drive. But it was not built for accidents, and neither am I. I had some of my stuff stolen that was left in the car, which was a complete total, while I went to the hospital. But considering that I was hit by two other cars after the one came across the road and hit me head-on, and that I finished up the bumper-car routine by plowing into a low block wall, I think we can call it magical that I lived.

There were lots of other goings-on while I was there. The Olympics were in Munich in 1972, a tragic Olympics as it turned out. It was quite an amazing time while I was there and there was no inkling of the problems that were about to occur—I left a few weeks before the terrorist attack. Barcelona and the Spanish coast were a fun adventure, though in those days one had to watch out for the civil guard, but the people I met were great and we partied without worrying too much. It was there that I learned the dangers of chemically-fermented wine and the goodness of a campground owner who apparently waved off the two civil guards that came around inquiring how a grass fire got started. Heck, I was just trying to break up a burning log—at least that’s the single-frame picture I remember upon waking up the next morning and wondering why the field around us was blackened. All-in-all during my wanderings in Europe during the spring and summer of 1972, I learned the art of greeting people and of the art of saying good-bye. And I learned that I could be about as lucky as a person could be. That trip, especially, added greatly to my knowledge, the knowledge that helped me to succeed in business and academics when I finally settled down about three years later.

And so I think of vacations, especially ones that take us to unfamiliar realms, as a time to look-up past our local view to see distant horizons. Such a change can affect our beings, changing us from a narrow, mouse-like view, to a broader, soaring avian view. As Paulo Coehlo wrote in The Valkyries, it makes our soul grow.

And the trip to Europe this summer won’t end there. My son has hatched a plan for all of us (there is an older sibling, my other daughter) to go on a Mediterranean cruise for two weeks in early January of 2009—our family Christmas and New Year’s celebration. Voilà, Christmas shopping is complete, even as the magic continues.