Coda (a love song)

The previous pages should have made it plenty clear that this was a great trip. As far as how great, well among all I’ve taken, I put it at number 6 overall and right on the heels of numbers 4 and 5. The ranking is based primarily on adventure and education. And sixth ain’t shabby. But in one huge respect this trip was as good as any, maybe, probably, the best. And that was how smoothly it played out and how much fun we had. Perhaps this was due in part to all the pre-trip research I did. But there’s only so much that plans can accomplish. In the end, you have to make good game day decisions, believe in what you’re doing, and be lucky. We were lucky, from having good weather to no traffic snarls to excellent health. We enjoyed smooth sailing on all fronts. The food was good, the beer great (and cheap if you don’t count the Isafold Lounge & Bar), the lodging diverse but always accommodating and stimulating, and the people amiable (and lucky for us almost all of them spoke English infinitely better that we spoke their language). We couldn’t have asked for more, except more time to have seen more of the seemingly endless wonders in which we were immersed for 16 days.

Of course, as with any trip to a foreign land, there are going to be things that irritate, annoy, and confound. It’s how you grow, it’s part of the beauty. Americans aren’t used to paying to use the restroom, so it sucks to be charged, but then it does cost to maintain the facilities, so why not. As it was, however, we only paid once. Narrow roads can be nerve rattling, and we rode down many, but we never hit anyone. Paying for plastic bags was new, but the cost was small, and probably should have been much more to discourage the use of those nasty things. Paying for gas after you pump is not the custom over “here”, so it took some getting used to. I guess they just have more trust “over there.” Using actual keys to get into hotel rooms was a novelty. It was quaint, but then it would have been nice if they worked better. My guess is that they won’t be around much longer. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Tipping was often as confusing as hell. I just hope I didn’t short change anyone, since most everyone was so nice.

Traveling by car introduced a whole set of annoyances unto itself. To begin with, we couldn’t read the road signs. Even those that were in symbols. But that of course was on us—all we had to do was study up, but we didn’t. As in turned out, it didn’t matter. We never got pulled over by the police or were ticketed, aside from the small fine received by email after the trip for speeding in Germany. And we can’t blame that on the sign—we can read Roman numerals just fine. Besides, the fine was worth all the laughs we’ve gotten from our joke about “getting a speeding ticket in Germany, where there is no speed limit.” I stressed out about the whole vignette thing before we got our first one. Afterward it was no more stressful than paying a toll. And vignettes have one big advantage over tolls—you don’t have to stop and pay them every time you get on or off a toll road. Parking was a hassle, but then that’s the case in every city in every county I’ve ever been to, as I strongly suspect it is in all the ones I haven’t been to.

Europe, and probably every other country outside the U.S., doesn’t make it easy to buy ice and a cheap cooler. And that makes it a challenge to keep the beer cold. That seemed to be a bigger deal on past trips. It wasn’t here, but that wasn’t because they started selling ice and Styrofoam coolers because they didn’t. Environmentally that’s for the good. Another thing for the good was to see people living a life without authoritarian restraints and yet not caught up in patriotic jingoism as if they had invented justice and liberty and were the only ones who enjoyed it. We saw no reason to believe that there wasn’t as much freedom in all the places we traveled as in the U.S., if not more.

Staying with the geopolitical aspects of our travels, it was encouraging that despite the American president being as unpopular abroad as he is, the locals didn’t take it out on us. Maybe they felt sorry for us. At any rate, as previously noted, we were recognized as Americans as soon as we opened our mouths but were almost without exception treated fairly and friendly. Surprising to us was that before we opened our mouths, we were often taken to be Germans.

Two things that were markedly different about this trips from the three taken in 1989, 1990, and 1992 were having hotel reservations vs. finding lodging as we went and navigating by GPS rather than maps. Both of these differences can be directly traced to the internet. It played no part in the earlier trips and a huge part in this one. Not having to spend hours looking for a hotel that was reasonably priced, pleasant, and with vacancies saved us a ton of time and aggravation. GPS made things much simpler too, although it does have a downside in my opinion. The downside is it makes one directionally illiterate, and that makes one stupider. So next time, maybe we should turn off the GPS for a day or two and venture forth with only a map in hand. Of course, it won’t be quite the same as in the old days since we’ll know that if we get lost, we can just flip it back on.

After the trip, people often asked us what place we liked best. That’s sort of like asking which of your kids you like best. Each place becomes part of you. That said, Budapest did seem like the most removed from our world, and thus the biggest stretch we made. So it was special in that regard. And while I can’t say what was the best place we visited, it’s very easy to say what was the best thing about this trip. That was that I did it with Sharon. She is, after all, the love of my life. We have fun pretty much wherever we go, whatever we do, and never more so than during these 16 days in September 2018. And we both love to travel, and it turned out we really loved traveling in central Europe. Throw in a pinch of good weather, a little planning, a run of good luck, and a whole lot of castles, rivers, and cold beer, and well, you got the makings of the time of your life.

Hey, hey baby

I want to know if you'll be my girl

Hey, hey baby

I want to know if you'll be my girl