When I tell people about this trip Beth and I are on, the most common reaction is excitement mixed with a bit of jealousy. I suppose traipsing around the globe for six months evokes in people visions of the unknown, of things that are out there just out of sight which are strange and wonderful and which, just might, fill some hole in their life, real or imaginary, that keeps them from their full potential. Well I am here to report back to you all that that's a pile of poo. There is no magic pill and moving around from place to place is the same as any endeavor in life, it is what you make of it.
You know how a nice Thanksgiving day can be? A brisk walk in the autumn woods with loved ones. Returning chilled to a warm bustling kitchen redolent with the smell of turkey and fixings and the aproned grandma fussing over you as she pours you a hot spiced wine. Or the other scenario, when you slightly burned your sweet potato casserole and your mother in law won't let you forget it. Uncle Jim came late with some crappy store made green bean salad, sullen and stinking of vodka. The kids are overly excited and your mother does not approve. They pound around the house screeching and all you can do is hiss at them and shoot them secret angry looks. Then you eat too much too fast and all you want is to be alone but it looks like no one leaving anytime soon... Well traveling can be like that.
Here is an example of the way not to travel. We have been proud of our success at winging this trip and letting it unfold according to God's plan. Actually we have been cocky about it. Things were going so well! The week in agriturismo farms in Italy, the perfect apartments and houses we booked in Slovenia and Croatia! What the hell we decided, feeling all road warriorsish, let's go to India! On it, we dove into the internet and emerged holding a 19 day trip across the north and south of India with private drivers and guides the whole way. A couple of days living on a boat, a day on elephants in a tiger reserve etc. We made all the arrangements, wired a rather large sum of cash to some guy named Ashu in Delhi and sat back on our laurels. Then it occurred to us we need an Indian visa. Whoops and double whoops. Things up to this time has been going so well we felt surely some divine hand was guiding our path and all would work out. Besides India is our close ally and they are really pushing the tourism thing. Then we crashed headlong into the brick wall of Indian bureaucracy. In Europe the embassies are for the most part located only in country capitals. Lucky for us we were in Budapest at the time. I called the Indian embassy intent on charming them with my American wit and seducing then with my treasure but amazingly could not get even one scrap of information regarding visa applications. I was put on hold, transferred and put on hold, told to call back in twenty minutes, twenty minutes later told to call back in fifteen minutes and finally connected with an answering machine informing me the embassy was now closed even though it was only 4pm and their web site had them opened until 5. We did some research and found that step one is to fill out an application on-line. Then you must wait 24 hours before coming to the embassy, paperwork in tow. You submit the paper work, wait for one week and come back and pick up your shiny new visas good to go. Looking at our calendar we saw we could do this. We could apply in Athens, stick to our booked trip to the island of Naxos, return to Athens, get the visas and fly out the next day to Istanbul (flight and apartment also pre-booked). One problem, we had to get color copies and print many forms and it was Sunday in Athens. Everything except the churches are closed in Athens in Sunday. A challenge! We started with the guy we were renting our apartment from. Dimitrus is super nice but man does his printer suck. Undeterred we found addresses of local colleges, internet cafes and hotels and set out to do this thing. No luck. The students were unable, the internet cafes without color printers and the hotels unwilling until finally, miles from our apartment we stumbled upon the business center of the Intercontinental which met all our needs (and with a smile as well). Yeah we were saved! Next morning we were at the embassy gates early, papers in hand and confident. The crowd outside the gate swelled with a mix of Anglos and Indians united by their pensive apprehensive attitudes. The gates opened and we were admitted one by one in a manner pretty much exactly like I imagine being processed into prison to be. We were ushered upstairs to a room reminiscent of a rural small town bus station in 1952 where we were given numbers. And we sat. A prisoner of war gallows humor emerged after several hours and we found some solice in that. And then our number was called. A pretty but hard edged Indian woman spoke to us from behind her plexiglass window. The microphone was broken and I could barely hear a word which apparently frustrated her. She successfully communicated that I was not standing in the precise right place so I took two giant steps backwards which seemed to mullify her. She spent some time looking over our paper work and asked why we had not applied in the US. We laughed nervously and tried to let her see we were free spirits who were so enamoured of her country that spontaneously we decided we must go. Well she said, we had not filled out the form explaining that and also the on-line form we had completed was filled out wrong. On the address line we had put our home address when what is needed is our Greek address. No prob we can fix that.....not. We must reapply on-line, wait 24 hours and come back. Impossible we pleaded. We are going to Naxos tomorrow for a week and would also have to rearrange our Istanbul trip. You should have thought of that before she scolded but then in a moment of divine pity allowed that she would waive the 24 hour requirement but that was as far a she could go. The embassy closes at 3:30 it's 2:30, we have no computer or internet access. Hearts in our mouths we flagged down a cab. The driver was an overly chatty angry Greek who hated his trip to NYC. We rushed into the Intercontinental business center and as if a gun were to our heads completed the on line form, printed it, grabbed a cab and made it back to the embassy with 15 minutes to spare. And then we waited and waited and waited. First in last out our number finally got called and nodding and bowing we resubmitted our paperwork. We felt great relief when she asked us for money, cash only and twice as much as the amount stated on line. We didn't care. We paid the bill scooped up our paper work and fled feeling like 5th graders leaving school on the onset of summer vacation. Then in the cab Beth started rummaging around and with a look that can only be classified as terror asked me if I had the passports. I did not. Despite our emotional exhaustion adrenaline once again flooded our synapses and with edgy alertness we talked it through. We realized the embassy might have retained them but for the next week never fully believed that. We carried on and despite the gnawing background trepidation really loved our stay in Naxos. At times, usually fortified by wine, we integrated the idea that oh well, it is what it is, we are healthy alive and way more fortunate then most of the world. That worked to a point. It wasn't until we returned to the embassy, suffered through their lines and suspicion and had both our passports and visas firmly in hand that the black cloud lifted. Now all is sunny and bright again.
We are flying off to Istanbull for 3 days and then to India. The mind is a trickster, it tells you you are doing great when you are not and when all is fine it constantly warns of danger. If I learn anything from this trip I hope it teaches me how to wrestle that beast. Wishing you all peace love and happy holidays.
