Travel Tales

Travel begins next week—travel not to conferences, feet propped up on the dashboard with my goodie bags of chips, sunflower seeds, computer paraphenalia, and spare shoes on the floor (Hank drives in case you were wondering).

No, this travel begins inside a metal tube pushed 40,000 feet into the air to traverse the Atlantic. As always, I have no idea how I’m going to get everything ready or what I’m going to take. Ridiculous, I know, after decades of constant travel. “Some things never change,” right?

The first three weeks will be riotous and unpredictable, and maybe even ill-advised. We’re taking our 9- and 11-year-old grandchildren with us, laying laid out an ambitious, logical itinerary that probably will fall apart within days. We’re staying in AirB&B’s near parks or green belts, to help them balance the rigor of sites we hope to show them. Admittedly, this is one of those trips where it’d be better to wait until they’re a bit older. On the other hand, to borrow one of my father’s favorite phrases, “Make Hay While the Sun Shines.” And so, the hay is going to be planted, or cut, or whatever it means to “make hay.”

After the family chapter, I’ve got a long train ride from Budapest to Hamburg to start my first tour on June 7 with Academy Travel, a new (to me) organization that specializes in tours packed with the arts and cultural history. Since this lovely company is based in Sydney, Australia, part of the fun has been talking with them while I’m still in Tuesday evening and they are in Wednesday morning. I know it’s kitschy, but it feels like sci-fi, despite my knowing better.

Since I’ve had almost zero contact with things Australian in my life, I’m eager to know more. Surely, after 15 days with my new Australian travelers, I will know more. Already, several things have struck me, including the way the words “kind” and “kindly” come up in the emails and documents we’ve exchanged. “Could you kindly sign this xyz?” they ask. Or, “It would be kind of you to make this recording by such-and-such date.” Their letter-closing (valediction) seems to be “Kind regards.” It’s sweet, even if boilerplate, and reminds me of the need to be kinder in my own life.

“Oh,” you say, “you are kind, Carol!” Well, thank you for that, but I can be mean-as-a-snake at home (one of my mother’s favorite descriptives), particularly when I’m throwing around stacks of laundry looking for my ever-lost phone or car keys. Or when I fall over the grandkids’ backpacks, step on their Legos in the laundry room, or discover that all of the Eggo waffles are gone but the empty packaging is still in the freezer.

Maybe that’s part of what I like about travel. I think I’m kinder on the road. Oh, there are frustrations (flight cancellations, missed train connections, arriving at museums to find them closed, no matter what the website said). Yet a different type of patience overtakes me: except for certain situations, one has to be humble and kind when trying to solve the inevitable problems, not to mention flexible.

So there it is. I hope to report more regularly starting right now. Yes, there’s been a hiatus in these posts. I’ve missed writing regularly to you. Soon I will tell you one of the projects that has captivated my energies over the last months (hint, it is a new curriculum on art and music for younger kids).

With the upcoming trip, I’d like to report a lot of what happens, particularly after I meet my Aussies. Our itinerary includes nine (yes nine) evenings of top-level concerts, operas, dance performances, and recitals: artists like Sir András Schiff and Hélène Grimaud; venues like the Berlin Philharmonic, the Elbphilharmonie, and the Vienna State Opera. The daytime will be devoted to the major art museums in Hamburg, Berlin, and Vienna. If ever there was a time to eat my Wheaties, it will be on this tour . . . except, if you know the reference, Wheaties probably aren’t all that healthy. Still, it was a good phrase for a lot of decades.

Let me close with a few travel proverbs, of which there are hundreds. The first one really speaks to me:

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” ― Gustav Flaubert

Here’s another good one:

 “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” ― John Steinbeck

Finally, try this one:

“Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” ― Ibn Battuta

I had to look up the author to identify Battuta. He dictated a 14^th-century travelogue nicknamed The Rihla, or A Gift to those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.

Still, as beautiful as they are, there is a flaw in Battuta’s words. My father who barely traveled anywhere, other than in the Army during World War II, was the best storyteller I ever met (with tough competition from Jim Weiss, but that came decades later). Daddy’s stories took us wherever he wished us to go. Many came from his childhood in the hollers of West Virginia’s coal country or his burly adolescence in Depression-era New York City. They would make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and not all were kid-friendly, but you never forgot them. Almost all of them ended with a proverb or saying of some sort, elevating them from personal stories to maxims for life.

So, with the hope that I can collect and share some new stories, I will go pretend to pack. And with the hope that you will continue to share your stories with me, I sign off with

Kind regards,
Carol