Travel truth and lies

The rain and cold are dragging at me. A project at work just got put on work-through-the-weekend priority. A school strike is messing up our tech schedule for the show I'm mixing. And then there was a little fire. Everyone is okay but half my tenants are displaced and contractors are slamming around at all hours and nobody is getting any sleep.

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I'm going to talk about the novel progress in a bit, but first I'd like to share some of my own travel lessons.

There's the big three I learned from my mom:

1. Pack light
2. Reserve your first night's stay
3. Go to the water

In inverse order, there's a lot of advantages to a river. It is cooler -- going to the river saved us in Bangkok. The river is sometimes a simpler and straighter route -- I used the Thames to get from the Tower Bridge area to Greenwich and it was simpler than figuring out buses and Tube. But mostly, the river is a different world. The city is noise and smoke and crowds and, yes, tourists. The river shows you a slower and more gentle world and gives you glimpses of the working reality of the place outside of the shopping districts and tourist hotspots.

First night; I've amended my mom's method. She likes to spend the first day getting to know a town, wandering around, and finding somewhere both cheap and cool to stay for the rest of the trip. For Greece, I just paid everything up front so I wouldn't have to deal with it. The only adventure was finding the places when I landed. Which is the other key element here; splurge on that first night. You are jetlagged, it is two in the morning, you don't know the language or your way around. Sleep in a Western-style hotel that offers a shuttle service from the airport. You'll be a lot more rested and ready to deal with a whole new world after that.

Packing light: okay, I used to camp. Then I was in the Army, more, in the Paratroops. One dirty secret is that we may parachute in but all the gear a modern army needs to operate would be flown in or trucked in later to meet us. Thing is, it didn't always get there. So us experienced guys would jump with rain gear, a poncho liner to sleep on, some 550 cord, a knife, and enough food and water to keep going for a day or two.

Not saying I always get it right, but the pack for Crete was almost perfect. Here's the big trick; airlines currently allow two carry-ons (without paying extra); one larger that goes in the overhead, and a smaller one you can keep with you. I saw a lot of people on all six flights that didn't understand the advantage this gives. Moment the seatbelt light went off they were all back into the overhead bins making a commotion. I have a shoulder bag I picked up in Berlin -- sort of a small messenger bag. I put everything I thought I might need on the flight in there, including tickets and passport. Means I could check my larger bag if the airline asked me to. When I arrived I'd repack and it would be my day bag, holding camera and maps and charging stick.

Two changes of clothes. Enough to last a week and then you have something to wear while you do laundry. This was all casual walking stuff; I had no intention of dining anywhere fancy. But here's another trick; I know they are less comfortable, but prioritize trousers and long sleeves over shorts and t-shirts; a lot of other countries are less casual than the US and many places of worship won't even let you in with short sleeves.

I did bring camera but almost never used it. And no laptop. Not even any books. But if you are going to be doing everything off a smart phone (books, camera, writing with a neat little folding keyboard, even maps) then bring power stick and a charger that will let you do both at once.



Then there's a few other things that haven't quite made Three Rules level:

4. Learn "Hello" and "Thank you." This isn't always exact or plausible...getting the courtesy's out in Greece could be a race, Italy has way too many nuances of greeting and good-byes to easily memorize, and Japan is such a politeness-driven country it is well worth learning a variety of thankful and apologetic words (mine were Ohio gozaimasu, konbanwa, ano, dozo, ii desu....but if you learn nothing else, arigato will get you a long way.)

5. Watch people. This seems obvious. And like above it isn't always possible. I came close to getting on a bus in Athens before I noticed nobody was using cash...instead they flashed a card and there was a beeping sound. So then I started asking around where you bought that ticket. In Japan, there is a very clear understanding of which staircase goes up and which goes down so watch the crowd before you try to plunge Up the Down Staircase. A little watching of when and what the locals are doing will make you look a lot less like an Ugly American. (My counter-example in Greece was trying to figure out the correct way to drink coffee. I couldn't find anyone doing it, and asking was no help because in the places I was, the staff had long decided the crazy tourists were right no matter what they did.)

6. Adjust. I really shouldn't have to say this. If you want bed your way, burger made your way, toilet the way it is at home,  then why are you traveling? If you really can't deal and just want to look at the sights then there are options. There are package tours that shift you from Western-Style hotel to Western-Style hotel in the air-conditioned embrace of a tour bus and the comforting arm of a tour guide. Or just stay home and watch the movie. I've witnessed far too many travelers who couldn't re-adjust to their expectations that coffee would be free with the buffet in Berlin, that there would be chairs at a noodle shop in Tokyo, that they could pay with American dollars in London. Instead of taking a step back and realizing "this is different here...so what else is different that I could be enjoying the benefits of?" they start arguing with the server. For food, for beds, for all sorts of things, my advice is try it. If you don't like it, then no shame on you and you'll find something you like eventually. If you do, though...that's something you've learned and might even take home with you.

7. The two-week rule. I've failed on this as often as I've followed it, but the idea is you want to stay at a place long enough to get past the "we have to climb the Eiffel and visit the Louve and Notre Dame..." Actually, you'll never visit everything in Paris. Point being, the first week is rushing around doing the typical tourist spots and the must-see's. The second week is when you can relax and take in the place. Sit in a cafe and people-watch; the pressure is done. Around a week is when you slowly transition from visiting to staying; you know the street layout, which buses you usually take, the place you like to eat at. Where to buy paper and do laundry. And this goes both ways. To the locals you move from "today's tourist" to "that quiet American with the crazy beard who's been coming in here every day."

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With all the above commotion, though, I'm actually making progress on the novel. Have a draft now of the key moment when my protagonist puts on the mask for the first time.

Checked some more geography and I still haven't tracked down any Roman ruins or active digs in the Bad Münster area. Not that it matters for the plot; a medieval well is just as good for me. I did, however, discover a nice Roman mine that's about 50 km Northwest of Frankfurt. So far I've been honest with geography and although I may be adding a few things that aren't quite right (like transplanting the torchlight parade from another medieval fair to the one at Bad Münster) I haven't actually...lied.

Checked up on taking a train from Frankfurt to Venice. One day (or an overnight), a few hundred Euros. Depending on what times I plug in, though, the route planner either runs me through Switzerland or an Eastern route through Austria. Which possibly touches Salzburg (I've spent a couple days there). And also passes through München. That is, Munich (where I've also been, but only to change trains). And the story is set in October.

Oho. Thing is, the end of the shoulder season is late October and Oktoberfest actually ends on the first Sunday in October. My protagonist is also taking the latest flight she can before the prices go up and for me that was the 28th. So...move the shoulder earlier, or move Oktoberfest? Oh, yeah, and there's Ohi Day on the 28th, although the people I talked to in Crete didn't seem to think it was that much of a deal, an Athenian might disagree and in any case would play perfectly into what I want to say about the history of Greece after the Classical Era.

Sigh. I should have done something other than Germany. Kept the story in Greece, maybe included Crete. The thing about the German detour is that the way it is currently plotted she's going to be exploring around the Rhine and the Stein, into Bavaria and then to Austria, through the turned-cuff of the Italian boot and to the city of Venice (possibly stopping in Padua or Verona first), and then take a boat down the Adriatic. She'll be a seasoned -- well, semi-seasoned -- traveller by the time she gets back to Athens, and a lot of the first-time-out-figuring-stuff-out stuff I'd plotted was in the Athenian setting.