Preparations for Departure When I announce I want to go to Europe, I am not surprised by anyone’s response. My siblings take it in stride as just another “Vince thing”. My boss gives me a hundred and fifty bucks, a copy of Michener’s The Drifters, and the address for a Biergarten in Munich. My parents
Preparations for Departure
When I announce I want to go to Europe, I am not surprised by anyone’s response. My siblings take it in stride as just another “Vince thing”. My boss gives me a hundred and fifty bucks, a copy of Michener’s The Drifters, and the address for a Biergarten in Munich. My parents make their position clear. Though they do not object, they only think it wise that I use my newly acquired degree to find a stable, well-paying job and then work towards a nice two-week vacation that will ensure I have both money and employment to come back to. However, neither of them has been to Europe yet, so this I take with a grain of salt.
My friends mostly shrug it off. We have all been milling about in a fog of uncertainty since the day our university made us put on gowns, handed us our diplomas and told us to get the hell out. They see this as just another way of me saying I have no idea what to do with my life now that college has ended. This is not altogether inaccurate.
From the get-go I know I will be traveling with Chris. We met three years earlier and slowly became the best of friends. We are complete opposites. He is anal, orderly and not very good under pressure. I am lax, messy and do not normally show signs of stress. When I ask him if he wants to go to Europe, he is as enthusiastic as I knew he would be. His zeal is brought on by the fact that he has grown up hearing his dad tell stories of his travels and this is a chance to tell some of his own, plus, he too is facing the same goal-less future I am.
Neither of us has traveled much, besides the cross-country trips we made to see how far our cars would go. The only other country he has visited is Canada, which I do not think really counts as much of another country, it’s more like a higher version of America. I have only been to Mexico, more precisely Nogales, and spent so much time with a guy name Jose Cuervo, reminiscence of these trips would be somewhat inaccurate. We see this as a wonderful opportunity to open our eyes, add to our gray matter, stimulate our taste buds and improve our postures.
I am planning on a three-month trip, though neither of us has much in the way of money. Aside from the money for the plane tickets, I have $700 in cash and a credit card that is itching to be used. Chris only has a bit more. We set the date for the middle of April and by the time April rolls around we have argued just about every point of the trip. Three months seems ridiculously long to him, not only because of our lack of funds, but also because it is a long time to be spending with the same person while living out of a backpack.
I agree to cut the trip down, but only if we chop off places to visit altogether rather than limit the amount of time we spend in each one. I refuse to be rushed and want more than just a point-and-click drive-by of Europe’s offerings. He agrees to take Greece off our itinerary, not because he does not want to see it, but because it is the furthest point and will take the most days out of our travel time.
I remove St. Petersburg from my list of must-sees. This is mainly due to the fact that our train pass would require us to pay an extra fifty dollars to enter the former Soviet Union. Something having to do with the tracks being a different size, thus having to change trains at the border. I am also assuming that it will not be too hard to talk him into hopping over to Russia, since we will be so close and all.
Our next argument is a lovely one that brings us quite near to exchanging blows. It is due to a little thing Chris refers to as “closure”. We have decided to fly into London, tour Great Britain, cross the Channel and then do the mainland of Europe. At the end of our journey, I have planned that we fly out of one of Europe’s main airports, like Paris, to ensure a straight-through flight to the States. This makes perfect sense to me.
Chris decides that at the end of the trip, we should make our way back to London and fly out of the same airport we have arrived in. He draws me a diagram on a map that shows us landing in London, doing Europe and then flying out of London. He points out the neat circle this makes. I relate that this will not only take two or three days off the trip, as we schlep our way back to England, but God knows how much more it will cost to re-cross the English Channel and taxi our way into London.
This does not matter to him. My way is the way of Neanderthals. It offers no sense of completion. It provides nothing that resembles the visual treat of his well-drawn circle on the map, and worst of all, it provides us with no closure. At this point I think I pop a blood vessel. This makes no sense to me. He is not able to understand my inability to see the poetry in it all. Sadly, when it is time to book our tickets, Chris is unable to meet me at the travel agent’s office. Thus, the matter is solved quite easily. We are flying into London and out of Paris. Viola!
Packing is not as amusing as I thought it might be. The backpacks we buy are huge, green things big enough for a small woman to fit inside. Neither of us is planning on picking up any small women, but the salesman convinces us that we never really know what we might want to bring back.
The bags have pockets everywhere including a separate compartment for wet things. I am not sure how often I will be looking for a place to store wet things, or why I would even be keeping company with items that need to be kept less than dry. However the manufacturer (as well as the salesman), is positive this feature is something that we will undoubtedly use. The bottom of the backpack can even be expanded to give us another foot of packing space. I suppose this is there in case the small woman wants to stretch.
These bags are built to hold all one needs to survive, scientifically constructed to ensure the balance of its content rest on specific pressure points. It appears that the metal framing sewn inside is to keep our spines from snapping. What wins our hearts, however, is the small backpack that detaches from the large one, handy for day trips. It looks like a little pod coming off the mother ship and this is enough to make it our bag of choice.
Though this bag is huge, my clothes have somehow expanded since yesterday. I lay out everything I plan on wearing, which consists of two weeks worth of undergarments, three pairs of pants, two pairs of walking shorts, six shirts and a pair of running shoes. After three hours of pushing, pulling, stomping and cussing, I end up with one week worth of undergarments, two pairs of pants, two pairs of shorts and six shirts.
The only reason these all fit is because I discover the trick of rolling the garment into a sort of log shape and then stacking it in the bag. The problem with folding the items and stacking them flat is that it gives them that folded look, and it takes up too much space. I try to stuff everything in haphazardly, but then the items, when worn, appear as though I had just been run over and dragged forty yards.
This trick of rolling them not only takes up the least amount of room, but cheerily gives everything that freshly rolled look. It also guarantees that I will not have to wear the same shirt for fourteen days in a row. The running shoes will have to stay home, which is not a bad thing, as I have not actually worn them once in the past year.
Chris is somehow able to get more in his bag. This makes me jealous until I try to pick it up, then I just chuckle softly to myself. He has brought along enough sweaters to ward off the slightest change in temperature. He also found a way to fit in an extra pair of shoes, though I have to wonder if having the nearly busting look is a good way for his bag to start the trip. He says that he plans on leaving his old things behind as he picks up new ones. It would be great if we could do that with every aspect of our lives.
We sit down with a map and plot out our journey. My only request is that even though we are making an itinerary, we leave it loose enough to be able to take things as they pop up.
He says, “Of course we will.”
Something tells me he may be humoring me. I have already found that he has made a list of every item he has in his backpack:
Six batteries
One tube of toothpaste
30 Q-Tips
Etc…
We both move out of our apartments in Tucson. He goes home to Prescott and I go home to Globe. We meet on April 18th and fly out of Phoenix.