Category: Bucket List

Many of the things I’ve wanted to do before I shuffle off this mortal whatsit involve travel, most especially to places I’ve not been to before, which would mean mostly Central Europe:  Budapest, Prague, Krakow and so on.  Note that these are cities, because I’m a city boy at heart and while I like beautiful countryside scenes as much as anyone, I prefer that I see them en route to the next city rather than as an end unto themselves.

That said, Hallstatt in Austria may have an inside track, for obvious reasons:

(Doesn’t seem like the season matters too much, does it?)

When it comes to revisiting some of my favorite cities — London, Paris, Vienna and so on — well, there things start getting a little more problematic.

…except, of course, that these pics were taken back when I last visited them.  That’s not what they look like now.
#ThirdWorld

None of the Western European cities, therefore, is likely to be anything like the cities I remember so fondly, as Lincoln Brown discusses in Europe’s Death Spiral Picks Up Speed, with this memorable statement:

“A cruise up the Seine sounds tantalizing. Spending time in a foreign ER with a subdural hematoma or being forcibly relieved of all my valuables does not.”

Understand that the prospect of some random street violence has never much bothered me before;  but I’m older now, slower and frankly less likely to engage in some kind of physical altercation that doesn’t involve (my) use of a gun.  And as any fule kno, Euroland has all sorts of stupid laws which forbid carry, let alone use of same, so I would be to all intents and purposes completely helpless.  The newspapers and TV are full of stories that outline how tourists and travelers have been attacked and robbed, and worse, raped and/or killed, and I have not the slightest interest in becoming just another of those statistics.

I’m not a fearful man, but I’m not a stupid one either.  In the past, when threatened with violence, I’ve responded with, shall we say, disproportionate violence in my self-defense (and most not involving firearms, by the way).  But I can’t do that anymore because I don’t have anything like the physical wherewithal to respond like that (which is one of the reasons why today I never leave the house without my 1911).

So any travel items on Ye Olde Bucquette Lystte have perforce been severely modified, to the extent where I’m most likely only going to visit places that are 1) safer than most in general (which rules out Paris and London altogether), and 2) are not infested with Muslim- or African “migrants”.  (The “Romanies” — gypsies — are a constant threat everywhere, and always have been, so not much to be done there.)

In fact, international travel per se  has increasingly become considerably less alluring than back when I was just an air ticket and packed suitcase away from [insert random destination here].  The only alternative would be to go on one of those riverboat cruises down the Rhine or Danube, except that I hate, absolutely loathe being tethered to someone else’s itinerary.  That’s just not how I run, to use the modern expression.

And yes:  I’d truly love to go to the Goodwood Revival in Britishland, for example, except that it would only be that reason (plus a visit with my old Brit friends like the Sorensons, the Free Markets and The Englishman) that could ever entice me to book a DFW-LHR air ticket.  Okay, driving around the gorgeous English countryside might also be tempting, except that one can’t do that in summer because said English countryside becomes like rush hour anywhere in the world, only with narrower roads .  Pass.

This whole topic makes me ineffably sad, because being a traveler (in the literal sense, i.e. not just being a simple tourist going from one church to another museum as part of a sheep-like group) has always enticed me with all its wonders of being exposed to foreign cultures, foods and customs.

But if modern travel in Western Europe means a much higher chance of being mugged etc., hell, I could have stayed in Johannesburg for that.

It seems as though Poland, Hungary and Czechia seem to have got on top of the whole immigrant criminalization problem simply by not letting any of the Third Worlders into their respective countries.

So maybe I could just tour Central Europe — but as I’ve written before, the problem with that is that I cannot speak any of the languages, and said languages are extraordinarily difficult to learn, especially for someone of my advanced age and failing mental faculties.

Sucks, dunnit?