Amsterdam, September 2004
Tag: Travel
Not That Easy
After Connie died in 2017, I was really adrift. Apart from the bereavement, I really had no idea where or how I wanted to live. Fortunately, any immediate problems about accommodation were taken care of by Doc Russia, who took me in immediately after I sold the Plano house, and then by Mr. Free Market, who most graciously ensconsed me in one of his spare suites at Free Market Towers.
Towards the end of my stay at the Towers, I went to Frenchland (okay, Monaco) to spend some time with Former Drummer Knob, who lives thereabouts. While driving around that exquisite part of the world known as the Midi, I discovered that as long as I didn’t try for a sea-facing apartment, I could actually have afforded to live there.
I found a (very) small one-bed/one bath apartment just north of Antibes which fitted the bill.
(just over the blue sign)
Modest, but not a slum; the exterior looks totally foul, but the interior was okay — sort of like a typical student’s digs. The monthly rent was about 1,400 euro — say, $1,600 (about what I’d pay for the same thing in Dallas) — but unlike Dallas, the rent included water and electricity, and the apartment came furnished. (There’s a caveat, in that the “free” utilities thing was for a specific amount of w&e per month; higher and you pay quite a lot, but I would have come in under that limit quite comfortably.)
Just in passing: at the time, my French was reasonably fluent and would have become completely so within a couple of months anyway. My fluency and French last name would have eased my ability to get a short-term residence visa, I was assured by a local official. My U.S. passport was no big deal because apparently quite a few Murkins do that kind of thing in that part of the world anyway, she said.
Yes, in case you’re wondering: I did a fair amount of research into this because, as I said, I was at something of a loose end during that time, so all options were on the table.
And yes, the apartment was quite humble, but it didn’t matter because once you leave the apartment you’re in frigging France, FFS, with bistros, boulangeries, patisseries, charcuteries, estaminets and all those things that make life in France unforgettable.
All the above were brought to mind when I read this article, which purported to list the cheapest countries to live in as an expat.
Of course, when people say “cheapest” they mean just that. If the list is topped by Vietnam… well, you get the picture.
And here’s the problem with this “expat” thing, and the reason I ended up coming back to the U.S. of A.: what articles like this never mention is that cost isn’t the only reason to live elsewhere. Hell, it should only be Reason #4 or #5.
The biggest reason to live somewhere else — and by this I mean in a furrin country — is that you have to adapt to the culture and lifestyle of the place. And that’s no small thing. It’s all very well to live somewhere cheap, but when the free TV sucks and the cable/satellite option is either limited or expensive, or both, that’s not a good thing. And getting around and getting on with the locals can be quite a task, or even impossible. Expats often talk about “conversation fatigue”, which is the stress you face when you’re constantly translating a foreign language mentally in order to understand what’s being said to you, or before you open your mouth to speak. It’s fine if a lot of the locals can speak English, and are prepared to do so. This is sometimes the case when living in one of the larger cities — which are not cheap to live in, as I can attest — but in small villages or towns, that’s not the way to bet, as I discovered in my various travels around Europe, and most especially not in France.
Once again, I had little problem reading the newspapers and books in French, and that could only have improved; but it was still going to be a chore, experienced daily. Now imagine doing that in, say, Vietnam, where the language is not only foreign, but the text is of the “chicken scratch” variety.
I would have been unutterably lonely; even though Knob lived but a few miles from that apartment, seeing him would have meant catching the train to Monaco every time because forget buying a car Over There. Oy. And he worked, which meant he wouldn’t be available all the time.
I was in my early sixties. Had I been much younger and coupled with a woman willing to try the experience with me: who knows? But no, it was not to be.
So it was with only a little regret that I decided not to stay in France.
One thing I do know: I was really, really glad to get back home, and only realized how glad when Doc picked me up at the airport, and casually tossed over one of my handguns in its holster with the comment: “I thought you might want that.”
Asking For It
The inhabitants of various European tourist “hot spots” have recently been rebelling against the incursion of said tourists who, they claim, are making their home towns unaffordable and unbearable. (I talked about it here, some time ago.)
Well, it seems as though they’re getting what they asked for:
Bookings in some of Mallorca’s most popular summer holiday resorts have slumped by as much as 20 per cent, say hoteliers on the Balearic Island, suggesting holidaymakers are voting with their feet following anti-tourism marches.
The hoteliers association that represents the resorts of Alcudia and Can Picafort say their key markets have slowed in recent months.
The news comes following major anti-tourism protests across mainland Spain and its islands this year – with another huge protest march in the pipeline for Mallorca’s capital next weekend.
Last week, thousands of defiant anti-tourism protesters vowed to bring the streets of Palma to a standstill on June 15th, with representatives of around 60 groups saying they’re planning to march.
Well, let’s hope all the “death to touristas” thing doesn’t kill the destinations altogether. I suspect the locals would not care for that either.
Then there’s this take:
Pablo Riera-Marsa, president of the hotelier’s Association, said: ‘We are seeing how the German market, traditionally our Number 1 market, is the one that has slowed down the most.’
However, the Majorca Daily Bulletin reports that the group is optimistic that late bookings would still see figures rise, saying tourists were edging their bets on bargain last-gasp deals.
He explained: ‘We are detecting that this season, last-minute bookings are once again becoming more popular, with tourists waiting for special offers and promotions before making their purchase decisions.’
Hate to say it, Pablo me old mate, but the kind of tourists who jump at the bargains are more likely to be the kind of tourists you don’t want.
That Suitcase Thing
This silly article in the Daily Mail (is there any other kind?) prompted a thought or two from me. But first, an excerpt:
Despite years of obsessive searching, I’m yet to find the perfect suitcase. It’s as elusive as a desert mirage. My attic is filled with discarded luggage experiments, lurking in the dark as memories of a different life and far too impractical for my current one.
I used to have that same problem, back when I traveled a lot (50+ flights per annum, on United — mostly — out of O’Hare). A simple overnighter? No problem, a decent garment bag generally sufficed. Anything more than a couple/three nights, however, and things started getting a little more problematic.
And back when I was constantly flying to Yurp and Britishland, the problems increased exponentially.
I remember once giving in to the nylon/canvas “duffle bag” trend, and oy…never again, even with wheels. (Without wheels? Nope, never again in this lifetime. No wheels — on any luggage choice, no buy.)
The only good thing to say about duffle bags is that they start off light, whereas suitcases start off being heavier. And of course, if you’re carrying anything that’s not an anvil, the soft duffles afford no protection for your stuff whatsoever. But if you’re going to use the wheeled duffle bag, just remember that the extendable handles need a structure to hold them when not in use, and that structure means that the bags will end up being about the same weight as a soft-sided suitcase.
Now add to all that the journey through the tender ministrations of baggage “handlers” at any airport…
(thanks,Kenny)
…and you’ll see my point.
Then there’s this little temptation:
I would love to indulge myself with really expensive, luxury suitcases such as the Globe-Trotter Safari:
…but at around $3,000 per piece, and remembering Kenny’s pic above, you’d be better off — maybe — just shipping your luggage via FedEx or something. (Don’t laugh; I knew a guy of considerable wealth who used to do just that: ship his heavy luggage from one destination to the next, leaving the hotel’s concierge to handle the details.)
Or you can do what I used to do, when doing expense-account / client-funded travel: buy cheap-ish luggage, use it once and then toss it in the trash after you get home. Repeat as necessary. (It actually adds to the pre-trip excitement, by the way; buying luggage for your trip is an event all by itself.)
One last option is to see your luggage as a challenge to baggage handlers of the Delta/American/United ilk, and go with aluminum suitcases:
Just be aware that this stuff can cost a lot more than the hotel bill from your trip to Amsterdam or Tokyo. And baggage thieves know how much this stuff costs, so the chances increase greatly of having your luggage simply stolen for its container rather than its contents.
Lastly, you can always just go with a steamer truck (or as they’re sometimes called, footlockers):
Just remember that unless you’re going to a place that has porters on call, you’ll want to make sure to get that thing with wheels. (Another of my buddies uses one for travels with his wife; they pack all their clothes and such into the one trunk, and he just pays the weight penalty on his air ticket, saying that the reduction of hassle is worth the extra cost. I don’t believe him, by the way; if you’ve ever seen Planes Trains And Automobiles, and watched John Candy struggling with his trunk, you’ll understand my skepticism.)
Trunks, by the way, are pretty much indestructible, even for airlines. I once used one to get a large and expensive crockery set back from Britishland, just checking it in at Heathrow or Gatwick (don’t recall which one). I expected to lose a couple of pieces to breakage, but nary as much as a chip, let alone a breakage. Trunks are also less likely to be stolen because they’re just too heavy to carry easily, and too bulky to be hidden away somewhere.
And unlike Alexandra Shulman, I don’t care about features like “compartments”; just a sufficient volume will do just fine.
Afterthought: one of the besetting problems with airline luggage is that most options (like Ford’s Model T) come only in black, which makes it a chore to distinguish your luggage from all the others on the baggage carousel. One option is to go with something like this camping trunk:
…which should be strong enough to survive the trip, and it generally costs (and weighs) much less than the average suitcase — $50 compared to $200-$300 for ordinary suitcases. And it’ll stand out like a dog turd on the black tablecloth of carousel luggage.
My American Car Experience – Part 2: The Silver Bullet
I’ve talked about my first experience of driving an American car, and this was the second.
A quick background to the story: I first met Longtime and Very Dear Friend Trevor when we worked together at a small ad agency in Johannesburg. He had just returned from a trip to the U.S., as had I, and so over the following months we swapped stories together and in the process, built a friendly relationship. Sadly, my other relationship (with Wife#1) had foundered on the rocks of divorce, made somewhat more difficult by virtue of the fact that she worked at the same Small Ad Agency, but I left the company soon enough, so that wasn’t too bad.
Some months later I went to an art gallery opening in Johannesburg, and by chance Trevor was there. I had planned a solo trip to the U.S. as a sort of post-divorce present for myself — just a month this time — and I started crowing over said trip to him. Whereupon he confided that he too had planned a solo trip Over There, and when we compared notes, found that the dates overlapped quite a bit. I couldn’t change my dates because I’d squeezed in the time between conferences and client meetings; but Trevor had no such problems in that regard, and so the two solo trips became a double-header, so to speak.
I had made no plans at all for my solo trip, intending to wing it completely upon arrival at JFK, but Trevor had made plans to stay with a friend in Newport RI, and as I’d met her when she’d visited Johannesburg a little earlier and we knew each other, it was no problem for her to put us both up on the giant couches she had in her capacious living room. Getting to Newport was another story. I didn’t feel like renting a car just yet (particularly out of JFK #LongIslandTraffic), so our trip to Newport was as follows: shuttle bus to Manhattan, cab to Grand Central Station, train to Providence, Trailways bus to Newport, where Maryann would pick us up in her totally-inadequate and tiny Fiat 124 convertible. (As Trevor later put it: “We missed traveling by hovercraft, but that’s about all we missed.”)
Anyway, we took care of jet lag in Newport for one of the most delightful weeks of my life: eggs-n-bakey at Crazy Gigi’s for breakfast, clam chowdah at Christie’s Dock for lunch, lobstah at the Canfield House Restaurant for dinner, parties at the Boom-Boom Room [sic], flirting with lonely divorcees, and all washed down with huge quantities of bee-ah. July in Newport is not an experienced to be missed.
Anyway, the time came for Trevor and I to begin what was to be the first of many, many trips around the U.S. Here’s the itinerary: Newport – Concord NH – New Orleans – Austin and back up to New England.
The map routes do not do justice to the trip we actually made, because we tried to avoid all interstate highways wherever possible (e.g. to get around major cities, which neither of us was interested in doing), using roads like the Blue Ridge Parkway and so on. (The only major city we actually ventured into was Washington D.C., but our adventure there is a whole ‘nother story involving Congressmen, their various staff members and their family members, and I’m not sure the statute of limitations has expired for the telling of that episode).
Anyway, the car.
This time, because the rental was being picked up by my employer back in Johannesburg on the company’s account (another story), I’d reserved a mid-size car because why not? and when we picked it up at the Avis office in Newport, we discovered it to be the largest car either of us had ever driven in, an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Coupe*:
…which featured a 3.8-liter V6 (not the later 5-liter V8, alas), but which, compared to the anemic 2.2-liter Chrysler Reliant engine, I thought would give us the proper punch for a very long trip.
How wrong I was. This was my first experience of driving a car which, when one floored the throttle at 50mph to overtake, caused the rev counter to climb but the speedometer needle to stay in exactly the same place. (It did not help that my “home” car had been a BMW 3-series two-door, which was quick, nimble and fast.)
Compared to the little Beemer (okay, compared to every car I’d ever driven), the Olds handled like a frigging supertanker, with a turning circle to match. I swear, I could make a full quarter-turn of the steering wheel before the car actually changed direction, and then it would do so only marginally. Parallel parking was a complete bloody nightmare, and after a day or so of this silliness I made sure that I only parked in drive-in spaces.
In short, the car was a major disappointment — sarcastically, we christened it “The Silver Bullet” because it was anything but — and it colored my opinion of American cars until… well, I still feel the same way about them.
Anyway, we survived the trip. The Bullet made up for its performance shortcomings in other ways: the plush velour seats and comfortable drive seemed to impress the several ladies we had occasion to drive around in our travel stops, and amazingly for such an inefficient car, the gas mileage wasn’t too bad as long as I didn’t go much over 50mph — which, given the back roads we mostly drove along, wasn’t too difficult. And even more so than on my previous trip, we were in absolutely no hurry to get anywhere, so we lollygagged all over the place, stopped in small towns and villages along the way, met some strange but interesting people; and in short, we both fell in love with America all over again and pledged to each other that we would soon come back for good.
So there’s that.
In Part 3, I’ll talk about my next disappointment.
*the Bullet’s license plate was “VD 237”, which prompted the acidic comment from Maryann: “VD? They must have known you two guys were coming.” She also warned us about New Orleans being the pox capital of the United States, whereupon one of us (probably me) replied, “Yeah? Well after we’re done there, it’s going to be the pox capital of the world.” (Sadly, ’twas not to be and we left The Big Easy unscathed. Austin, however, would be another matter.)
Rethinking The Bucket List: Part 1
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?