Oops! Not In Charge: Slow travel

Fluidity, flexibility; they are important to me. Too many years spent raging against the machine with too many head butts into impenetrable walls. Perhaps I am here on this existential plane to learn fluidity and flexibility. The rage and assaults on immovable objects that caused me pain and suffering seem as though they would have been my teachers.

Perhaps they have been, but I have observed myself to be a slow learner in many instances. Walls are not there for me to break down, rocks in a stream are not there for me to move. Sometimes that is easy for me to see and believe. And other times my ego, or is it something else, tells me to fight. Do I simply need to learn to pick my fights? I guess the conundrum is belief that I always need to chase something. It could be physical, or mental; but I need a goal to move toward.  Now I need to resolve what that means, and if the chase really is better when I cast trying aside for flexibility and fluidity.

Travel has been a wonderful opportunity for me to address the subject. It has been a slow drift toward resolution that is fueled by travel planning as we work our way through Europe. Early on we decided that flying and car renting were producers of stress, anxiety. In some ways they make things easier by allowing faster movement and more control over schedules. Are they worth the trade off? Of course that depends. Once we decided that they weren’t – most of the time – we had to put that principle into practice, an experiment to determine an outcome.

Taking trains from the UK into France, and in France has been a tremendous experience. It appeared to validate the premise of avoiding cars and planes. But, what happens when obstacles appear in the road and/or the stream? That is when the challenge of fluidity and flexibility over aggression becomes a true experiment. We have been enjoying stress free life in Nimes France for nearly two weeks. The end is near. The beginning is near. We had planned to follow up this phase of our trip by exploring Central Europe and the Balkans starting in Budapest Hungary. Having heard so much about the ease and efficiency of train travel in Europe, The expectation was it would be fairly easy to put a train itinerary together for that purpose.

For a few days I spent many an hour on that task. Walls and boulders, in the form of endless transfers and hours lost. Finally, lying in bed awake at three in the morning it hit me! When I am pushed in a different direction than I expected (wanted), why not cast aside resistance. Our goal is to travel in Europe. Time to let the Universe fill in the details. After consultation with a few people whose European experiences I value our itinerary transformed. It has transformed in a way that weaves and bobs as it seeks the paths of least resistance.

Gone are Budapest, Croatia, Albania and others. Replaced by Alsace and northern eastern Europe, we avoid arduous train trips and lost hours. Everything is fitted together in, what for us, is a comfortable schedule that still allows us to see new places; places heartily and passionately recommended by trusted friends. All of it will take place by train until we depart Warsaw Poland by plane for Porto Portugal. Additionally, we have flexibility as we go along to make more changes and decide how much time to spend along the way.

We leave for Grenoble France Friday. The tentative itinerary is Nimes to Grenoble to Colmar to Strasbourg to Prague to Krakow to Warsaw then Porto. It feels good to not face looming decisions, and All of these places are new to Sheila and myself. It feels to good to put principles I believe in, but fail to enact often enough, into practice. I feel as though, give me another 72 years and I will be ll grown up.

I have read travel recommendation articles since we left. The first one I saw today was on “slow travel”. Slow travel is basically what we have opted to do, even though I did not previously know what it was. No rushing around to see all of the attractions and get to the next destination! Sounds perfect.