One Month Out

Listening: Love is life, and life is free. Take a ride on life with me. Free your mind and find your way. There will be a brighter day.

So I'm one month out from my trip. I have no rail pass, no plane tickets and no walking shoes. I guess I'm kind of lacking in my transportation planning. No bueno. I'm determined to have reservations and my Eurail pass ordered by the end of this week. It looks right now I'm going to have to drop an extra two bills on top of my vouchers for airfare and my Eurail tickets will be right around seven bills. The Keen Bronx II shoes that I have my eye on cost another ninety bones. So I'll be dropping another grand before I even set foot on the other side of the pond.

I'm not really all that upset or discouraged. I've set up a mental budget for myself and I've been saving some money since I no longer have any debt besides school loans. I'm not planning on going out to be the wild and crazy party person that I was back three years ago. I plan on being relatively conservative with my money. My major expenses will be hostels, which we're looking at anywhere from twenty to thirty-five dollars a night and food. I know that food can be pretty expensive with tastes like mine, but I'm not going to go overboard. I think that I'll have at most one really nice meal a week. One will be in Paris, another will be in Marseille. I'll be damned if I miss out on bouillabaisse. Damned, I tell ya.

Since I last posted, I bought myself a new Mountainsmith Tour II (aka a new man-purse) and a soft shell from EMS. I never planned on buying a soft shell, but it called out to me. It's a red North Face Apex Magic jacket that retails for a hundred and fifty dollars. I got it for fifty. It's light, warm and windproof. It also fits me perfectly to boot. I'm such a good shopper.

As the days pass and I get closer and closer to my trip, I have been getting increasingly more anxious to go. I'm nervous about really being alone for the first time in my life, where I don't know anyone in a fifty mile radius and I may not speak the language. I'm trying to get myself as prepared as possible, but I don't think I will be until about a week into a trip, when I settle into my traveler mode. There have been a couple of people that I have e-mailed that I may or may not meet up with along the way. Hopefully it won't matter if I do or if I don't. Hopefully, I'll meet random people anyways.

*Sigh* I count the days. I can already smell the fries on Damrak and the taste of genever on my tongue. Life is going to get very sweet.

An Early Start

Listening: When I was young I thought of growing old, of what my life would mean to me. Would I have followed down my chosen road or only wished what I could be?

Back when I thought about starting a travel blog for my upcoming trip to Europe in October, I planned on starting it a month before I boarded the plane. As time went on, I found that I couldn't wait and that I wanted to start writing again immediately. So here I am, a couple weeks ahead of schedule with my first entry.

Over the past few months, I have done immense amounts of research for my month abroad. I have sat in my cubicle at the day job for hours at a time looking at websites and weeks worth of lunch hours perched in the corner of Border's Books or Barnes & Noble's. I would have been at The Globe Bookstore in Harvard Square, but they closed their doors just a couple of weeks after I delved head first into my trip planning.

I have acquired a lot of "things" that I "need" for my journey. I think that the running tab is up to two hundred and seventy five dollars. On the flip side, I am the proud new owner of an EMS Long Trail II backpack, a set of Eagle Creek packing cubes, a tote for my pack so I can check it as luggage, a money belt, a travel laundry kit including a clothes line, sink stopper and detergent, a voltage converter, a travel alarm clock, a passport case, a new battery for my digital camera and a microfiber towel. I'm sure that I'm going to have to buy more stuff. The question is how much and when?

As of this moment I don't have either my Eurail passes or my airline tickets. Prices for airline tickets go up every day. I think that I should have ignored a certain someone when they told me that the airfares would come down even more. I think my goal would be to get my tickets by the end of the weekend, or at least have a plan that would allow me to lock in a fixed price. I'm also waiting for a certain someone to let me know where their friends got their Eurail passes from.

I'm not really nervous about those rather large details, but I am very anxious about the trip. Over the past eight months I have taken only two vacation days from the day job and only one of them coincided with a day off from the restaurant. I have had scattered Saturdays and Sundays off, but nothing consistent. So, in my eyes, I have really earned this vacation. I have taken myself out of debt. I have worked hard. I figure, I should, as my friend at the office would put it, "treat myself to something big."

Anyways, keep a look out in the next few days and months for me to update y'all on the status of my vacation. Truth be told, if I could take y'all with me, I still wouldn't. I kind of feel the need to be on my own a bit. Although I do feel like I am on my own quite a bit, when I'm in Europe, I can't knock on my roomie's doors, pick up a phone and call my best friend (for a reasonable price at least). I'll have to come out of my shell a bit an expand my horizons.

So here begins the journey across Europe as an effort to grow and expand under the guise of eating to expand my palate and seeing the filming locations of "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset."