Day 0: The Masterplan

2024/08/13

Eleven years ago, Amanda and I, fed up with a lot of the bullshit of everyday life, decided to just up and go to Europe for a few weeks. We'd heard about the Eurail passes, where for a set fee, you could ride all the trains you wanted with (almost) no additional charge. We planned that trip out meticulously, unlike our previous Big Trip vacations to New Zealand and the East Coast. A lot of things went wrong, and we had to think on our feet, rearrange plans, find new trains, sometimes at 4:00 in the morning with no internet.
    Since Amanda passed away last year, i've been struggling to make a connection to the world at large, and find my place in it. I had told her over the course of her treatments that, if the worst happened, i would probably sell everything, buy a smaller RV, and just travel until the money ran out. "See the world while it still exists," i would often say, because climate change is real and Mad Max is coming.
    Obviously i haven't done that, and it's no longer my first choice for what to do with the rest of my life. But. I had the idea a few months ago to get another Eurail pass, and take the time to go see as much as i could see.
    Traveling has functioned as a hard reset for me in the past. Our New Zealand trip in 2008 was a complete heel turn, i became an entirely different person almost overnight. Our 2013 Eurotrip followed a death in the family, and other major life upheavals.
    Amanda's been gone for over a year and i don't feel like i've healed very much. So i'm hoping, hoping so hard, that getting out and seeing faraway pieces of the world and meeting new people and learning new things and touching history and just...existing well the fuck outside of my comfort zone for much longer than anyone would consider reasonable, will spark something deep inside of me and reignite whatever flames should be burning in there.
    I'm hoping.
    Less than 24 hours away from that first flight. My bag is packed, i'm ready to go. I've got some of Amanda's ashes on a necklace. I'm taking her with me.

So here's the plan. We can compare notes in the end and see how far i ended up straying from it, either by necessity, or from following a shiny squirrel that caught the corner of my eye.
    We planned the 2013 trip so thoroughly because we thought we would have to live or die by that train schedule. "The trains always run on time," you always hear, but our experience was uh no the fuck they absolutely do not.
    So i'm going to be doing this trip a lot more like our 2008 New Zealand trip, but without the car. On that trip, we drove around the country, booked accommodation as we rolled into whatever city or town or national park, and just figured it out as we went. Amanda kept telling Alyssa and i that she had a plan in her head, but she never told us what it was. We just went with the flow. She finally admitted years later that she did not have much of a plan, just a list of handful of things she wanted to see, which she had not even written down.
    Here's the vague bits that i know.
    Tomorrow, i'm taking the Van Galder down to Chicago first thing in the morning. My flight isn't until 10:15pm, so i'll have most of the day to muck about in the Windy City. Get used to wearing the backpack, experiment with how i'll be shooting my videos & photos, and tourist a little in a country that i already know. I've never liked Chicago, so i've never given it a fair shake. Maybe tomorrow's the day i finally do that.
    I have a near-perfect layover in Reykjavik, Iceland, from 9:20am to 4:30pm, basically a whole working day to explore the city. The confirmation email says "please be at the airport no later than 3:40" but c'mon, international flight, i'm definitely gonna still try and be there by like, 2pm. To be safe. I don't know what airport security is like in Iceland.
    I land in Copenhagen at 9:45pm. My cousin Cyndi & her husband Jake will be meeting me at the airport. Since they live in Copenhagen now, i'll be spending the first few days of the trip with them. I hear they have some plans for things they'd like to show me.
    Not set in stone, but i'll probably leave Copenhagen on Monday-ish. From there, i'm currently intending to head north, and spend a few days each in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Then i'll come back down through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I'm really excited about Estonia, for some reason. I'm not 100% sure why. But i think i'm going to like it there. It sounds like they have a high standard of living and they really like the internet.
    Then i get to Poland, and plans are a bit less tangible. I'm not sure which parts of Poland i'm going to travel through yet. I really want to get to Czechia/Czech Republic, but also there's a film festival in Berlin i want to go to from September 4-11. Then there's the Oldenburg film festival from September 11-15, which has been called "the Sundance of Europe," so it would be cool to drop in on that one for at least a day. That timing gets sketchy, though, because kind of the tentpole of this whole trip is coming up quickly from there.
    I want to be in Paris on September 13th. That will be Amanda's and my 21st anniversary, and i want to see the sunset from the top of the Eiffel Tower that night. Hands down, the single most iconic photo of the two of us is from the top of L'Arc de Triomphe with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and the day we took that photo, we spent twilight atop the Eiffel Tower, watching the sun set over Paris. It was breathtaking, magical. It's a core memory. So i'm doing it again, for our anniversary, wearing her ashes around my neck. As best as i can, i'm bringing her back there.
    I do want to spend a substantial amount of time in Paris. I've been learning French (again) for the last three years, i'd like to take some time to simmer in the culture. I was thinking a week, when i originally planned that, i was expecting to be there well before the 13th, and the Berlin film fest and Oldenburg kinda fuck that up. But that's the thing; i don't know! I can do whatever i want! So we'll see where i land and when.
    There is another film festival in Paris that is very interesting to me, which runs September 3-15. Again, i'd be happy to attend at least one day of it, so that will also depend on when i leave Berlin and if i go to Oldenburg.
    Otherwise, the main thing i want to see in Paris is the Catacombs. I can't believe we missed them the last time around, i'm not making that mistake again. I might also go back to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, it's so cool. In 2013, we meant to wander in there, see Jim Morrison's grave, maybe mosey about for an hour, and leave, and we ended up spending the bulk of the day exploring it. And somehow i still missed Georges Méliès!
    After Paris, there is basically no plan at all for the rest of September. I want to see Amsterdam, probably more of the Netherlands, plus Belgium and Luxembourg, but also friends have recommended bits of Italy that Amanda and i missed previously, and i might go meet a friend in Greece. Another friend, who travels a lot, said Skopje, North Macedonia is one of her favorite European cities, and i'd love to see Bosnia and Herezegovina, Albania, Montenegro, and Serbia as well. Plus, there's Hungary; in 2013 we were supposed to have most of a day in Budapest, but due to train fuck ups, we ended up not seeing any more of it than the train station and the inside of the hotel. So i'd love to rectify that if i can.
    Going that way also opens up Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria; we did see a lot of the Bulgarian countryside last time, but mostly just through the window of a bus.
    I don't think i'll get as far east as Turkey. But the Eurail does go there!
    The reason i don't think i'll go that far east, though, and in fact Greece is kinda pushing it, is because i end in Barcelona. When i was originally booking the trip, i thought i'd come back at the end of September, but then i found out that the Sitges Film Festival, the most important film festival in the world for the type of movie i'm trying to make, is the first week of October. So i'll definitely be going to that. Maybe swing through Monaco on the way.
    Another friend emphatically recommended i check out Portugal if i can, in particular the city of Porto. The Sitges festival is 11 days long, i do not think i'll attend all of it, so i may swoop over to Portugal for a bit in the middle.
    And if i'm feeling really ambitious...i was told that there's a pretty easy way to take a ferry from Spain to Morocco. So i might go there for a day, too.
    I fly out of Barcelona on October 14th. Then i have another layover in Reykjavik, this time for 22 hours. So i should have time to do some decent exploring, perhaps even get out of the city, if i can find transportation. See a volcano maybe. Unfortunately, i won't be there at the time of year when the sun doesn't set, so there will be some night time.
    So what am i doing in all these cities? Well, for one thing, i have a bunch of lists i've made on Atlas Obscura to see weird shit. Then i've got a bunch of Instagram folders of saved travel reels of cool shit, but that stuff might be more touristy and busy. And i've got a spreadsheet of stuff people have recommended.
    But what might be more interesting, is that i'm planning on finding accommodation during this trip with Couchsurfing, a web site that puts you in contact with locals who have couches or spare rooms they let people crash on for free. Many of them like giving recommendations on what to see and eat, or even just like to take you around the city themselves. I'm also on three other competing web sites that do the same thing.
    I'm hoping to get a good mix of hiking, cultural and historical sites, weird shit, and touristy activities. I'm glad i've got all the film festivals on the docket, i'm gonna need days to sit and chill and relax, so it's nice to have that built into the schedule.
    Oh also, all i packed is camera gear. I get one 10kg bag for the flights, so that's what i chose to fill it with. I'm gonna buy clothes and toiletries when i get there, and donate them when i leave. Honestly? That's part of the adventure to me.
    OH SWITZERLAND, I FORGOT TO MENTION SWITZERLAND. Just neglected a huge hole right in the middle of Europe. Just like a map of the EU.

So that's about it. That's almost as much as i know about this trip at this time. Now you know it too.