a change of direction
by the principle writer
Bingen am Rhein, Germany
To arrive in London a week before Rob’s sister arrives to spend two weeks with us was the original (well, 37th actually) plan. But we are changing our mind about as often as our underwear (which is likely to be less frequently than you right now – in fact, when I asked Rob what he’d learnt in Asia he replied, “That I don’t need to change my undies so often.”)
We realised that the two weeks with Aunty is going to be frantically busy, travelling almost every day so that she gets to see a fair portion of the country, and we know that we can not keep up that pace as well as our sanity, so we decided a week relaxing in Holland would be more beneficial than a see-all-the-tourist-sights-of-London mad dash! London will still be there when we get back down from Scotland a month later.
Just like we have changed travel plans, we are also changing our blog approach. Surprisingly to us, in Europe-where-we-thought-internet-access-would-be-simple (but there are not the gazillion unsecured networks of Asia, and we don’t want to drag the kids up and down the main street of every town looking for an internet cafe, so it’s actually a problem) we are finding the race to upload photos and blogposts etc when we actually find an internet connection is becoming problematic….for the sake of pleasant travels, we are going to cut back considerably. There’s no point stressing about recording the trip properly and not managing to *live* it well. Because we would like to have a complete record one day, I am secretly going to continue daily journalling that might one day turn into blog posts, but we’re just not going to be constantly on the look-out for internet to publish stuff now.
On hearing this news, the children requested that they write something once a week or so for a little up-to-date-ness….who would deny a child wanting to write?
Plus, the kids need the computer for science studies, which they have been neglecting in our non-on-the-road hours, so demand for the lappy is high.
The other thing is that we don’t have as much *free* time now (that must sound funny if you are thinking of us on one long holiday!)….
- it takes more time to do shopping etc in a country where you are unfamiliar with everything,
- laundry facilities are rare and expensive and we haven’t come across the occasional nice lady to cheaply do a wash for us (we do handwashing every single day and it all takes time),
- there are no noodle stalls to grab dinner at (while we are not making our own bread and jam and pasta like we would at home, we are spending a lot of time cooking and doing dishes in our tin bowl),
- our “travelling time” now means us at the helm instead of sitting back on a train and letting someone else do the
honkingdriving – we can’t play cards with the kids while we drive and we don’t want to go the whole way round Europe and have lost the connection with our family. Which we are gravely in danger of doing. The honeymoon stage of our trip is over and we are in a have-to-work-hard-to-live-so-closely-together-happily stage, and quite frankly, we are not doing it at all well. So I want to put my energy into enjoying my family and the experience we are having rather than itching to create photo collages and constantly sideways glancing hoping I’ll spot an internet cafe. I hope to have some good stories to tell, and not end up an imploding disaster. A goal worth pursuing, don’t you think?
PS The next week after writing this, I managed a blog post every day! We decided to find internet to upload them all to complete “The Rhein Road Trip”…..then we’ll slow down the pace (although I found myself typing in the evenings instead of writing with a 2H pencil in a journal, so who knows what will eventuate?)
Tags: children, learning, postcard: Germany, postcard: Rhein Road Trip
rayres
It sounds like a very sensible approach, you need to make sure you are enjoying your time together. Just to let you know, as well as the washing machine, we also have WIFI, so you can upload to your heart’s content when you get here!