Travel Expenses

Well, at last check, the euro was up to $1.42. Fortunately, I budgeting the trip for €100/day when the dollar was lower, so I'm not behind...I was just hoping the euro would've stayed below $1.30. Oh, well. Things to consider before travelling overseas.

Another hot item I looked into was the cost of buying stuff while I was informing my bank/credit card companies about my impending travels. Dig this: it's $5 extra per ATM withdrawal, (and from there you must add whatever the ATM's fee is going to be). To make point-of-sale purchases, Visa tacks on an additional 3%...never mind the cost of exchange rates, Value-Added Taxes (VAT), etc. American Express charges 2%. Might not want to leave home without it. On the plus side, VAT will get refunded at the end of the trip, but that means keeping all my receipts until I get Stateside. I didn't even ask about personal checks--I presume the Europeans aren't stupid enough to accept an overseas check.

A few things my seasoned-traveler friends have been telling me:

• Don't bother with traveler's checks. They're becoming passé, and credit cards are accepted nearly anywhere anyway. The joys of electronic money.
• American Express offices are supposed to get good currency exchange rates--better than the guys at the airport, anyway.
• It's probably better to just buy euros stateside or use ATMs in larger chunks.

The tricky question will be: is it cheaper to make purchases as I go or just rack up the ATM fees and risk carrying more cash? The 2-to-3-percent charges make the cost issue academic. $5 ATM fees are fine as long as I'm taking out bigger chunks of cash and stowing them safely. Going to have to think like a smuggler without looking like a spy, I guess. Pickpockets are reputed to be infamous across the pond, but then so are pickpockets in New York City, and I never had anything stolen there. Have to chalk that up to the Lord's protection; it certainly wasn't due to any smart or precautionary behavior on my part.

The idea Rick Steves advocates in his books is to keep larger amounts of cash in your money belt and smaller amounts in your wallet...and to make your wallet a cheap one so you don't miss it if it's stolen. I particularly like this little card, which Steves recommends keeping in the el cheapo wallet (printed in five languages):

Dear Thief: Sorry this contains so little money. Consider changing your profession.

Ha!

Anyhow, my list of things to do/buy continues to shrink. Put down some change today to buy a backup pair of eyeglasses. There are some bills I need to start double-paying to keep the collection agency people off my back when I get home. I need another travel lock for my backpack and more batteries for the camera. I probably need a bigger memory card for the camera, or just a backup. Need to buy a soap container and transfer money from savings to checking before I head out the door. Otherwise I've left a lot of optional stuff to the family if they feel inclined to buy. And yes, I need to get back to at least a refresher on my rudimentary French/German/Italian. I've got a three-language phrase book and can match the sounds to the written spellings (mostly), but otherwise I'll be doing a lot of gesticulating and faking it with those folks who didn't bother to learn any more English than I learned of their language.

The countdown continues.

Huzzah!

Father Dan sent a rain poncho from Bass Pro Shops...folks who actually DO the outdoors. Progress on the European checklist continues.

Clothes Washing Experiment #1

Anyone who has left their swimsuit to hang over the shower curtain in Florida can quickly guess the problem with hand-washing your clothes in the sink: drying. If you're living in your swimsuit for a week, it's probably not a big deal. However, if you're sitting on buses and hiking around hotels and castles all day, another one-word problem comes to mind: chafing. Shirts might dry, socks will tend to get gamey, jeans take forever to dry. So fine, what next?

• Finding a laundromat seems to be the best option. A friend just came back from Germany and informs me that a lot of stuff closes down after 5 p.m. Great! After walking all day, I'll just find the laundromat and...psssst! What if the laundromat is closed, pal? Hm.
• Buy and pitch clothes along the way. Frees up more room in the bag, might help me look more "European," but also requires regular visits to clothing stores instead of playing tourist. Not a great idea, nor the most efficient/fun use of my time. Still, it's not outside the realm of possibility.
• There's the Rick Steves Pack Mate, which lets the air out of clothing, condensing the amount of space it takes up. It can also help to isolate wet/stinky clothing from whatever else is in my bag. Great! That doesn't solve the drying problem, though.
• Hair dryer?
• Tough it out and bring some sort of petroleum jelly to deal with the "chafing" issue. Ick.
• Febreeze to "freshen" clothing? Already bought a couple of those. After three weeks, I'll smell like sweaty lavender--or something. Rick Steves sells an unscented "clothes freshener" as well. Might as well stick with the Febreeze and save myself from the shipping charges. Or at least contemplate the Rick Steves stuff before it's too late.
• Disposable underwear--at least. Assuming I stay indoors and walk around a lot, my clothes will dry out eventually, though I'll probably feel cold and slimy all day.

Hm. This is why I practice these things in advance. There's still time for contingency planning. Recommendations welcome.

Europe Vacation Packing Experiment, Take 1

Theoretically I have everything I need to go to Europe. Still need a foldable rain jacket or poncho, and my water bottle went missing, but these are easily remedied in the next two months. This is actually less stuff than I bring for a week in Florida, so I might be in okay shape when it comes to carrying things long distances. After I get some fresh air and exercise, I'll try to pack everything up, weigh it, and take it for a test hike. I rarely see my neighbors anyway, so they're not likely to comment. T-minus 63 days and counting.

More Packing Items

I have a general idea of what clothing I'll be bringing to Europe (guideline #1: pack light). RickSteves.com has a pretty thorough packing list. It's the little stuff that keeps multiplying. Here's where the "small stuff" list stands right now:

• First aid kit
  --Aspirin
  --Cold medicine
  --Immodium
  --Laxative (for those fine "binding" moments)
  --Allergy medicine
  --Neosporin
  --Band-Aids
  --Vitamins
• Photocopies of ID, passport, credit cards, emergency contact #s, etc.
• Prescriptions (ain't it just a treat getting old?)
• Day pack/small backpack (recommended by Karen in FL--thanks!)
• Ziploc bags (for, among other things, the prescriptions
• Soap/container
• Deep Woods Off!
• Sunblock/aloe
• Small towel

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have... any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

• Clothesline
• Shout/stain remover
• Lock for backpack
• Slippers/moccasins
• Small flashlight
• Water bottle
• AA batteries
• Power adapter
• Charging widget for iPod
• Compact umbrella
• Cola can w/bits of metal junk (good anti-theft device)
• Clothes freshener
• Travel alarm
• Travel-size shampoo, toothpaste, etc.
• TP (per my sister--thanks!), though obviously a full shrink-wrapped four-pack is not an option.

And no doubt other weird stuff will crop up as I get closer to travel time. Yeep! What am I missing?

Flying to Europe

I moved a step closer to Europe yesterday by finally booking my airline flight. My big thing was that I was willing to pay full fare if I was able to use my frequent flyer miles to upgrade to business class. This meant flying on Northwest, Delta, or one of the airlines affiliated with them. Well, after I finally found a travel agency that was open in Huntsville on a Saturday, I managed to book a flight on Northwest AND get the upgrade to business class to both sides of the pond.

HUZZAH!!!

For reasons that are probably easy to figure out if I gave the matter some thought, Delta does not accept NWA's WorldPerks miles, even though Delta just bought NWA. No problem: the NWA flight was cheaper anyway. The only downside of the flight is the return portion. Outbound, I fly to Memphis and then head to Amsterdam from there. The return flight is Paris (CDG) to Minneapolis, then Minneapolis-Memphis, and THEN Memphis-Huntsville. The other icky part is that I leave Paris around noonish, arrive in the States around 4 p.m., and finally get home around 9 p.m. Sort of like a time travel episode of Star Trek, as written by a sadistic airline scheduler. There has to be a way to get an overnight flight back to the U.S. doesn't there? Well, maybe it won't be so bad. If I sleep in that day, get to the airport, and stay awake through the flights, I should be able to get home and crash hard...just in time to go into work the next day. Oy.

Anyhow, I'm jazzed. After half a dozen years of shoehorning myself into a bunch of RJs, it'll be a frickin' novelty to be able to sit in a decent seat and not pay $5 for a cocktail. I might even learn to like airline travel again, even if it means getting to the airport two hours before flight time. Might have to buy that Kindle. I could be doing a lot of reading on these flights.

I suppose the next thing I'll need to do is to start nailing down what I need to pack--Rick Steeves provides a recommended list--try to pack all that stuff into the suitcase, and then see how far I can walk with it before collapsing under the weight. Oh yeah, and I need to learn how to wash my clothes on the road. Yippee.