Which Was Your Favorite Country?

It is sad to hear about what's happening now in Egypt. I take no pleasure in reminding you that I predicted in my blog that it will be a long and tortuous road toward a decent society. Give credit to the people in power anywhere - they make reality much worse than the worst nightmare. We are so lucky to have made it there last November and so glad that we didn't listen to our doubts and outside advice and traveled there. Of all the countries that we visited it was the only one that we all liked in equal measure. We all rated it with an 8 out 10. Read on and you'd realize why this is as close to perfection as possible.

A graphic representation of our scoring results from February 2013

Numbers and Money

My favorite saying is "a statistician drowned in a river with the average depth of 2 cm." Many people don't get it, but I use this in different situations, asking somebody to look at things from a different angle, or just not to take numbers or statistics too seriously. Anyhow, for reference, here are some numbers.

We visited 33 countries. One might argue rightly that I artificially inflated the number by including Tibet, Hong Kong and Macau, who some might consider part of China; Lesotho, which we visited on a day trip; France, where we spent a night in a motel across the Swiss border; Vatican, a tiny republic inside Rome; Saudi Arabia, where we only stayed 10 hours in the airport and it even includes Romania and United States (our home bases). I added all these places because they have different histories, cultures, currencies and/or borders and passport stamps. Even briefly, each experience was a special lesson for us. I think that the country model is way overrated, but unfortunately this is what we have in today's world.

North Camp of Mount Everest. China or Tibet?

We Did It

We did it or we made it. However you want to put it we went around the world and we are back home in five whole pieces. We left Bucharest on Sunday afternoon, in the end of January. A short flight to Vienna, a change of planes to Berlin. A little adventure, I booked a hotel at the wrong airport, I realized at the last moment thanks to Ina. Overnight in Berlin, a short encounter with our friend in the hallway of the airport and we got on our last flight. At JFK we got a car and drove a couple of hours toward our house. We left the children to spend the night with a friend in New Jersey and we spend the last night in a hotel. Tuesday morning we drove a few more hours, stopped at Sam's club and Aldi for groceries. We spent $500 on supplies, for the first time in ages we didn't have to calculate how much we needed to buy, we just got everything that we could think of to resupply our pantry and fill our fridge. In the afternoon, we did the last few miles toward our house. It was epic. Unplanned, Louis Armstrong started to sing on the car stereo "What a Wonderful World". We did the last few miles singing and naming all the landmarks that we've learned so well on our way home. When we entered the house there was a lot of screaming and jumping. It took a few minutes of going through the house to recognize our home. In the evening friends joined us for pizza and champagne. It was epic. We did it, or we made it, however you want to put it, we went around the world!

At the airport in Berlin, AirBerlin carousel 

Our Country

Welcome to my country! Bun venit! (boon veh-NEAT)

What happened? Did I blink and miss it? When did six weeks pass? Though we lived every day, time flew, moving from house to house, from tables laden with homemade traditional food to another one, from conversation to discussion and so forth.

Every day was a celebration!

All Good Things Come To An End

We never got a surprise party. I never had a surprise party. We've never been part of one. We've seen some in Hollywood movies and more than once couldn't really understand how somebody can be so clueless to fall for it. I also couldn't understand what's the fun in it, but imagining how the others saw my face when they yelled "surprise!" was probably worth all the money and the trouble.