First Days

It is so beautiful that it is breathtaking.

I’ll start with the beginning. Work. Restlessness. Ideas of trekking the Annapurna Circuit. And then the yen falls. Should we go to Japan? Yes. No. Why not? That’s a tricky question…What would we see? Something that we didn’t. We buy tickets.

Mihai works. Too many hours. I’m supposed to read the books, find places, rent rooms. To do what he did for the around the world trip. I start full of enthusiasm, and then I deflate: every page is a must see, extraordinary, interesting place. I find myself procrastinating. It is easier to brush up my Japanese, but even there I loose myself in grammar trying to understand the different expressions from Essential Expressions for Surviving in Japan.

I tell him I’m not doing my job. Goody, more work for him! Suddenly 4 weeks are not enough to see Japan. We need 6 months, or even move there so we can see everything. How do you decide how long you are going to stay in one place? Maybe you want to see more, or decide that you’ve already had enough. Better live every day. The only planned elements are the flights in and out, a JR-pass that is valid for two weeks after the first use, our first night in New Chitose and a car, rented for a week.

Bags done. Food done (we fly from Toronto and we need sustenance). We pray for a safe trip and a guardian angel. Mihai films us as we leave. We drive for 7 minutes and as I remember all our actions, I ask: “Where is the food?” We return, pick up the food, Japan 2015- take two.

Back on the Road

Interview with Ileana Ruxandra Dascalu

Here you are, after two and a half years after you finished your round the world trip, traveling again and writing in your blog. Why?

Because we like it and because there are many people in our lives that like to “travel” with us. I thought of starting a new blog just for our trips, but decided to continue to write in this one. We are still traveling around the world, though in small steps.

Why Japan?

Back from where we started

Really?

I doubt that!

We’ve been home for quite some time now. But you already know that.

The doors of the airport open and we stumble with our too many bags (our stay in Romania tripled or quadrupled our belongings). The first thing that I see is a big panel on which is written “Bun Venit” (Welcome in Romanian). My heart skips a beat as my adoptive country greets me with my own language. And then I notice the other ones: Malaysian, Russian, German… hey, we’ve been there too.

We take turns driving the rented car: instinctively the foot is searching for an inexistent

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.

Istanbul

What?

You thought that if we bought tickets to go home, we’re really going? And skip this beautiful city? No, no, no, no... too many ties to my country’s and the world’s history. Nope, we had to visit, even if is just for four days.

Leaving the warm Egypt, we prepared for a thermic shock: Istanbul is with ten degrees latitude North of Cairo that translates in a difference of almost 40 degrees Fahrenheit in temperature. We layered all our clothes and hoped for the best.

These ladies are not playing, they're cleaning!

In The City

Flying from Cairo to Istanbul, there is certainly a cultural shock. I didn't expect such a dramatic contrast, after all what's the difference between Egypt and Turkey?

We spent three weeks in Egypt, we've been everywhere and it would have only been fair to spend at least the same amount of time in Turkey. Surprisingly - it is the sixth most popular international touristic destination, ahead of Great Britain or Germany. Turkey receives more tourists every year than all South America, three times more than Australia and New Zealand combined, five times more than Japan or Egypt! People come here from all over the world to see various ruins, Cappadocia, seaside resorts and, of course, Istanbul. I guess all I can learn from the statistics is that we have a pretty good chance of a vacation in Turkey sometime in our future. At this point we look at it differently. With time and energy running out and the winter coming, we had to settle for just a quick stop. To get from Cairo to Romania it is cheaper to stop in Istanbul.

Cairo

Again we’re moving in a block, eyes darting in all directions, reading the intentions of the people surrounding us. They know where they’re going, we have to huddle up so Mihai can look on the iPad to find the streets we’re supposed to follow to reach our hotel. We left Luxor early in the morning, boarded the train and passed the time people-watching, eating, working on the computer.

5 Things That Make Egypt the Most Interesting Country Yet

I might say that Egypt is my favorite country so far as well, but that might be a bit of exaggeration and a lot of relief from the fact that we're going home soon… so I'll just use the adjective 'interesting,' and go from there.

Interesting can mean a lot of things. It can mean interesting as in "lots to learn about it." It can mean "slightly negative situations you're being polite about." It can mean interesting as in, "haven't seen this before."

So, without further ado, here's my list.