....And then came stuff

So before I get too deep into this potentially boring post I thought I'd explain the reason for this blog. After all what is the point of a travel blog when the only travel we've done lately is to the car dealership for our scheduled maintenance on the Honda Fit? I mean seriously, how boring!! You might also notice I tend to ramble on. It's called "Ramblings of Wanderings" for a reason!!

The "pretend" reason is to keep our family and friends updated on our adventures. The real reason is I am old and forgetful. Cheryl likes to scrapbook our lives and if I don't write it down I'll probably forget half of what happened and for sure I'll forget the names of half the places we visit. So Cheryl the editor says to me the writer (terms used loosely): "Get busy blogging now so we can remember how much 'fun' we had getting ready for this trip." Fun? Really? After some early procrastinating I caved and here I am making potentially boring updates about pre-trip planning stuff. Which brings us to the theme of today's blog: STUFF!!

Anyone who knows us knows we have a lot of stuff, so a big trip is bound to result in more stuff. Stuff before the trip, stuff during the trip, stuff after the trip. Fun!! Since we are still in the planning phase I'll be talking about planning stuff. Now this does not mean planning about what stuff we will be getting (though Cheryl does that too). This all about the stuff we are acquiring now to facilitate the organized acquisition of more stuff!

So...stuff piece number one was a new GPS. We have a nice little Garmin and I thought it would be fun to get European maps for it. I've tooled around Europe a bit on some of my military adventures and I know that without good navigation our trip to Europe could end up with us in some Croatian prison because we turned right instead of left at the Austrian border with Italy. Carrying detailed paper maps for all the countries we are now visiting would be like lugging around a phone book everywhere we go. This would not do so I pulled up the Garmin website and quickly found that for the price of one simple European map update we could buy our own small non-Euro Zone European Country (or maybe Greece ). Sooo Instead I sniped an auction on eBay and got us a brand new refurbished GPS preloaded with 2010 European maps. Wooohooo. My job was done. Cheryl's job was just beginning. Once the GPS arrived I plugged it in, fired it up, and tossed it to Cheryl. Since I’m the designated driver in Europe she has been assigned designated navigator duties. As Cheryl is the navigator we (we being me) decided it was her job to program in every town, hotel, restaurant, museum, castle, bathroom...etc that we want to visit. It wasn't too bad of a job (for me). After all we do have the big trip book listing everywhere we are going and everything we are doing!

Book you say? What book is this? Well as part of our excessive planning Cheryl decided we needed a trip planning book. This does not mean we went to Barnes and Noble to buy "Europe for Dummies." No No No!! We dummies made our own book. This book started as a thin three ring binder with a few Wikipedia pages of Munich, Neuschwanstein, Salzburg and such. Of course if you read the earlier post you might have noticed our plans changed a few times. Every time the plans changed the book changed and got thicker and thicker. Now our travel book has Wikipedia pages for every town we are stopping in for anything other than gas or a toilette. It has all of our hotels (we went from one to eleven with our many plan changes). It has historical sites, tourist traps, natural wonders, museums, churches, and even bathrooms (Venice apparently doesn't have many public ones). It even has a list of foreign foods so we don't accidentally end up ordering something like "blutworst" in Germany (congealed blood/fat sausage) or "carne de asino" in Italy (donkey meat). I think I'll pass. So anyway, it's a good thing we got the GPS instead of a big pile of maps because now our trip book is in a much thicker zip up three ring binder. It is bigger than a phone book and one phone book per trip is enough when luggage weight counts!

I could use that segue and dive right into the upcoming luggage shopping adventure. I could discuss such exciting things as: Luggage sizes, colors, and weights. Features like wheels, handles, tags, and built in scales. But I think maybe I've rambled enough for one day.

For those of you faithful readers (of these two whole posts): Don't worry! If you hang around until October I will start blogging about actual travel. Until then you'll have to put up with whatever obscure ramble the editor tells me to blog about. Sorry! So until next time: ciao...etc

Editor's Note- Like I could MAKE him write about anything. I can't MAKE him do anything, and any one who knows him knows this is true!

In the beginning...we planned, unplanned, overplanned, and replanned

So...about three months ago as we were sitting on the couch eating bon bons and watching the "Biggest Loser" Cheryl pipes up with something like "lets go to Germany!" Not sure how sweaty fat people inspired that, but what the heck? I like Europe. We had a big trip planned to Disney World in October and Cheryl had done a bit of sneaky research on her own (Cheryl loves to research and plan) and found that Germany didn't look that much more expensive than Disney World. Hahahhaha hahahh haaaaa...ha....ha...uh...yeah..suuure.

Anyway, we love to travel a lot!! I figured Europe is much more travely than Florida so I was willing to listen. The cost of hotels, rental car, airfare, and theme park were actually about the same as two weeks in Munich... if we flew over on the red-eye, stayed in an average quality hotel and rented a clown car. Interesting I thought. So as we tend to do, we threw out one well planned vacation and started working on another one.

Planning is the theme here today....

Plan number one: Lose some weight... damn bon bons were making us look like fat Americans. That wouldn't do in Europe! That plan hasn't changed. I mention this one just to show that we can stick to a plan. By "stick to a plan" I don't necessarily mean we didn't drop an occasional bon bon down the gullet to cover up the indigestion the Big Mac and fries were causing...we just haven't decided to drop the diet!

Plan number two: Reserve all kinds of stuff. Airline tickets, hotels, clown cars...etc. This was easy. I've been to Germany and have a real good idea of the stuff I'd love to show to Cheryl. My time in Germany was in the Rhineland and Bavaria so I recommended Munich as a base station and taking day trips out from there to Salzburg, Neuschwanstein, Rothenburg, Nuremberg, the Black Forest...etc. That was a great plan and airline tickets were purchased, hotel reservations were made for one hotel in Munich for thirteen nights, and a clown car called a VW Polo was reserved (I'm pretty sure the VW Polo fits in the trunk of the Mini Cooper).

Plans were made for breaking!!

Plan three: Munich is just too centrally located. While studying maps for our day trips we found that Trento, Italy was only 200 miles from Munich...Fun!! Italy got added to the trip. And did you know Trento, Italy is only another 130 miles from Venice? Well hell..We HAD to go to Venice! That made for too long of a day trip so a night in Venice was planned. The clown car was too small to hold real luggage so we decided to keep the hotel in Munich, leave the luggage and take an overnight bag to Venice! Good plan I think! Let's change it!!

Plan four: Did you know Strasbourg, France is basically just across the Rhine River from the Black Forest? Well I did and I casually mentioned that to Cheryl. I should have known that females seem to have some romantic ideal of France and while it isn't Paris, Strasbourg is in France and dammit we HAD to go to France!! Well as you might guess That's too long of a day trip so we added a night in Saarbrucken, Germany...We've talked about the clown car so another overnight bag must be used.. Good Plan I think! Lets change it!!

We were now driving 3,000 miles, visiting Germany, Austria (twice), Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy, and France. Paying for fifteen hotel nights while sleeping for thirteen and contorting into a clown car while driving 100 miles per hour on the Autobahn. This good plan was starting to get a bit smelly.

Plan fifteen: Throw out all plans and replan the replans! This was the best plan yet. Airline tickets are paid for so that didn't change but every other reservation was canceled. We re-did plan five about ten times but I don't think you want to read about plans 5-14 . So here is plan fifteen. We fly into Munich and rent a much bigger car that will hold all our luggage and a couple large Americans. We then spend the night in Munich...twice. Then everywhere we travel to, we spend the night at a nice small hotel full of local flavor and culture. We will spend the night in Southern Bavaria at the base of the Alps; Innsbruck, Austria near the Swiss and Italian borders; Verona, Italy near Juliet's fictional balcony from Romeo and Juliet; Across the bay from Venice, Italy; downtown in Salzurg, Austria; in the middle-age village of Rothenburg, Germany; outside Strasbourg, France near the mighty Rhine River; at a small guasthaus in the hills of the Black Forrest near Triburg; and Finally back to Munich for our last night in Europe.

Phew that was more work than reserving thirteen nights at the Munich Holiday Inn. But wow we are so much more excited to experience the culture of Europe in the small local type hotels. Plus we actually saved money on the hotels, cut out over 1,000 miles of driving, and probably saved my life by not shoehorning me into a tiny little clown car...wooohooo!!

Plan sixteen: haha kidding! Or not...It's still over three months until we fly way. I think with a little bit of planning we can change this itinerary quite a few more times...I'll let you know...

Auf wiedersehen, ciao, au revoir

ps...Plan number one is still in force!!