Affordable Travel

Do you think travel is too expensive for you?

Do you worry that you will never see great places?

Do you fret that, if you reach great places, you won't have the means to get home, and be forced to wash dishes in another language for a long time, to buy passage home?

Your worries would be over if you contacted my sister, whom I call a genius at travel planning.  In past times, she has showed genius in other areas, and if you want to pass time elsewhere, rest assured that her genius would help you do it.  Alas, she plans only for herself, me and a few others.  She does not make a business of travel planning.  You might still end up washing foreign dishes.

I can help you, basking as I have been, here in Germany, in the glow of her planning skills, which shone on Sunday, August 14.

That day, she booked, online, our late-August flights from Hamburg to London, train from there to Brighton, where she is to house sit after this current house sit, and passage for us, on different days, north to Manchester, her next and last house sit of these two-plus years of house sitting in Europe.  She also found easily-affordable train tickets, actually one-day train passes that cover  one or two states, for our remaining time in Germany.

The north passage is different for each of us because she is to be in Manchester while she still has three days of Brighton house sitting, which I am to do.  Always happy to help, I am confident that I, a travel babe in the woods, will get, alone, from Brighton, through big London, to Manchester.

"Staple your passport to your chest" is among the helpful travel hints she has given me.  Britain voted in June to leave the European Union, but I do not think this break heralds a break of north from south Britain; I therefore will not need my passport.  The staple marks on my chest from flying from Canada to Germany this month are almost healed, so I am ready to heed good advice.

Her Sunday booking session might have included more passages than I recall above, but one thing it did include was economy.  She looked carefully for the best plane and train deals.  The fares she found tell me to tell you that travel is within your budget.  She also considered when the German home owner  would return, which remains an uncertain day, and when the Brighton home owner would leave, a certain day she learned of which she learned only the night before the Sunday booking session.

"You get good at what you practice," is another one of her axioms, and her many axioms merit a book.  This practiced traveler has lived rent-free in Europe for three quarters of the time since she arrived in mid-2014, more than two years ago.  I am far from home, but in good hands.

A few brief years ago, I did not expect to see Europe.  This is my third trip to Europe, each trip heavily subsidized by one or both of my sisters.   After this trip, the longest of the three, I will have seen Europe enough.

In late September, we will return together to Canada.  By early October, we will go our separate ways.

If you have not seen Europe enough, know from me, who saw my sister in action, that travel to and within Europe costs less than you might expect, even if you do not have generous siblings, such as I have.

As my late father-in-law said, you live only once, so go where you can and see what you can during that life.