The End of the Beginning

Reflections on our Adventure

We’re back in California now after our crazy adventure. It may be the end of Eurobears 2022, but we’re just getting started. As a family we have so many more adventures ahead of us. In fact, we’re going to Cazadero Family Performing Arts camp next week! We’re really excited about a week in the woods with other families that love to sing and dance! But before we close the book on Europe, here’s some of the things we learned on our trip:

Traveling as a family is awesome

At the start of our trip, we were a little worried about traveling with a six year old. Would it be too hard? Would we feel “held back”? Not at all. Baby Bear rose to the challenge and became an excellent traveler. She got into the rhythm of setting up a new bed every night, started looking forward to listening to fun educational podcasts on long car rides, and learned to switch into “go mode” when needed. But most importantly, she brought so much joy and purpose into the trip. The newness of a place and the excitement of discovery and learning are all heightened through the eyes of a child. Teaching her about the Romans and Catholics etc, brought new spark to our own curiosity. And her interests added to our itinerary: finding playgrounds with swings, cannons to sit on.

Traveling is a full time job

Originally, we had thought about mixing travel and work. We ended up ditching the work part, and honestly, I’ve never been busier. Researching what to do (and what needs to booked ahead of time), booking places to stay and writing a blog are all on top of a day of checking out, driving, exploring new places, organizing check-in (surprisingly complex since they don’t really do self check-in or parking), setting up a new place, more exploring etc. Every day was filled with excitement but also tiring. But to be honest, I really enjoyed having a few months where I didn’t have time to watch Netflix.

Three months is enough

But it’s really a job that only needs three months. After a few months, the excitement of seeing new things starts to fade. Are we collecting too many new experiences without the headspace to capture and save all those memories? Also we start missing the stability of home, of seeing other people somewhat consistently.

History is vast, amazing, and frightening

Driving through the Mediterranean was an amazing way to learn history. And there is so much of it. From Portugal to Croatia we experienced the remnants of the vast Roman empire. And having driven it, man it really was vast. And the Romans are a tiny blip in the totality of history in the region. Greeks, Phoenicians, Christians, modern times… every place we went to had layers and layers of history. Slovenia and Croatia as part of Yugoslavia. Turkey in the Ottoman empire. The whole region after world war I and world war II. So much changes. Europe has had such a dynamic history over thousands of years. It is truly mind boggling to see cities which have been built and rebuilt across civilizations and millenia. It is amazing to see the current cities and cultures and trace back to how it evolved from the myriad of civilizations and critical events of the past.

And it is frightening. Because 90% of history is war and atrocity. Europe has largely been shaped by conquest, wars and persecution. The beautiful hilltop villages and walled cities are built for protection. The historical sites are monuments to war, or evidence of conquest as new temples or churches are built upon old ones. Even the grand Coliseum, a “sporting arena”, was full of bloody gladiator battles and a reminder of much more violent days. When explaining all of this to a seven year old, it’s striking to see how much our culture has changed. In our daily lives it is quite taboo to hit someone, and yet our human history is quite violent. Today we still fight wars. People are dying every day in Ukraine. There are more troops today than anytime in history. Looking at history, it seems all too plausible that we can return to a more violent world, and that is a bit frightening.

California is pretty awesome

Traveling through Europe was amazing but also really makes me appreciate some things about the US and California. In no particular order:

Weather: with heat waves spreading across Europe (we had a couple days where we hid inside with the air conditioning all day), it’s really nice to come to our house with no AC and be able to enjoy the outdoors and not be scared of the sun. In Turkey there were a few days where we thought we’d get heat stroke. Being too hot trumps everything else. How can you enjoy anything while melting?

Drinking water: while most of the water in Europe is safe to drink, there is a strong cultural bias for drinking tap water at restaurants. Thus there is a mountain of tiny plastic bottles being thrown out left and right, and we feel “rude” for not ordering bottled water and sneaking drinks from our refillable water bottles. It results in not drinking enough water, which doesn’t work so well with the whole heat wave mentioned above.

Access to Bathrooms: The US also has lot of clean, free, publicly accessible bathrooms. It seems that the right to pee is not universal. It seems like a small thing, but the psychological comfort of being able to pee when needed is huge.

Smoking: California has essentially limited smoking to special areas, so you can enjoy dinner indoors or outdoors free of smoke. In Europe, there is SO much smoking. There is a strong outdoor eating culture which looks beautiful, but there’s a 90% chance that someone will start smoking as it is commonly done before AND after a meal. Second hand smoke is almost a guarantee.

Smells: On that note, European cities are old, and even nice looking places often have a little sewer smell, especially after it rains. Toilets tend to smell like sewer even in some nice places we stay at, just because the infrastructure is that old! So toilet lid down became a must. California is amazingly dry and really doesn’t smell. Same with clothes. In humid places, you definitely have to wash your clothes more often, and oh yeah, there are no dryers in Europe. Hang dry only.

“Fast” food: We’re not fans of fast food in the US, but we are certainly fans of moderately paced food and food to-go. In Europe, it can be hard to find a casual place which can just churn out food to go or relatively fast. So grabbing lunch can be a 2 hour affair and dinner a 3 hour affair. This can be nice on occasion, but when traveling, that eats up the whole day. Where’s Chipotle when you need it?

Hmm, looks like I’m really thankful for California. Good thing we live here!

Mission Accomplished

Eurobears 2022 has been a great success. We bonded as a family, traveled far and wide and learned so much. We filled our savings account with new experiences that will last a lifetime. But this is just the start. We’re excited to go on many more adventures, both large and small as a family. For instance, we need to go to Santa Cruz to see the pizza spinning at Kianti’s since we saw NO pizza spinning in Italy. And Japan is on the list once Asia really opens up again. Here’s to the future

!