Farewell Hari! Fairwell dear friend!

I have long been intending to write a post chronicalling the many warm, wonderful and intersting people we have met along the way, and Hari was kind enough to occasionally remind me. As I sit here on the shore awaiting my ferry across the sea, I want to write this post first to mark Hari’s return to the US of A. He wandered with us across manifold terrain from Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan, but having lapsed his aloted vacation time, he can go no further. He will not pass into the promised land, and I know that this troubles him a little. I am sad to see him, his logisitical capacities, his water filtration skills, his company in the tent, and his constant cheer. But go he must, and I understand this. We thank the NIH for loaning him to us for as much as they did and we made the best of it. There are microscopes to build Hari. I spurr you on! There is a worm’s development to map out! There are post-dcs to hire and a lab to start. A farewell gift is this set of pictures for your lab…

Our Wheelz

Astrid’s crankshaft turned over for the first time in 1994. Gleaming off the assembly line with a bright turquoise paint job and a slightly funky deco interior, it was immediately clear that she had a spunky, no-nonsense attitude and a passion for travel. After a series of dead-end relationships in Germany, she found herself broken-down and out in Dresden. She had fallen in with a bad crowd of used vehicles, some destined for better things and some destined for the proverbial junk yard. On a fateful day in July 2009 she met Amanda and Tristan through a mutual friend (Geri); there was chemistry from the first turn of the key. She got so excited her passenger-side mirror fell off (how embarrassing!). A week later, Amanda and Tristan and Astrid began moving forward with their new relationship. While it was clear she could hold her own on the road, the team came to realize she also carried a lot of baggage. After the relationship had some mileage, she confessed (through a bad valve-tick) that she had a synthetic (oil) drinking problem. Each day presents her with new challenges, new bumps in the road, but we push on (with 2 quarts of…

Borders, Belgrade, Barges, and Bulgaria

En route to Plovdiv from Sofia, 9 pm, 8/4/9

No major health problems as yet (for either humans or the car), although we had to reattach the right-hand passenger mirror after I inadvertently knocked it off (it was loose to begin with, when the car was purchased), and we are all developing a slight heat rash because of the temperature, which regularly exceeds 90 F. I suspect it will only get warmer as we head further east.
The heat also is suppressing our appetite – we are down to ~1.5 meals a day, usually a light breakfast (coffee, the occasional bowl of cereal or pastry) and a heavier linner. We just don’t feel that hungry, in part because we are probably burning far fewer calories as we drive and walk around cities than we do in our normal activity-filled days back in the States. I’m fairly sure I’ll return home ~10 lbs lighter than when I left, although this is nothing new (when I go to India, diarrhea usually thins me out a bit).

I had mentioned last time that we had some issues at the borders. Turns out one needs a ‘green card’ – essentially a proof of insurance in multiple languages.…

Eastern Europe: Grittier, Edgier, Cheaper

8/2/09

11:50 am, Belgrade

I’m writing this from the nice hostel we checked into late (~3 am) last night, while I’m waiting for T$ and PP to rouse themselves. The last few nights our driving has fallen into a pattern – get up around 10 am, explore a city until ~4pm, then drive into the evening and night to get to our next destination. While ok, this has been a bit fatiguing, so we’re taking a ‘down day’ in Belgrade to recharge our mental and physical batteries before continuing east. We need to do a better job of planning our route- the atlas we have is good, but it would be even better to google-map our ongoing route to help us with directions. It’s time consuming to drive into a city and try and find a place to crash when we arrive in the dark, rather than making a reservation beforehand and taking advantage of the daylight. In Slovenia and Switzerland, we could get away with camping near town, but in the large cities of the Eastern bloc, this is less viable. The good news is that these cities seem not to sleep, so we have been always able to find some…

The Journey So Far: Vienna -> Croatia

7/30/09, 1:30 pm

I’m writing this in the car again – we are headed into Southern Croatia, eventually to Dubrovnik on the coast, the ‘pearl of the Adriatic’ according to Lord Byron. The countryside could be classified as Mediterranean – lots of scrub, the occasional evergreen, low-lyiing hills, and squat box-like buildings built into them. Now is a good time to write about the places I’ve been so far.

I flew into Vienna on 7/21, from DC by way of NYC and London. My friends picked me up a few hours late, a consequence of road construction and traffic on the long drive over from Prague (things taking longer than expected has become a common feature of life on the road – despite the way our car eats km up, poor signage is common and we don’t always have clear directions on our atlas). I was pretty tired when they picked me up, so we spent the next day in Vienna while I recovered from the jet lag. Vienna is a beautiful and interesting city – lots of parks, lots of cool architecture and gardens. Of particular note was the butterfly house, a greenhouse with many different species of these colorful insects.…

Initial Meditations on the Trip, 07/28/09

4:30 pm, local time

I’m currently writing this while in the car, finally full with all 4 of us and our possessions. We picked up Peretz Partensky (PP) in Vienna this morning, and are currently en route to Slovenia – had thought first about heading to Ljubljana (the capital), but now may divert to a national park instead. The car, a 1994 Opel Astra, is a blue station wagon, currently stuffed to the gills with tents, backpacks, carbs of various kinds, ice (and regular) tea, pillows, various electronics including PP’s mini laptop that I’m writing this on, the walkie-talkies that PP and Tristan Ursell (T$) are chattering on while in the car, many more items of various functions, and the 4 of us (PP, T$, me, and Amand Dunn, aD, who is driving). I’m sitting in the backseat, and am cramped but oddly satisfied. There’s something great about heading towards a country you’ve never visited before, could only vaguely pinpoint on a map, and *not* having a set plan. Why the trip? Where are we headed? Will the car break down? Will we be able to tolerate each other for the additional 5 weeks that I’m here?

Impossible to answer all these…

Birthday

It’s my birthday.  It’s also the day I gave my “exit talk” which nominally crowned me with a p h d with a bit of champagne, but enough about that.  For the past two months, I have lived out of a backpack, practiced at being a nomad, wandered through three countries while preparing for this road trip through another ten.

I’ve identified some of the skills I will need to endure the road and came up with questions I would like to answer on my path.

• How do I deal with travel fatigue, and how do my interactions with people I meet for the first time and for not more than a few days become something other than an protracted amorphous hello and goodbye?  I need to have my own center and goals, and channel that at productive conversation that I will be responsible for conducting from place to place, leaving and taking.
• I’m curious how successful we will be at using CouchSurfing.com to identify individuals curious to engage and share their realities with us.