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HEY BOOMERS, DUST OFF YOUR BACKPACKS

TRAVEL THE WORLD ON A LIMITED BUDGET

AROUND THE WORLD ALONE

ON SOCIAL SECURITY

LINDA J. BROWN

A Hey Boomers Media Book

2011 Broadway Ave.

Clearwater, Florida, 33755

thereof, may not be reproduced in

any form without permission

First Edition, 2008

Visit our website at www.heyboomers.com

Brown, Linda J.

Hey Boomers, Dust Off Your Backpacks: Travel The World On A Limited Budget/ Linda J. Brown

ISBN 978-0-9820049-5-1

1. Baby Boomers

2. Around The World Travel

3. Social Security

4. Budget Travel

5. Backpacking/Hostelling

6. Senior Travel

7. Traveler's writings, American

BISAC # TRV026050

To intrepid travelers of every century,

no matter what their age.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WHEN FEAR FELL AWAY

PREFACE

SLEEPING WITH GUYS HALF MY AGE

SLOVENIA

Ljubljana, Dreznica, Bled

HUNGARY

Heviz, Budapest

BULGARIA

Sofia, Varna

SERBIA

Belgrade

SLOVAKIA

Kezmarok

POLAND

Krakow, Auschwitz/Birkenau, Salt Mines, Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw

CZECH REPUBLIC

Prague

SLOVENIA

Piran

CROATIA

Rovinj Rijeka

BOSNIA

Sarajevo

CROATIA

Dubrovnik

MONTENEGRO

Podgorica

ALBANIA

Shkoder, Tirana

MACEDONIA

Skopje

TURKEY

Istanbul, Cappadocia, Olympos

Part II

Egypt, India and Thailand

EGYPT

Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Nile River Felucca, Mt. Sinai, Cairo

INDIA

Mumbai, Pune, Osho Ashram, Goa, Panjim, Calangute Beach, Palolem Beach, Mysore, Ahmadabad, Udaipur, Narayan Seva Sansthan Hospital, Kali Puja, New Delhi, Agra, Taj Mahal, Old Delhi, Calcutta

THAILAND

Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Ethnic Hill Tribes: Li Su Village, Karen Village, Ko Payam Island, Phuket

A LOVE LETTER TO THE BOOMERS

WHEN FEAR FALLS AWAY FROM YOU

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF COSTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Fawn Germer, my friend, mentor, and exercise buddy, who encouraged and counseled me about getting my work into print while we sweated through long fitness walks beside Clearwater Bay. She is my example of a successful author.

To my editor, Lynn Stratton, who protected the world from knowing the wrong stuff about me and encouraged me to give more of the right stuff; to Teri Swift, my friend, neighbor and computer professional who converted the manuscript into print format, I am grateful for your expertise and for being available when I needed you both.

To Deb Kunzie, of GarlicDzign, for designing my blogsite, heyboomers.com, which will tell the world about this book, I am glad our paths crossed.

To my son, Randy Brown, whose knowledge about literature and art I completely respect, and who took care of home base while I went gallivanting; thanks for being there every step of the way in the writing, proofing, and cover design. To my sister, Ann Sargent, for a last-minute proofing and further correction suggestions for which I am very grateful.

Thanks also to my friends, Renee Hardman and Polly Wylie, who kept up with my progress during bike rides and lunches over the years, and to the Kirkhams, now of Denver, Colorado: my daughter, Jennifer, son-in-law, Kevin, and grand-children, Riley, 10, and Molly, 8, who cheered me on and voted on things that needed deciding.

WHEN FEAR FELL AWAY

We were descending the summit of Pyramid Peak near Aspen, Colorado, when I had my first—and final—face-to-face encounter with fear. I stared it down, and I haven’t heard from it since.

It was August 1988, and I'd climbed this killer mountain three times before, never much thinking of its drastic reputation among mountaineers as the toughest and most dangerous of Colorado's “fourteeners,” the mountaineer’s term for any mountain over 14,000 feet. But the death of famed theoretical physicist Heinz Pagels, just the week before, was on my mind.

At fifty, I was only a year older than he had been on that gorgeous July day when he hugged the same rock face and edged his right foot blindly around the curve to find a solid place on the narrow ledge. Pyramid is what’s called a "rotten" mountain, and it was his bad luck to find a rotten rock with that right foot. Thinking of him that day, I survived his ledge, but there was a scree-covered slope just ahead with my name on it

Someone else in my party had already crossed an angled slab of granite and was waiting to grab my hand, once I'd taken several long steps necessary to traverse the sideways-slanting rock crossed by the trail. Then, I stopped short. There was nothing for four thousand feet to catch a plummeting body. Plus, tiny pebbles of scree littered that slick rock, and they could easily send my boot soles skidding.

"I could die ten seconds from now," I heard a part of my mind whisper to myself, as fear found a wide open door into my heart. I felt his cold fingers along my spine and noticed how that affected the backs of my knees and put a stricture in my throat. For one split second, I even considered challenging my own belief that what one takes up the mountain, one must also carry down, including my own inexpert body.

Then, I remembered the lesson of the labor room, twenty-five years before. My babies were born by natural childbirth and I went into labor fully trained to cooperate. Midpoint, and simply out of curiosity, I had experimented for one tiny moment to see what would happen if I stopped doing the breathing and relaxing exercises that I'd been taught. Wham—the pain hit hard. Now, I understood why those women down the hall were screaming and crying in such fear: They were unprepared, and so afraid that their bodies naturally clenched up and worked against them. There in that labor room bed I took charge of myself and resumed the exercises, and all went well.

And, on this mountain, I took charge of myself again. Tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, tak, said my mind, verbalizing the six steps required; using my hands to rehearse the placement of my feet. That launched my body across the open space and, in seconds, I was holding my friend's outstretched hand. Fear had lost its foothold and must have fallen into the abyss instead, because I haven’t seen him since.

Over the next quarter-century, there were many opportunities for fear to return to my heart. I left my happygo-lucky life in glorious Aspen to plan and lead group trips to the Soviet Union, taking Westerners to meet the people of that vast land when the Iron Curtain fell apart. Strange and dicey things happened all the time, but they gave me exhilaration and happiness instead of fear and worry. That sort of travel led to an appetite for more, and I began to roam the less-traveled places of the world, alone. Recently, I proved that I could safely wander across the entire Northern Hemisphere by myself, with only a backpack, for a year. Soon, I'll set out to do the same throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Even as I age along, I do not encounter that old rascal, Fear. My beloved mountain, Pyramid Peak in Colorado, took him away from me forever.

PREFACE

There’s a certain kind of story that pops up in our minds when we’re sitting around a campfire, or a dinner table, and someone says, “Let me tell you about the funniest bus trip I ever took . . .” Or the wildest camel ride, or the strangest meal, or whatever.

If you’re a veteran traveler too, then all of your own stories in those same categories will come to mind, ready for the telling when the first speaker is finished. Human beings have always been this way. It’s how we spent our evenings, back in the cave. And it’s often how we spend them today, if we ever take the time to sit around a fire. So, come now and gather around my campfire while I tell my tales. I call out to a vast population, the Baby Boomers, the oldest of whom are, at the very least, eight years younger than me. A few boomers began to tiptoe into early retirement at age 62, in February of 2008, but the greater majority must wait a few more years until they can draw full Social Security benefits.

Boomers may not yet have comforting stories in their minds, as I do, with the strange vistas I’ve seen through the gauze of a government check, because they’re still among the uninitiated. I’m like an elderly warrior, securely under the protection of the Tribal Fund, who has returned to tell of good times possible on the other side of the great age divide. Boomers cannot yet go to learn the truth for themselves, and they may quake at the thought of seventh-decade bones lugging belongings along unlit back roads to strange beds and uncertain sanitation. Historically, that Tribal Fund has spelled an end to the happy-go-lucky life and a beginning of a long and dreaded decline into dotage.

But, here am I, with genuine tales to the contrary. I’ve been Out There, and I’m going again. Let me tell you what it’s like to be socially secure under the most insecure of circumstances. Let me tell you how I traveled all over, and eventually around the world alone, on Social Security.

My traveling style is quite wingdingarooney, just like my self-taught snow-skiing. I like to go fast. Through all the years that I lived in Aspen, Colorado, try as I might to carve those nice, safe turns, I usually wound up heading straight down the mountain, gathering speed, and hoping I could make the next curve in the trail without a spectacular wipeout. Somehow, I never got hurt; did no damage to people or their property, and had a very exhilarating time, but I hung up my skis when I turned sixty-five because my younger friends were getting their blown-out-knees replaced. Nowadays, I’m still carrying on that tradition of throwing myself down the mountain and then seeing what happens, by heading out into the world with a minimum of preparation.

I have two disclaimers to make. First, I hardly expect many of you to roar out the door, like I do, and fling yourselves down the mountains of adventure travel without a safety net. But if I’m doing it the hard way, then perhaps I can defuse any temptation of yours to use age as an excuse. You can go kamikaze skiing with me vicariously and then make up your own style, having seen that the wide-open spaces are relatively forgiving and that the world is actually quite safe. This is not a how-to book. There are many excellent ones already available. This is a what-happened-to-me book, which might give you an inkling of things that could happen to you if you also become enthralled with extemporaneous travel.

The second disclaimer is that it would be foolish of me to say that everyone can do this on Social Security. I can, only because certain conditions apply: I’m single and healthy and lead a very simple lifestyle with no debts and few expenses. I do have a good thing going for me, in that my Social Security check is pretty large. I’m collecting as if I were a doctor, without ever having gone to medical school, thanks to the fact that I married a physician and became eligible for his Social Security when he passed away.

After six or seven decades on this planet, none of us will have exactly the same configuration of lifestyle. We geriatrics may all look alike to those in charge now, but we’re still very, very individual, which means that my story surely won’t fit your circumstances. But my attitude might possibly have an impact upon your own. And, that’s what I’m really trying to convey: thoughts, discoveries, and conclusions about this high-wire act called Life.

Growing up in the Fifties in the small town of Winter Haven, Florida, I had the same aspirations as the other girls in my class: to fall in love, marry and raise a family. I married a medical student right after graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in Journalism and Broadcasting. Some decades later, after my children were raised, I grew restless with my settled life, left my husband, and eventually moved to Aspen, where I became involved with grassroots travel to the Soviet Union just as that country was beginning to open up.

Westerners were curious to meet Russian citizens and to see the country that had been closed to them for over seventy years. An informal movement called Citizen Diplomacy soon developed, to allow teachers and other professionals to interact with their Soviet counterparts. Two of my friends participated in those early groups and returned to set up their own small travel companies to meet the need for bringing Americans to the USSR for homestays, conferences, and short business seminars. I spent the next four years helping to plan and lead group tours to Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Siberia. There was no model for this sort of work and we were completely independent of any government, other than the requirements of the complicated Russian visa application. We employed doctoral candidates in the computer sciences to set up the tours and to provide us with university students as local guides and translators.

I was actually within the Soviet Union, and the Republics that developed later, for a total of eighteen months during that four-year period. It was a very exciting time to be in the USSR, and all such travel necessarily had a very wingdingarooney flavor. Later, I became qualified to lead conventional group tours by taking a course at the International Tour Manager Academy in Denver, but my real interest is in solitary rambling in strange countries, to see what I can see. Inevitably, I’ll not see all the sights available in a given location and I’ll have frustrations that the escorted traveler will never know; but it’s always possible for me to develop a mystical sense of belonging to a place, simply because I’m free to loaf around in it.

When I set out in 2005 on my around-the-world journey, I was trying to be a lady and to do a little something to preserve a dignity befitting my advanced years, so backpacking hadn’t yet occurred to me. But after daily agonies with an assortment of suitcases across the length and breadth of Central Europe, I succumbed to an enormous pack, bought on the run in Prague, which did solve the problem. I never knew how many pounds I was carrying, but I’m eagerly looking forward to the day when an experienced mountain man informs me that an eighty-five liter pack was built for giants.

SLEEPING WITH GUYS HALF MY AGE:

HOSTELING AROUND THE WORLD

ON SOCIAL SECURITY

EASTERN EUROPE

2005 - Age 67

Is an around-the-world journey the Holy Grail of travel?

For me, that was the case. It seemed so far to travel, so difficult, so expensive, and so foreign. Plus, I didn’t want to whisk around in eighty days. I wanted a trip that I could savor, one that made me feel as if I were living in permanent travel mode.

One that took me a whole year.

It was just too tempting not to use my fat Social Security check to follow my dreams. This obligingly hit the bank once a month, requiring nothing more of me than to keep aging along. Having also inherited my ex-husband’s fine, bright-yellow pickup truck, I had no need of my sweet little bright-yellow 1979 VW restored convertible, so I sold it for $6000 and used that stash for airfare, Intrepid group trips, and incidentals. All in all, the money came out right on the nose. I never quite ran out, but I also had nothing left over—only the memories, and twelve handwritten journals from which these stories have been gleaned—with plenty of them remaining untold, as you might imagine.

I can’t call myself a backpacker during this first section, covering most of Eastern Europe, as I was busy having luggage headaches of the first order. I became a backpacker when finally, in Prague, I’d had it up to here with rolling suitcases. Actually, if your definition of a backpacker is one who camps out, hikes everywhere and eats granola, then I’ll never live up to that description. Hostels and hotels were my form of shelter and I only chose this sort of luggage because I was sick and tired of every other kind of suitcase used during the first months of this trip. There’s so much to be said for a pack that can be worn. Yes, it’s very heavy, but it is practical and, in the long run, a great deal easier.

My departure preparation consisted of pesky details concerning my house, yard, air tickets, immunizations, and money, as well as the future anticipated needs of family and friends. I was very fortunate that my son Randy, was willing to handle my business affairs while I was out of the country. Aside from designing my route and buying the first half of my plane tickets, it was too early to detail plans for overland travel. I’ve always done that by the seat of my pants.

The trip was launched in mid-May 2005, with a visit to my daughter’s family in Castledawson, Northern Ireland, where my grandchildren took me to their schools to give talks about this sort of traveling. I showed the classes my little tricks of the trade for savvy travel – the skirt that converted into either long pants or shorts, the hidden pouch in my rain jacket for emergency funds, the zippered pocket in my sock, and the first of many journals which I would fill with my stories—the same stories which I am including in this book.

From Ireland, I flew to Zagreb, Croatia, and took the train into Slovenia to begin a four-month ramble through Eastern Europe, before heading to the Middle East and Asia. Life is different and so I am different when I’m “on the road.” It’s good to have a pleasant place to slip into the traveling role which, unfortunately, only strangers see me in.

Superman had his phone booth; I had Ljubljana.

SLOVENIA

Ljubljana

Tuesday, May 31: Such a beautiful little jewel of a capital city. It reminds me of San Antonio’s Riverwalk, with an Old Town spread along a charming river canal. Small boutiques filled with beautiful clothing, jewelry and art make shopping fun, even for a non-shopper like me. Then, there are the enticing cafes with their outdoor umbrella tables, which create a quandary as to which one to patronize next. Most amazing is that the waiters seem to actually want you to stay a whole afternoon.

Home to 60,000 students, Ljubljana has a vibrant, youthful, university atmosphere.

It’s a good place to get my bearings and to shed the role of mother/grandmother/ local senior citizen and put on my traveling attitude again. I need to linger long over a good glass of wine, with my guidebooks spread out before me, to figure out just where I want to go within this large chunk of the world. Then, I’ll take those ideas to the nearest internet cafe and do some practical exploring among the many choices of accommodations within my chosen villages and cities. Something will turn up, and that’s where I’ll go next.

Ljubljana is a very clean city, with good sidewalks and everything in good repair. This country is known as the richest portion of old Yugoslavia. The land isn’t much good for agriculture, so Slovenia has become a center of industry, learning, finance, and mountain sports, which attract many local tourists in summer and winter alike.

One small fact gleaned from my city tour was about a historic bank there. Long after the present bank was established, archeological records showed that the Treasury, or bank equivalent, in Roman times was located on that very spot. So, all through the ages, there was financial prosperity to the place.

Somewhere near that bank building are the subjects of a poignant folk tale about two lovers, kept apart in life, but now able to gaze upon one another, forever. He was the country’s most famous poet, Dr. France Preseren, born in 1800, whose statue stands grandly in the central square. She was Julia, whom he had met just two weeks before her wedding. They fell madly in love, but she honored her betrothal vows and became the wife of a man she now could not love.

Julia was the love of Preseren’s life, and many of his famous poems are about her. On the side of a building, directly in the statue’s line of sight, is a bas-relief statue of her lovely young head and shoulders, leaning out of a carved window, set between two of the actual second floor windows. It seems so natural that she is forever looking into his eyes, and he is permanently gazing at her from across the piazza.

This beloved story tells something about the romantic and sentimental character of this sweet town. Honeymooners would not be disappointed with its atmosphere, considering that its name means “beloved,” from the Russian word for love, Ljublju.

The Fluxus Hostel, at $27 for a dorm bunk, is half the cost of the cheapest hotel. It is brand new, brightly decorated, and very clean and quiet, despite 100% occupancy.

What is it like to sleep in a coed bunk room, surrounded by thirty assorted men and women? It’s just fine. Mutual consideration makes it work out. I wear a loose sundress to bed and get dressed in the morning under the covers, quietly and modestly, as do many others. All are extremely respectful of each other’s privacy and right to sleep late. No loud conversations; no turning on the lights or getting in each other’s way; no violation of each other’s possessions, often strewn about the base of every bunk. There are good lockers for valuables, but backpacks are usually kept handy and available, perhaps just shoved under the bed or to the side. I feel completely at home in this environment and have never had any bad experience with it. Generally, no one even snores.

All but me are attractive young adults; they’re not kids, and they don’t behave as such. Most are already out of university. The subject of one’s travels is usually the first thing we all talk about: where you’ve just been, and where you’re headed. It’s at these times that I realize what a Road Warrior I really am, because my experience often ranks me as equal, and often senior, in unique mileage. This is surely why they don’t see me as representing my age, but simply as a well-broken-in fellow traveler, with advice of my own to share about off-beat places.

Soon, it became necessary to figure out where to go next and I turned to the hostel and pension listings for Slovenia on my favorite backpacker’s website, BootsnAll.com. I based my selection on the availability of a bed. When I had located one and booked it, I checked to see where it was and that’s how I wound up staying in a family home in a small Slovenian village.

Dreznica

Friday, June 3: I have truly landed in paradise. Who knows when I’ll ever come out?

What a wonderful mountain village it is, a small collection of two- and three-story white houses with red tile roofs, built in the Swiss style. All the balconies have flower boxes spilling over with trailing blossoms in bright red or pale purple. The houses are placed all higgledy-piggledy, with little dirt alleyways between them, and when you walk along the paths, you see well-used farming equipment, a horse-drawn plow, or a small tractor, pulled up beside the barn, and then you catch a whiff of the cows inside or hear them stirring about.

The barns are built cozily close to the house and path, as are tiny hen houses and patches of bright green vegetables. In that village, a whole farm could be contained within one building lot, right in town, and it looks as if there never has been any city planning. Instead, the layout reflects the original sprouting up of cabins, facing all sorts of directions, with footpaths winding among them. Oddly, there are no old houses; every single one of them seems to be brand new and modern. But, it is a very old village, or so I hear. The most striking feature about Dreznica is the lovely Catholic Church built high on a small hill so that it towers grandly above the village. It is literally the centerpiece of life here.

My hostess, Monica, meets me in her little red car soon after I climbed off the bus. Her five-year-old daughter, Luzita, is crying away in the back seat, and continues to do so all the way home, without making the least impression on her mother.

Monica’s village is about three miles into the forested mountains above the small town of Kobarid, which contains a few restaurants, a war museum, and several shops. I can hitchhike there whenever I need to go; Monica says it is the accepted way, and there is always traffic to and fro. Before the switchback road to Dreznica was built by the army for one of the wars, the only way between the two towns was a rope ladder, slung over a perpendicular cliff. I don’t imagine they did much heavy shopping in the bigger city.

Kobarid is famous with war buffs because in 1917 this territory was Italian and named Caporetto, the “white town” described in A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway, who was a medic in World War I, passed through here on his way to the front. That seems like a rather slender claim to fame, but they make a big thing of it there. The front must have, at some point, been right near Kobarid and Dreznica, as well, judging by the extreme loss of life by all of the armies involved.

Monica tells me of the million unburied bodies in the mountains above the village. She says that in World War II a large number of soldiers fighting in the extremely hostile mountain conditions were killed; many villagers also had died then.

Dreznica was squeezed between three different armies. There was the Italian Army, the Communist Army, and also a very Catholic army. After World War I, this part of Slovenia was declared a part of Italy, and its citizens were forced to speak only Italian. They hated to be under that flag. Many villagers were taken away during the night, and even today, their families don’t know what became of them. Not only were partisan activities avenged, but old scores were settled once a former antagonist gained power. Many of the bodies in the woods some of them civilian date from that period.

Monica also speaks of the lovely village graveyard right beside the house. She admits that some guests take one look at it and refuse to stay there, going off to find other accommodations not so close. Originally, that site was at the very edge of the village, but now it is almost at the center. Someone can always be seen tending the plot of a loved one. Her husband’s older brother was killed in a mountain fall four years before my visit. He still seems very close to them because his grave is just across the low wall beside the driveway. Everyone in this village is related to everyone else. Monica’s mother, brother, and stepfather own the only restaurant here, and her brother runs the paragliding operation, which I hope to patronize. In spite of roads, cars, and other small settlements within walking distance Dreznica feels isolated,. When I look up, all I can see are ragged mountains nearby, closing me in.

I learned, finally, that earthquakes are the reason that all the houses are new. The most recent quakes were in 1996 and 1998, and another had struck in 1978, so they come fairly regularly. The government helped a little with the rebuilding money, but taxes went up, so the local citizens will wind up paying, anyway.

The people of Dreznica are very much connected with the modern world and right on top of things, with nothing at all provincial or backwoods about any of them or their attractive homes. Yet, they’re the genuine article in their living connection to history, having bridged that gap most successfully. Family life is conducted in the very same way that ours in the States is, as far as I could see. In fact, I made a shoe-buying trip with Monica’s family to a nearby town. I wanted hiking shoes and a different and much lighter suitcase, the first of many attempts to solve my luggage woes.

Bled

Friday, June 10: I fall ever more deeply in love with Slovenia. A walk through my hostel’s neighborhood has me oohhing and ahhhing at every turn. First, I walked the streets leading up the mountainside, ostensibly looking for the road to the old church, high up there, but I didn’t really care where I wound up. The hostel is on a slightly commercial main road circling the base of the mountain, but the streets leading upwards are all residential, and truly, each house and garden would do any upper-middle-class neighborhood in the States proud. The houses all look new and unique. There’s that Swiss look again and all those blooming flowers in their boxes on windows and balconies. Everything is happily colorful.

Among my fellow hostel guests were six ladies from London. They have been friends for twenty years and every now and then will leave their husbands and children at home and hop on a plane for a long weekend in some new and interesting part of the world. We spent the day together exploring the little resort town which circles the lake. These English gals never neglect their tea time, and I was privileged to share it with them in a lakeside park gazebo. Each woman is responsible for bringing along one particular necessity, such as a piece of equipment or an ingredient. I watched in amazement as they combined their items and had us a boil-up in no time flat.

The famous Lake Bled is ringed by lovely green mountains. After tea, we rented a boat and rowed out to the small island in the center of the lake. Almost every square inch of this island is filled with a great big white church. A wedding was about to begin and we witnessed their very athletic bridal custom, which requires the groom to scoop up the bride and carry her to the church door over several hundred steep steps. This groom looked like a Marine and managed very well, but pity any poor Jack Sprat to marry here.

From Bled, Slovenia to Heviz, Hungary

A great storm front moved across Eastern Europe bringing rain and much lower temperatures. Among my travel literature was a booklet about the Hungarian Hot Springs Spas which I had become slightly familiar with on a previous trip to Budapest. After studying this menu of delightfully appealing Bath Cures, I chose the small town of Heviz, Hungary, close to the shores of Lake Ballaton, which seemed to offer a wide array of lovely hotels offering relatively inexpensive packages for a week of massage, hot springs soaks, food, rooms and medical supervision. Why not hunker down in such luxury while the storm blew over? I hopped a train for Hungary.

HUNGARY

Heviz

Wednesday, June 16: By the time I reached Heviz, the Shingles, which started before I left home, had returned, and I hoped that this Cure might make them disappear. Shingles are caused by a virus that hides deep in the nerve tissue of people who have had chickenpox as children. Silent throughout life, they sometimes come on with a vengeance in the senior years, and it was just my luck that this condition would strike me for the first time as I was planning this around-the-world trip.

Other people get Shingles on their backs but mine come out on my face, looking red, feeling very itchy, and swelling my eyes shut. Plus, all of my energy disappears for the week or more that my nerves are inflamed. Eventually, my health always returns to normal, helped along by steroids and antibiotics. I’d already had a flare-up of this condition in Slovenia, and was now on my second bout of the trip

Right at the moment, I needed to rest and do nothing but eat, sleep and soak in healing waters, so I decided to seek alternative cures, as my doctor at home had suggested I do if my symptoms returned.

The spa package in the Panorama Hotel is under six hundred dollars for the whole week and that includes the room, two meals per day and an initial physical examination. I also scheduled acupressure treatments by a Chinese doctor.

The hotel is certainly well-located, right in the heart of the bustling little spa town, on a shady promenade lined with attractive shops and restaurants. This avenue is always full of happy people in bathrobes, bathing suits, or colorful summer clothing as they walk back and forth between the hot springs and the hotels.

A brief overview of a curative spa experience:

The admitting doctor said that they had no suggested treatment for Shingles and looking in vain for signs of rheumatism, something that they do claim to help. I was prescribed a daily massage and long soaks in the small lake nearby, plus a seaweed wrap during the week.

The thermal waters of the tiny lake come from a deep crevasse in the earth and are believed to contain healing minerals. At 89.6 degrees, the little pond feels neither hot nor cold, but just pleasant. One needs a swim ring as the bottom is far below and treading water becomes quickly exhausting.

There has to be a large component of faith here, because these folks are very serious about the efficacy of mineral baths. Probably most of the clients do have the usual problems of aging and the aches and pains of rheumatism, but this is obviously not a place for sick people. Those with heart trouble, malignant tumors and infectious diseases are not permitted to use the lake. I was expecting really hot water because Tamas, my translator, said not to stay in it very long. In the afternoon, I went to my first full body massage. You can’t be bashful, that’s for sure. A pleasant young therapist showed me to his curtained massage room and spread the blue cloth I’d been given this morning onto his table. There’s not even a pretense at modesty. You strip and lie face down on the table with no towels or drapes as one gets in the States. It was a very good twenty minute massage, on the back side only, from toes to neck.

The days take on a lazy pattern of floating on the lake, meals, massages, and rests in my room. I spend the day in a bathing suit with a luxurious white terry cloth robe, as do all the cure patients. And that’s about it, day after day. Evenings, I dress and go to a restaurant. One day I got a gooshy green seaweed pack while lying on a table and was then wrapped in warm cloths to steep. After that, I stumbled into a way-toohot bath to soak the stuff off and to uncover my purified pores.

Tuesday, June 21: Nothing interferes today. No clouds chill the earth, no wind comes up; there’s no separation between me and the strangers who surround me, speaking their incomprehensible language. I feel no need to watch, and I do not feel watched in return. After nearly a week of immersion in my Hungarian spa cure, it occurs to me that I’ve lost all interest in carrying on any sort of internal, intellectual activity, such as studying people, or thinking about the next move I must make on my travels. I simply float on my inner tube in this warm little lake created by a hot spring, letting myself drift away into a lazy trance-like state.

The lake is healing me; if not of the Shingles, then of the condition of Uptight, which I would have sworn that I did not have. I just keep paddling around, dreamily returning to my detached self; feeling full of well-being; having nowhere to hurry off to. Where I am, in the middle of a tiny Hungarian lake, is exactly fine with me; floating obliviously with all the others, who also seem to be in the same semi-conscious state.

Late in the day, it occurs to me that it is the first day of summer. What a fine way to spend it. Very probably, it is the best Summer Equinox I’ve ever had. I wonder what in the world I will be, where in the world I will be, and who in the world I will have become on the last day of summer, three months from this day.

In three months time, I’ll still be in Eastern Europe, but how many more of its wonders will have affected me? What friends will pass through these days on the way to Fall? Now, when I can see ahead only to the next train destination, and that only after much deliberation, I have no idea of the specific shape that my life is going to take.

Only one thing is certain: Unless the uncertainty of life decides to intervene, I will be a year older when autumn rolls around. Sixty-eight is so ancient-sounding. But, if this Coming of Age phase continues to work its miracles, I’ll be younger than ever.

Two teenage boys play ballads with a cello and a flute in the park as the swimmers amble home. I take a bench break to listen and to admire the bright green, backlit leaves all around me. Another shot of afterglow. I’m now singing: “Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.”

I went to an outdoor restaurant late that night where a musician named Claus is the performer. I had admired his fine interpretations of popular Western songs the last time I ate dinner there and had complimented him after that performance. So I was very pleased to see him again and we waved at each other as I took a seat. Later, Claus came to the table on his break. It wasn’t a good night for him, because the mosquitoes were picking on him instead of the customers. The tops of his hands were swollen because he was defenseless against their bites while playing his instruments. Claus apologized, in advance, for any mistakes in his music tonight and also for the scent of citronella around him, explaining that both he and his small son always draw mosquitoes to themselves. His wife, he says, never gets bitten.

I had to laugh, because I had thought a great deal about bite prevention back home before leaving on this trip, especially as a way to avoid getting malaria later on, in India. I’d fallen for a catalogue advertisement selling a mosquito-repellent watch: All you had to do was push a button, and a tiny, high-pitched sound would drive away the pregnant females, which, the ad claimed, do most of the biting. Apparently, the watch convinced them that a male mosquito was around and, wanting nothing to do with males, they would flee. Of course, you had to leave the sound turned on all the time if you wanted any sort of protection.

Well, none of the mosquitoes, in Florida at least, seemed to be fazed by the noise, though it set my teeth on edge. Still, I brought it along with me, even though I couldn’t bear to wear the clunky thing. Once, I put it on the nightstand to see if it would clear the room of the buzzing insects and still allow me to sleep through the annoying sound. It was dark when I gave up in frustration and wildly mashed all six control buttons until it finally shut up. I must have seriously confused its electronic brain, because I never could get it to work again.

Claus was welcome to it, and I promised to bring it along with me the next night. Claus turns out to be a true gadget freak, and it’s the novelty which appeals to him, even more than the actual expectation of fooling any pregnant Hungarian mosquitoes. The whole subject became a running joke throughout the evening.

Musings on the bus ride to Budapest

Thursday, June 23: Hungary is thoroughly modern, clean, and beautiful. It has charming towns reflecting that Swiss Alpine architecture, with flower boxes in every window, and there are golden wheat fields and flat, rolling green land with small rises and hills in the distance.

It is not cheap, but it is very reasonable. My four-hour bus trip to Budapest costs fifteen dollars. I find that they have the same U.K. department store chains, Tesco and Lidl that my daughter patronizes in Northern Ireland, and within which Hungarian city women purchase the same products, even the same name brands, as we do in the States. Many of the world’s goods—trucks, clothing, paint, cement, whatever—come from the same international suppliers. Somewhere, in some office, a sales representative is writing an order for a million nuts and bolts to go to Hungary, whether that representative is in Japan, England, or America. Whatever the world uses, or wants to carry in its stores, will wind up there, no matter where it is made.

Why did I put two huge extra tubes of toothpaste in my already heavy luggage? I could buy the same brand in Eastern Europe. Why did I bring that enormous bottle of Ibuprophen? Those items alone added an extra two pounds, and I’d have to lug them halfway around the world before I’d even need them. How did I forget that these very things, and often these very brands, are on many grocer’s shelves, in every town in the world?

While I’m traveling between Heviz and Budapest, I’m basically doing a portion of what most tourists would call a “Tour of Europe.” I’m aboard a very fine, air-conditioned motor coach heading for a major European city on the Danube: Budapest, one of the most popular package tour destinations of all travel agencies. The tours that I am qualified to lead, as a tour manager, all involve days of transport between cities on similar coaches, so this could easily have been one of them, filled with Americans, instead of locals.

I’m now passing through the same countryside that they would see. Right here, it isn’t very exciting, and it looks a great deal like home. Here is where a good Tour Manager would be lecturing, in a most enthralling way, about the history of the land, or what the travelers will find at their hotel in Budapest, or the exciting adventures just ahead. Anything to uphold the exotic perception of the country that the paying tourists have come to explore.

The whole touristy thing is merely packaging, anyway. Maybe forty or fifty years ago, in each country, certain landmarks, buildings, churches, cathedrals, museums, galleries, and such, were identified as must-see spots. Around those well-photographed squares, fountains, and promenades were built plenty of cafes and souvenir stalls, and a few blocks away, many parking slots were provided for massive tour buses. Then, the giants of the travel industry must have met to divvy up the visiting hours, in order to space apart millions of tourists who would obediently flock to see what the brochures told them must be consumed by the well-rounded traveler.

Meanwhile, the people in that country are living their normal lives, frequently in the same circumstances that the tourists enjoy at home. I am now passing huge malls, just like ours. I see all the same fast food outlets. Other than the language on the signs, this Hungarian city could be any city in the West. Europe is just not that different anymore—in fact, it’s necessary to “Frenchify” Paris, or “romanticize” London, so that the tourists will feel that they have left home at all. What if St. Louis had no Arch; Paris, no Eiffel Tower; and New York, no Statue of Liberty? How would they advertise themselves?

Ironically, only a few miles away from these famous scenes may be a suburb with a modern shopping mall, full of familiar products. If visitors fly in and out, then the illusion is easier to maintain, but if they motor coach between cities, they have to look long and carefully inside the boundaries of Oz to find that Hungarian flavor they want, in order to feel as if they have “done” Europe, and not Detroit.

Generally, I travel to towns where no Americans go, like Heviz. These places haven’t yet bothered to position themselves as “must see” destinations so that Westerners will come and drop money on them.

Budapest

Kelati Train Station, Thursday, June 23, 4:30 p.m.: I entered Budapest’s large international train station and headed straight to the information window before going to the ticket window to make my purchase. The last time I was here, I had failed to get my train information first and that was a serious oversight. Now, it seemed like forever before the line finally moved forward. As people who are kept waiting will, I indulged in some friendly grousing with a fellow ticket buyer.

A tall British man in front of me remarked that if anyone wanted to experience a throwback to the Soviet era, they would have to go no farther than this train station. I agreed, saying that nothing had changed in the three years since I had stood in this very spot buying a ticket to Romania.

“Nothing has changed in seventy or eighty years,” he said. “This was the Communist Party’s method of giving everyone a job. They broke up any task into minute parts and assigned them to different people, who all take their time to do the work.”

I mentioned that even with computers on every desk, they still write out everything by hand, in triplicate. A memory of my years of Soviet travel during the early 1990’s flashed back: a day in Lvov, Ukraine, when I stood with my two translators at the train station window, needing to buy a ticket to Kiev. We were in a huge crowd pressing around the small wooden opening behind which sat a Ticket Dictator. No one formed a line; they all just pressed in close hoping to squeeze their way to the front. Then, when their turn came, they had to bend over in order to see through the low wooden window to speak to the woman in charge; in effect, causing them to bow before her. Arbitrarily, that window might slam shut at any time whenever she needed a break for a cigarette or lunch. This is why ticket purchasing was often done the day before by those in the know, because it sometimes took all day. Now, of course, Communism is no longer in charge, but inertia has kept things fairly static in the modernization department.

Here’s the way it operates in 2005 in Budapest’s international train station: People stand in obedient lines and you finally get your turn in front of a big glass window for your purchase, once you have acquired the data from the information window. The ticket lady then jumps up and disappears around the corner when you hand her the slip of paper telling her the train that you need. She’