The Anatomy of a Journey
A Scientific Analysis
written after returning from Cuba, December 2004
At our home, travel arrangements are wonderfully simple. We have clearly defined roles.
All trip preparation – choosing the destination, booking flights, planning the itinerary, navigating on the ground, and dealing with any crises along the way – is my responsibility.
My husband, on the other hand, has the right of veto.
And the right to complain.
After years of travelling together, I've come to realize that every trip follows a predictable cycle. Rather like a butterfly's life cycle—or a human life.
There is, however, one important difference.
In our case, the entire process starts with a single word:
"No."
1. The Planning Stage – Choosing the Destination
I am the one who comes up with the ideas.
Where we should go. When we should go. For how long. How we will get there. What we will do once we're there. And how much it is going to cost.
The proposal must be presented repeatedly and at carefully chosen intervals before it even reaches my husband's subconscious.
The first reaction is almost always the same:
"No."
You can imagine that I have several trips in various stages of development. Some have been there for years, and the answer is still No. (Afghanistan and Mozambique, for example.)
However, when the "No" becomes slightly less emphatic and I detect the faintest spark of interest in my husband's eyes, we move on to:
2. The Persuasion Stage
At this point, I need some seriously good arguments.
Which means it's time for research.
I read guidebooks, novels set in the destination, interviews with people who have travelled there, and stories from those who have relatives in the country. I spend hours exploring the internet.
Then I distill all that information through a single filter:
Will this contribute to my husband's idea of the perfect holiday?
At this stage, there are no limits to strategy—or to the amount of information that quietly disappears during the filtering process.
I don't need to persuade my husband with cultural insights or political history. Those things are largely irrelevant.
Simple pleasures work much better.
Sand and water? Good.
A decent steak? Definitely a plus.
Beautiful women? Also a plus.
A complicated journey involving multiple connections? Not good.
Unless, of course, the flights are with KLM or Air France, where my husband fanatically collects air miles.
As you can see, the system is actually very simple.
So I look for places in the destination country that have sand and diving—and I quietly hope there will also be enough meat.
If I know there isn't (as in Cuba, for example), I switch tactics and act naïve once we're there. I express surprise that not everything can be trusted, or I claim I have reliable information that there used to be plenty of meat there just last year.
As for women—well, that's the easy part. Beauty is purely subjective. It is always possible to say that I find those women attractive, even if they are ugly as sin and have crooked legs.
Admitting the real purpose of the trip—such as that I might want to take photos, visit places, or, heaven forbid, that I have friends there—is strongly discouraged during the persuasion stage.
Such confessions inevitably trigger a long monologue from my husband, in which he declares that he will no longer be responsible for watching over me when I get robbed again, or fall somewhere again.
And then I am expected to confirm that I understand and agree that he will not be my rescuer, that this time he will take the first flight home and leave me in my own mess—because he has simply had enough of helping me out of situations I got myself into through my own recklessness, naivety, and insatiable appetite for experiences in pursuit of some elusive mirage.
He will also immediately add that I will be carrying my own luggage, because he will no longer be my porter for all the "stuff" we women insist on taking on trips.
(Although I must admit that on our last trip to Africa, his only suitcase weighed under 11 kilograms.)
My husband, after all, does not ask much from life. He wants nothing more than to dive, drive a 4x4 through the sand, eat meat in between, and look at beautiful women. Oh—and drink wine.
And the fact that this is not quite enough for me, that I want more from life, is a considerable burden for him.
Once I have agreed to all of this to the satisfaction of the household authority, we move on to:
3. The Booking Stage
This is when we book flights, hotels, cars, and everything else.
Or rather: I spend weeks studying all available sources and then present a proposal.
I take great pride in non-standard places.
I carefully select accommodations with "soul." I don't want a generic concrete hotel block filled with crowds of tourists.
I much prefer a night under the stars in the desert, a small hotel overlooking an old castle, a kibbutz in Israel, or a modern building with unusual architecture.
It's all about genius loci.
During my searches, I regularly fall in love with places that are not on the main routes, are not reached by proper roads, and sometimes are not even on the map. And if they do have known GPS coordinates, they earn extra points.
I call it planned adventure.
4. The Packing stage
The Days Before Departure
I pack everything necessary for survival.
And, rather alarmingly, the older I get, the longer that list becomes.
From medication and spare glasses to mosquito nets. For Cuba, just to be on the safe side, I packed a pocket-sized Spanish phrasebook.
As it turned out, it was almost completely useless.
In Cuba, we needed a much simpler vocabulary...
My husband, on the other hand, is convinced that apart from underwear, two shirts, and a GPS, he needs absolutely nothing else.
One of the things I cannot do without when travelling is the ability to communicate with local people.
If we are heading to a country whose language we do not speak, I always carry a pocket phrasebook with me. For more exotic destinations, I also pack a little book called "Point It", which uses pictures instead of words—images of trains, bread, toilets, and other essential items.
Using this little book invariably resulted in some highly entertaining situations.
For example, in some parts of rural China, showing people a picture of bread or a Western-style toilet achieved absolutely nothing. The locals simply stared at us as though we had just landed from Mars.
For Cuba, just to be on the safe side, I packed a pocket-sized Spanish phrasebook. As it turned out, it was almost completely useless. In Cuba, we needed a much simpler vocabulary...**
5. On the road stage
The Trip Itself
During the journey, there is only one unwritten rule:
All bad experiences are my fault.
The wonderful and unforgettable ones? Those are entirely thanks to my husband.
Naturally, it is my fault
- that we missed the ferry in Helsinki in February and the next one didn't leave for Germany for another three days.
- It is my fault that our flight to Amsterdam was cancelled.
- It is my fault that on our second day in Malaysia my husband left his only decent pair of shoes on the veranda of a local family and then couldn't buy a replacement anywhere in the country because nobody carried his size.
I was to blame
- that there was a thunderstorm in the desert.
- That we were kidnapped in Kashmir.
- for my husband's stomach troubles.
- The third flat tyre in the Sahara within half an hour.
- An earthquake.
- Floods in Sinai.
- Our car being broken into in Spain, Finland and France.
- that my suitcase accidentally flew to Australia while we got off in Singapore.
- The fact that my husband split his forehead open on a very old rusty taxi in Kashmir, and that instead of rushing in with first aid, I fainted.
With stoic calm, I accept the responsibility
- for the tick in Africa that gave him tick-bite fever.
- For the scraped knee he got while snorkelling with sharks.
- For the salmonella he caught in the Ugandan mountains at over three thousand metres above sea level.
Even for those occasions when, somewhere at the end of the world, we first have to catch, kill and cook a chicken before we can finally eat.
Over the years, I have learned how to handle these situations.
I lower my head. I keep my eyes fixed on the ground (so that the Lord of Creation does not see anything in them that might give me away), and I humbly accept responsibility for all the disasters of this world.
Why?
Because the next round of persuasion for the next trip will be much easier than if I rebelled now and demanded justice for all the falsely accused.
6. The Reminiscing Stage
After returning home comes the final—and by far the most pleasant—stage.
"That was an awesome trip. "
Remarkably, it was. It is always...
I have seen and experienced everything I wanted to.
And my husband?
In the end, he was most delighted too.
He didn't even moan when he gave me first aid after my somewhat botched rock jump in Egypt.
Even when he had to drive fifty kilometers back at dusk along Scottish paths and dirt roads to the cows in the pasture because I forgot my tripod while taking pictures there.
Lesson learned
So you might be thinking that your partner is no more stubborn than mine. That you will definitely be able to convince him to travel your way. So that he can enjoy it there and tell everyone what a great trip it was.
I wish you good luck.
And most importantly: have fun.