We’re just over a month into this trip now, and it’s time to hit you up with some travel wisdom. A few driving-thoughts from our time on the road. Starting with Technology…
Technology
For the love of the Luddites, please don’t make me download a bloody app to ‘do things’. Parking, Charging, Buying Tickets… This doesn’t make anything easy. It’s a bloody nightmare. And it’s a double-bloody-nightmare if you don’t speak the language.
Also, if you’ve got a website, have a website. If it doesn’t load, provides no information, doesn’t allow you to book or buy tickets or reserve seats, you don’t have a website, you’ve got an angry Ben in a car park, shouting at a phone.
In the technology-tick box though, holy crap, this stuff is like magic. Much of the travel we’ve done would have been a full-blown Royal Clusterfuffle if we didn’t have:
a) Mobile phones (obvs),
b) Roaming contracts (cheap obvs),
c) Google Maps & GPS. *Note, Apple Maps can get in the bin,
d) Translation apps (saved us more than once).
… And in a deferential bow to our AI overlords, thank Turing for ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Between them, they’ve provided a fantastic wealth of routing advice, accommodation recommendations, planning tips and so much more. Of course, they have also provided a healthy dose of utter f*cking garbage, and have been repeatedly flayed, like Basil Fawlty birch-whipping a car.
Travelling by car
Speaking of cars, we’re now about 3000 miles (old money) or 4828 kilometres into our journey (my satnav exclusively uses km now – Miles are a complete nonsense and should be deleted from history).
We’ve done a good bit of driving on other big trips – around the USA for 3 months, or through Australia for a month. We’ve also hired cars many, many times on other shorter holidays, but this is the first time we’ve meandered our way through so many countries, and it’s been fascinating.
Firstly, whoever invented aircon in cars deserves a Nobel prize. At times (including when we were still in the UK), we have just gone to the car to cool down. This has been a climate-destroying godsend and it would have been miserable without.
On less prosaic matters, in making our way across Europe, we’ve been surprised to feel the threads of EU unity binding together these distinct nations. While ostensibly administrative, when driving, the harmonisation of e.g. road signage, speed limits, insurance coverage, border management, etc creates a familiarity, and blurs the divisions between countries. Cross-border tourism is so easy without border controls, you can almost feel the melding of cultures; the mixing of languages and customs. There’s a lack of obvious animosity towards neighbouring EU nations. Often when we’ve been driving, we’re playing spot the nationality based on the EU symbol on the numberplate, and so frequently, it’s not from the country we’re in.
Not a huge surprise, but we’re also immensely grateful to natively speak the Lingua Franca in Europe. English is the default language for every foreigner in a foreign land, so we feel very privileged to be almost fluent in it… and of course, we also feel utterly ignorant.
Summer in Europe
Final reflection for now. Being selfishly child-free, we have generally avoided holidaying in the core summer months. We’ve been fortunate to avoid congestion, inflated prices, lack of availability, busyness, queues, and of course, children. We started this trip with open eyes and knew we’d be flouting this rule, but it would be a lie to say that it’s been easy.
Travelling in June, July (and soon, August) is hot. I know, I know, everywhere’s hot, but we’ve by choice gone to the hotter bits. It’s hot and it’s crowded. It’s hot, crowded and expensive. This isn’t to say that it’s bad – it’s not. It’s been really amazing, but my wisdomous reflections are nothing if not honest, and honestly, I suspect we’ll avoid holidaying in southern Europe at this time of year in future.
In future episodes, we’ll dive into packing, travel kit, supplies, cool boxes, and other exciting car-travel accoutrements (that’s French for ‘other junk’).
P.s. The image might have a little AI dusted around the edges.
Travels with Sklaroffs 