Boomers, You Can Do It! Part 2
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| Irish Countryside |
"Not only can you travel independently to Europe, but you can do it much more cheaply and easily than you thought possible."
I always hope that sentence will galvanize my listener into action so that he'll race to buy my book,
Europe on a Dime: Five-Star Travel on a One-Star Budget, and
start planning a trip. After all, the book holds your hand,
step-by-step, so you can plan a European experience that is easy on the
budget. Truly,
Europe on a Dime practically makes the reservations for you!
But
no matter how sincerely I promise to walk people through the process,
it's never quite that easy to convince them. No matter how tantalizing
the thought of traipsing down the Champs d'Elysee or cruising the canals
of Venice, there's usually a "yes, but...." counter to my promise of
cheap and meaningful travel.
So, it's time to face
those "yes, buts...." in the next few blog posts. We're going to take a
look at the fears which keep people rooted to their La-Z-Boy recliners when they could be sauntering down exotic cobblestone alleys.
We'll confront the objections head-on in hopes that everyone will soon
feel confident enough to plan a European trip.
I think one of the fears that keeps people firmly at home is the Disaster Fear. What if something terrible happens like a lost passport, stolen wallet, or a car accident? While everyone has resources here at home to cope with these traumas, most of us worry about handling a disaster in Europe.
The truth is that the skills you use to solve problems here will stand you in good stead in another country. If you are resourceful in your home country, you won't have difficulty finding ways to easily solve whatever problem arises in Europe. Handling a major problem would not be your choice, of course, and most likely nothing untoward will ever happen to you on any trip, but allowing that fear to keep you trapped at home is a serious mistake. You can cope if you need to.
I have had a flat tire in the Brittany area of France and a few other physical disasters I'll discuss in another post. But I knew I could cope with all those problems because of the first trip I made to Ireland fifteen years ago when disaster struck not once, but three times.
After my friend and colleague, Jane, spent a week with her boyfriend in Pennsylvania, she and I were to meet at JFK Airport in New York City for our charter flight to Ireland. There, at Shannon, the largest city on the Ireland's west coast, a rental car and seven nights at B and B's were part of the irresistibly inexpensive package.
The first disaster occurred when Jane did not show up at the airport. After I arrived from North Carolina, I waited for hours. No one answered the phone at her boyfriend's house, and, in this era before cell phones, I had no other way to reach her. Had she been in an accident on the way to the airport? Did she miss the plane? Had her boyfriend had a heart attack? Did she have a heart attack?
I stood there, adrift in a sea of people who were striding purposefully along the airport corridors. I was the only one who couldn't move, seemingly moored in place by the stream of never-ending announcements on the public address system, none of which told me to go to a courtesy phone for a call from Jane.
