Travel: my selfish pursuit

Travel is a rather selfish activity. By that, I don’t mean that travel is turning me into a people hating world destroying recluse. No, what I mean is that travel is something that really focuses on being of benefit to the individual doing the travel, in this case me, and no-one else.

Allow me to explain myself. I am just coasting over the hill of thirty, having spent a couple of years now in my third decade. I have a pretty tight knit group of friends who I have grown to know and love over the years. And because they are all running about as late with the whole growing up and settling down thing as me, many of them hadn’t, by the time I left, gotten around to doing the grown up stuff yet. You know – the getting married, having kids… buying a house… sort of thing that responsible adults are encouraged to get on with doing at some point.

Unfortunately, now that I’ve been away from home for nearly two years, things have started to change. Girlfriends are starting to put their feet down, and are pointing out that biological clocks don’t have a wind back mechanism. Marriage proposals are flying around like autumnal swallows seeking warmer weather. Tense negotiations are being held with banks about mortgages. And I’m on the other side of the world, far away from all of these things, watching all my friends grow up as I continue to wander in a vaguely irresponsible fashion, questing for something else.

This year of travelling, I am focusing on wandering the islands of New Zealand. The price for this wandering is missing out on not one, but three weddings of incredibly close friends. Luckily one of them had already decided on a small family only wedding. The other two had invited me to be an usher.

The main reason for missing these events is financial - the cost of a return flight from New Zealand to the UK is fairly mind boggling – and spending four months in the UK for two days worth of wedding fun at great expense just doesn’t seem sensible.

And this is kind of a problem with travel, at least the way I do it. I have no shame in admitting that I put myself first. It’s all about amazing experiences and scenic vistas that I get to witness first hand, and about pleasing and amusing myself.

I love my friends and family, but I have resigned myself to the fact that I’m not likely to see many of them for a while to come. Some of them realised this as I was leaving, when I was unable to answer the question of when I’d be back. Some thought I was just going through a phase, and six months after leaving I’d be back where I left off.

As it is, two years on, I have a lot more world to see, and nothing but finances to hold me back. Finances which I’m doing my best to top up by working as I go, which I’m clinging onto, and not squandering on dashing back to the UK so I don’t miss out on friends key events.

Long term travel, whilst a wonderful experience for me, does seem to carry with it the risk of growing apart from friends. It could be argued of course that these friends were always going to be lost – after all, many of my best friends are the ones whom I don’t see for months or even years at a time, and then get back on track with almost straight away. But the risk of being away for one too many key life events does gnaw at me somewhat.

Technology, the internet, Facebook - these are all things that help us stay in touch, to a point. This blog has even got me back in touch with friends who had drifted away from me. But it is hardly a substitute for real time together.

There is a balance I guess. A line to walk between ostracising myself and experiencing all that I want to. It can be a tricky line to walk, and I am yet to see what the end result will be. With luck I am not walking the line too close to the wind, and gaining experiences at great expense. At least, I really hope not.

I’d love to know what your thoughts on this matter are. Do you travel long term? How do you keep up to date with happenings back home? Are you missing key events in your friends lives that you worry will result in you growing apart? Or do you think friendships overcome these hurdles? Let me know in the comments below.

German weddings

Well, it seems only natural, after two posts on German love, that I run the full gamut of the experience and attend what some would believe is the natural outcome of the silver birch and padlock shenanigans, that being marriage.

The wedding we attended this weekend was held in Dusseldorf, just under an hour away on the still scarily fast autobahn. We were driving in Vera’s brothers Audi, which is more than capable of hitting speeds in excess of that which would normally catapult you through time itself, but in this case merely transported us in comfort and speed to the wedding venue. This took place in a Church near the centre of the city, and there was, before the service even began, oodles of champagne to be had. A great start.

The wedding service was overseen by two (two!) priests, one from the Catholic side, one from the Protestant side of the Christian faith. I’m not entirely au fait with the differences in these particular sects, but I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t battle it out on the altar to see who would get to do the actual wedding. As it was they rather politely took it in turns to read bits from their books. Most congenial.

After the actual service, and my rather poor attempts to sing along to the German hymns, we all stood outside the church and drank some more champagne. At this point the main difference between English and German weddings became apparent. It seems that the bride and groom are set a number of tasks throughout the course of the day. Some of these are common to most German weddings, like cutting out a heart shape from a giant piece of cloth, and then the groom carrying the bride through it. Others are specific to the couple, like throwing darts at heart shaped balloons. It certainly gave us all something to laugh at anyway. These tasks and games went on throughout the entire wedding, and included a full on pantomime performance. Impressive stuff.

After the church the whole wedding party assembled into their cars and formed a rather raucous convoy through Dusseldorf to the actual hotel where the evening party was being held, which was a bit like a cross between a farmhouse and a castle. Here serving people wandered around with giant platters of beer, balloons were released, and then we were let into the dining room where food was almost upon us. Some speeches in German later, and we were unleashed upon the buffet.

I am aware that there are various schools of thought as to wedding dining, such as whether or not a full on table service system is preferable to the buffet system. Personally I prefer a decent buffet as trying to serve 100 people with hot food all at the same time can be a bit of a challenge, whereas a buffet is self heating. Plus you can eat as much as you want. The food was entirely excellent. Of course, the downside to eating my own body weight in duck breast and crayfish was that I wasn’t really capable of moving in any great manner on the dance floor, but given that wedding dance music seems to be even worse in Germany than the fare you get in the UK, (and my inability to dance with any form of co-ordination) this wasn’t a bad thing. I quietly slumped in the corner and drank more beer. Waiters wandered around with trays of Grappe. After a few refreshing shots, I finally made it to the dance floor to er, bust out some moves, before we called it a night and headed back to our hotel. A wonderful wedding experience. The following day I restored myself to my natural health with a giant pile of fried food. Bliss.

So that was weddings in Germany. Tremendous fun all around, with the added bonus that I may never need to eat again.

In other, completed unrelated news, in a bid to reduce his worldly possessions before his move to tropical destinations, my brother currently has a number of items of his life for sale on ebay. If you are interested in snapping up some relative technological bargains (there’s a PSP for a mind boggling £20 at the moment), head on over to his page on ebay to check them out. Enjoy your day folks!

Oh, crikey

There are pivotal moments in a relationship. You know, the First Kiss. (And first other stuff that we won’t go into for fear of having to X-rate the blog.) The moving in together. The discussion about where the relationship is. The official confirmation of the relationship on facebook. Etc.. Lots of these are actually fun. However, today is a first that is usually not rated entirely highly as an activity, that being the first time I Meet The Parents. Capitalised, justly I feel. Naturally I am well prepared for the event. I have rolled my dreads. Topics of conversation are mentally prepared (What do you do? Not a lot. What do you intend to do with the rest of your life? As little as possible. And so on.) I can only see it going well.

That, I’m sure, is enough of a relationship update. No-one wants to read too much about this stuff I’m sure, unless it is of the going comically wrong nature. Naturally I will let you know when that happens.

I learnt yesterday that there is a giant gaming expo going on in Cologne towards the end of August, called Gamescon. As I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m quite a fan of gaming (although I have cut down my fix to the once a year review of the best games, as Chosen By Craig (tm)), so this will be a good opportunity to wander around and see all the latest developments before heading off to New Zealand for another year or so of technological hermitry. I am just making these words up folks. The spellchecker is having an apoplectic fit.

Otherwise it is back to business as usual in Germany. The sun is shining. The backgammon has been played. A giant thunderstorm nearly took the roof off yesterday. The sunflowers are flowering. The cats are slowly turning into puddles of cat fur in the heat. Summer continues to be pretty great. Enjoy! (apologies if you are reading this from the Southern Hemisphere in Winter. I can highly recommend a swallow like northerly migration.)