Gorman Stories

I grew up studying maps, and paid attention to every highway, every town, every crossing of railroad tracks or a river. On a vacation, the map was my best friend. I knew where I was.

Today I am driving a motor home with a global positioning satellite. There is no confusion. I tell it where I want to end up and the female voice (my preference) tells me when to turn in 100 meters and for how long to remain on that highway before turning again in 100 meters.

It lacks soul. It is at arm’s length from reality. I have no idea where I am as I cross from Belgium into Germany. I’m not even sure what direction I’m heading (but I assume east or south). I am crossing grand rivers but don’t know their names. On the tiny screen of a GPS it shows only as a blue ribbon the width of a pencil.

Earlier in the day, we had typed in an address of a campground in Heidelberg, Germany, where we planned to spend the night. En route, we stopped at Trier, Germany, where we saw Roman ruins dating back to the second century. It was amazing, to touch stones that were cut and positioned more than 1,800 years ago to funnel people into the town, or to keep enemies out. On this day, 50 yards from the main Roman gateway, a Japanese man was selling his wire sculptures to tourists who were more interested in his designs than in Roman soldier’s architectural accomplishments 1,800 years earlier.. His soft wire trumped tons of cut rock towering above the town center.

In Heidelberg, we drove alongside a river. The GPS did not identify the river, but it was beautiful, cutting through the hills of western Germany, hills covered by a thick blanket of oak and maple and birch trees. We were entering the Black Forest.

We found a campsite – we’re not sure if it was the campsite that GPS wanted us to find. Daughter saw a roadside sign pointing to this one, and we drove in to check it out. It would cost 28 euro, and offered wi-fi for 2 euro an hour, and we were within 100 feet of the river, and we had full electrical hookup so we could play with the satellite TV. Ah, camping.

Daughter cooked us a fine dinner, and we explored our RV on our first night on the road – all of its luxuries and  practicalities. We’re not sure we figured out how to heat the water, and the fridge isn’t as cold as we would have expected, but the TV worked great, and Daughter’s cordon bleau with salad was great, and the Scotch was good, and the wine too.

Jeanne laid down as I began typing this blog, and started to chuckle. She was reading a Mark Twain book about western Germany, and it mentioned the great river that cut through Heidelberg. Finally, the river that on the GPS showed only as a blue ribbon had a name. We were camping in the Neckar Gorge, which according to Twain, afforded a most stunning view.

I asked Jeanne how she knew this, because I didn’t see her pack any books. She said she was reading from her Sony e-reader. And I’m still trying to get my hands around the day: watching satellite TV in a campground that I found through a GPS, alongside a river whose name I discovered from a digitally uploaded novel being read on an electronic reader..

I’m sure I could have seen the river by calling up Google Earth on my miniature laptop computer with its wireless  connection. But, you know what? I actually walked down to look at it.

It was lovely.

It didn’t take long to grow comfortable with Mobi, running down the German autobahn at 130 kilometers an hour. No, I don’t know how fast that is in miles per hour and it really doesn’t matter, I suppose, because speed is relative. I was passing a lot of vehicles, but some very fancy sedans were passing me as if I were standing still.

I was very irritated by one vehicle that really slowed me down. It was a German police mini-van, that had been following me, then passed me, then slowed down. A flashing light on the back read, very clearly, “Bitte folgen.” I had no idea what bitte folgen meant.

Then the police car’s flashing lights turned on and I felt bad for whomever was in front of it. But there was no one in front of the German police car. And both officers inside the vehicle looked over their shoulder and waved madly at me as they drove to a near stop and pulled onto a dirt road. They waved for me to follow them. Hmmm.

Jeanne was asleep in the back. Daughter, sitting shotgun, said “Uh oh.” And I wondered what I had done wrong. The officers were a man and a woman and their combined age was 50 at most. Their uniforms looked like they were Scouts, khaki green with a badge embroidered on their shoulders. But I assumed the gun and handcuffs on their belts were real. 

The woman officer said something to me in what I assume was German. I looked blankly. She said it again. I said hello. She asked, “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” I said, “Huh?” She said, “Do you speak German?” I said no, in my very best English. She said, “Uh oh.” (In any language, “uh oh” translates as “uh oh.”)

She beckoned her partner, who spoke somewhat better English. Long story short: I had passed someone but didn’t make it back into the slow lane fast enough. I crossed the pavement that was painted, I guess, out of bounds. I drove over an imaginary median. Busted!

“You must pay 119 euro,” the young man said. I thought he was asking for a bribe. I was on guard to be bribed. Daughter’s Boyfriend had warned me that in the Czech Republic or in Poland, I might be pulled over by police and told to pay money to avoid something worse. So, being prepared, I told the young German officer that I had only 30 euro on me. (More was in the glove box but, truthfully, I only had 30 euros on me.)

He said he takes American Express.

And damn if they didn’t have a credit card imprinter in their vehicle, along with their weapons.

As I waited for them to complete the paperwork, another police car pulled off the highway and onto the dirt road, followed by a sedan that, I assume, was also busted for some infraction. I felt as one with some strange European. But then I saw the two officers who pulled him over. They were two hot blonde German police officers. 

As I waited for my ticket to be processed, I chatted with my officers. I told them I would like to take their pictures because I’m sure I would write about them as my new friends. Suddenly the male officer spoke very good English: “Oh no, no photographs. Our boss does not want to see us on the Internet.”

I promised them they would not be on the Internet. I did not take their photographs nor get their names. But the officer spelled “Sprechen sie Deutsch” for me, and he told me what “bitte folgen” meant: “Follow me.”

I now know five words of German.

Mobi for three weeks to travel across Europe, 5,000 euro. Traffic ticket, 119 euro. Personal language lessons from a German police officer on the outskirts of Trier, priceless.

American Express, don’t leave home without it.

This afternoon we picked up the motorhome, better known by its nickname, Mobi. It’s a smart vehicle, with a refrigerator/freezer that runs on 220 volts, 12-volt battery or propane depending on the situation, a flat screen TV with rooftop satellite dish and DVD player, rooftop solar panels to help charge the auxiliary battery, a bathroom featuring a separate shower and a toilet with a swivel seat (!) to maximize space, a three-burner range (but no oven, which was disappointing to Daughter who likes heating croissants for breakfast) and tons of storage. Tons.

At the dealership,I was taught how to turn the pedestal dining table into the second bed for Daughter, how to dump the toilet, how to run the GPS and how to know the difference between the diesel-fuel intake and the water intake. “People are stupid,” the young man said when explaining the difference. And then he added for some reason, “You’re American, yes?”

While I was getting the how-to tour, Daughter’s Boyfriend went inside the salesroom to find something to drink, and returned with two beers. Belgium.

Boyfriend followed me home, and not more than 3 minutes after leaving the dealership he waved me over on the highway. A corner of the rear bumper had come loose and was flapping badly. We’ll have to find some duct tape but hopefully this won’t be a sign of what’s to come.

When I pulled up to Daughter’s and Boyfriend’s downtown Antwerp apartment building, I encountered my first real driving test: parallel parking a 21-foot motorhome in a spot that was maybe 23 or 24 feet long. You can see the results. Jeanne and Daughter then loaded up the food, bedding and other provisions.

So tomorrow we begin our vacation in earnest. Jeanne is poring over the map and the tour books to find the best campground prospects, and they all sound marvelous, with rivers running through them. This won’t be the Europe we already know, the one with honking cars, police sirens with their signature European wail, and the constant rumble of the street cars. This will be its soft, quiet side. We are ready for Germany’s Black Forest.

After just a day in Belgium, you learn two things very quickly.  One: people love their beers and, well, they’re pretty good. Monica, my health coach, will kill me. I had three in one day.

The other thing you discover quickly is that Belgians love their sauces. And, they’re good.

Now, for the record, I’m not a big sauce person. I prefer lighter meals, like this antipasto appetizer plate that Daughter put out before our evening walk.

But when in Antwerp, eventually you have to do what Antwerpians do. For dinner, Daughter and Boyfriend suggested what they refer to as the Chicken House, one of a dozen or so restaurants and sidewalk cafes at what is called the Grand Marketplace, or the historic square in downtown Antwerp.

There are other things on the menu but the moment you walk in and see, smell and feel (the heat) of the wall of chickens on the rotisseries behind the hostess, you figure you’ve got to do chicken.  The chicken can come plain, but the menu offers various sauces and that is clearly  the intention: you want chicken? Then you get it with sauce.

Red wine-and-mushroom sauce. Mushroom pepper sauce. Stroganoff sauce. Provencal, curry, Bordelaise, béarnaise, compote… All sorts of sauces.

And you chose between fries or skillet country potatoes. But there don’t seem to be any vegetables in the house, and just one side-salad offering.

But there are lots of beers.

We are in Antwerp. Daughter and Boyfriend fed us breakfast — bacon, eggs, juice, and croissants with soft cheese. It was our second morning, and our second breakfast, of the day.

It started with a dear coworker, Emily, taking us to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas at 6:30 a.m. Saturday. Eleven hours of air travel later, plus a stop at Dulles, we were touching down in Brussels, 7:20 a.m. Sunday, Belgium time, 10:20 p.m. July 4th based on our Las Vegas clock.

Even before the start of our flight, Jeanne got into the shopping mood, finding an open gift store that had just the pendant she had been looking for, a charm of a Bichon.

Loading was delayed because the Airbus 320 had been cooking in the morning desert sun like some Dutch oven prior to our loading as its first trip of the day. The back of the plane was a sauna.

One of the flight attendants joined her colleagues at the front of the plane while the final passengers were taking their seats, and I could easily overhear her complaining: “I’m dripping sweat! I’ve already poured three cups of water out of the bag of ice and it’s only going to get worse. We got three extra bags of ice put on board but we’ll be lucky to end up with half of it.

“And the pilots? They’re up there with their own air conditioning. We shouldn’t be taking this! They shouldn’t have loaded the plane until we said it was cool enough. It’s still too hot back there!  And the pilots, they’re going to want some cold drinks? Oh, I think they can forget that!”

One of the flight attendants didn’t seem to be doing much work. I asked another attendant what was up. “He’s not feeling well,” he said. “The plane was real hot when we got in, and it got to him.”

As soon as the flight was in the air, one of the attendants sat down in a passenger seat and pointed two air funnels at his head.

The plane slowly cooled and the flight was uneventful.

At Dulles I happened across a duty-free shop. Bingo! Two bottles of Scotch and one of Drambuie. I’d be set for our vacation, and then some.  Jeanne thought it was appropriate, each of us scoring before we even got to Europe. “My pooch and your hooch,” she said.

We transferred to a Boeing 777. Among the passengers were dozens of retirees — including a handful of Las Vegans — headed  to Antwerp for a 16-day riverboat cruise. It sounded like fun, if a bit tame. Maybe in three weeks we would wish for tame.

We never experienced complete nightfall.  To the north, the horizon remained a ribbon of soft red, from sunset until sunrise.

Neither Jeanne nor I could sleep. I was mesmerized by the video screen’s display of flight data: flying at 37,000 feet, 560 mph, outside temperature 59 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

We’re not in Vegas any more.

We have packed, we have had the house cleaned and we have eaten! Son and daughter-in-law have been hugged and my mother has been tucked into her apartment. There are only little things left to do like make a phone list to carry, since our cell phones are not international and will remain home. One final wash is needed to freshen the towels. We argued about this. No clothing left in the hampers or leave a little for later? I won.

Tom keeps adding little things like a soap box to the suitcases. But he refuses to re-weigh them, telling me that it’s only a half-ounce here and one there. We’ll see when they weigh them at the airport…

The “boys” are looking at us with pouting eyes, trying to make us feel guilty enough to stay home. It’s not working, but it’s a good try for two dogs. They will be missed. Someday when we retire and go on trips they will go with us….if they’re still alive. It may take that long to retire in this economy.

I will miss my home and doggies and stuff…..but a great adventure awaits. I won’t even chance to say that we’ll have a terrific time or a horrific time. But it will be an adventure, I’m sure of that!!!!

Wish us luck ‘cuz we’re leaving on a jet plane!!!!

Jeanne is, if nothing else, an expert packer. We have a real weight scale in the bathroom, the kind you see at the doctor’s office where you slide the counterweights to measure your weight to the eighth-pound (so that I can weigh 229 and 7/8ths versus 230). And when Jeanne is done filling a suitcase, she says with great authority and confidence: Weigh it!

And it will weigh in at 49 1/2 pounds, just shy of the 50-pound limit. Jeanne is the human weight scale. She should work at a carnival. She’d look at me and say 230 – no, wait, 229 and 7/8ths! — and I wouldn’t win the plush yellow snake. 

So last night we packed, 24 hours earlier than we needed to. Jeanne wanted it done. The first suitcase came in at 48 pounds. (OK, it was an off night). The second one, 45 pounds but she figured as much because she wasn’t done with it. And before we tackled the last one, we decided to pack our meds.

I’m not saying we have a lot of meds but when we call our insurance company for refills, the phone menu says: Press 1 if you are a new customer, press 2 to place a refill; press 3 if you are checking the status of an order; press 4 if you are the Gormans.

Jeanne pulled out six one-week plastic pill containers (3 for each of us) to get our pills perfectly planned, and then she lined up our amber-gold bottles of pills without child-locking caps. I won’t explain what they’re all for but suffice to say we are old and our body chemicals, from head to toe, are off-kilter.

And for all the time it took to pack the first two suitcases, it took twice as long to figure out the pills. When a pill box fell off Jeanne’s lap and the contents spilled, I heard a stifled sob.

When we were done, we admired their colors. Jeanne’s, more than mine, looked like a colorful grab-bag selection of multi-flavored Jelly Belly jelly beans.  

By midnight or so, we were done, and I had my last-minute shopping list, which I’m about to go out and get: a travel-soap container and travel-size tube of toothpaste and shaving cream(CVS).  A doohickey that reduces a grounded three-plug to a two-plug for European transformers/converters, and a couple of quick-release link thingies to connect my backpack zippers so nobody can unzip them from behind and grab my camera without my detecting them (Home Depot).

By Jeanne’s reckoning, these last-minute items will bring the last suitcase up to 49 and 7/8ths pounds. 

We would have gone over if we had packed another week of pills.

We’ve been planning our RV trip through Europe for a few months and the realization that we leave in just two days is hard to grasp. We’ve prided ourselves on being calm, thoughtful, focused, paying attention to the important details.

For instance, we remembered to contact AAA in Canada a couple of weeks ago to get an international camping card, so we don’t have to give the campground manager our passports to make sure we don’t skip out without paying. That would be a nuisance because we wouldn’t have our passports with us when we take the buses into town. We leave the camping card instead. Somehow it vouches for us.

The other to-do’s on the checklist are almost all done, too. I got myself a great camera-carrying backpack, and my money belt, and the other day we bought a pair of duffel bags because they’ll be easier to handle than suitcases in the mobi. Jeanne has picked up the items that Daughter and Boyfriend want us to mule over to them. We even remembered to print up business cards to leave behind so people we befriend will know how to contact us. Last night we walked the house sitter through our home. The dogs will be groomed before we leave. In other words, just about everything is done.

But wait, no, it’s not.

We’ve got to call the credit card companies and tell them not to cancel our cards when they see strange charges in Europe. We’ve got to scan our important documents – passports, drivers’ licenses, credit cards, insurance policies and the like – so we can e-mail them to our kids, and to print out copies for ourselves, in case we lose the originals and need backups for proof. We’ve got to shift money around in our bank accounts so we’ve got enough cash in our debit account. I’ve got to download a ton of albums into my MP3 player and make sure all my electronic toys are charged and we have all the recharging cables and USB cables and batteries. We need to do one more load of wash. We need to clean the house and open up the suitcases and see if everything fits.

And when we walk out the door early Saturday morning, we need to make sure the toilet isn’t running and the iron is off. Well, no we don’t. The iron is never on.

Our flight leaves Las Vegas at 8 a.m.  We land in Brussels 12 1/2 hours later – 7:30 a.m. local time the next morning. We’ll have a day of calm. We pick up mobi Monday afternoon.

And then we’ll have some real stories to tell.

The books about traveling across Europe are filled with all sorts of cautions.

In their book “Europe by Van and Motorhome,” David Shore and Patty Campbell talk extensively about “free camping,” or essentially pulling over pretty much wherever you want, as long as it seems safe and you are not offending someone, to spend the night. Some places are more legal than others but police seem to be tolerant.

The authors advise to check out the surroundings before turning off the engine and drawing the curtains, and to park in an area with one or two other campers. “But be aware that a large gathering of trailers and motorhomes in a field, without a campground sign, is more than likely to be a gypsy camp, where you will be welcome only as prey.”

Lovely.

I wonder if Europeans buy books that caution them about traveling across the United States?