Jenni & Joe
The Itinerary
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The Travelogue
Practical Info
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PRACTICAL INFO, PART II

BUDGETING
JOE: We're doing just fine with money, thanks to Jenni. Usually, as soon as we arrive at a new destination, we head straight for the nearest cash machine and take out an estimate of the amount of money we will need for the time we'll be staying there (usually about 5 days). That way, we always get the best exchange rate and we're not carrying around a lot of extra money. There is always at least one ATM wherever we go so far. The money varies wildly from country to country. In Spain, it's about 200 pesetas to one dollar. In Poland, it's about 4 zlotys for one dollar. That's why Jenni has always got her calculator ready and has set up a program on the laptop to keep track of funds. Although we are staying very close to budget, sometimes it feels like we're obsessing about the money. I know that's necessary in order to keep from running out, but it can seem extreme. One night in Caen we either miscalculated or lost some money and that meant we had to choose between having a beer and having dinner. One beer later, I was still upset that we had to miss a meal and made a promise that we'd never go to bed hungry again. I hope we keep that promise, but either way, I slept quite well that night, thank you.

JENNI: First of all, I don't think we're obsessing. We are about $450 over budget right now, which means at this rate we'll come home with about $3000 in debt. That's not bad, but I think we can do better. I've always though that we'll spend much less in the Eastern European countries than we did in Germany and in France, and we'll come out even. So far, that's proving true in Prague and Krakow, where we come home each night with money in my pocket. I'm paying our few leftover bills from Houston via my bank's Web site. My mother-in-law is kindly taking care of the leftover deposits and lets me know via e-mail when a bill comes in. Bottom line, the budget is coming along, as it should.

JOE: I hope we don't take home very much debt. So far, the Eastern European swing is proving much less expensive. By the way, when Jenni says she has money in "her" pocket at the end of the day, that's because she is the keeper of money. All of it. But please do not somehow mistake that for "obsession." She's just better at money.

JENNI: That is true.

PACKING
JOE: I have to admit, I teased Jenni a little because we brought so much stuff, but, now that we've needed virtually everything in our backpack, I take the teasing back! Seriously, though, we did an extraordinary amount of research before we left, so each item we brought was very carefully chosen. In Paris, though, we did decide leave a few unnecessary items at Fabienne's apartment. I also don't know if we'll ever end up cooking our food, so far that cooking equipment hasn't come in very handy either.

JENNI: It's true that our packs seem somehow lighter…Joe jokes that someone must be systematically stealing our stuff. I think we've gotten used to carrying them and I'm rather proud of the careful packing I did. (Actually, we hope nobody will steal from us, but, just in case, we have locks on our backpacks.) As for clothes, Joe decided that he didn't like the shirts he brought, so we went shopping at a Tesco (like a Super Target) in Prague, and bought three new ones for a total of $11! And I'm glad he did…he looks cuter in the new ones than the others.

If we lose an article of clothing, it's cause for a shopping trip. We really don't have enough clothes to do without, I don't think. For example, the zipper on one of my shorts-pants (the pant legs zip off the make shorts) broke on the overnight train into Prague and we had to find a seamstress shop to get it fixed - otherwise, I'll only have one pair of pants for the rest of the trip through the cold months. And in Prague, nothing is ever possible (see Journal for Prague) so finding a seamstress shop was no easy task. However, find one we did, and it will cost about 150 korunas ($3.75) to fix. I also had to buy another pair of glasses...good thing I insisted that my doctor in Houston fax me the eye prescription a few days before we left. I still don't have a clue as to where I may have lost my original pair. These are German glasses, as Joe likes to call them, since we bought them in Munich.

JOE: About those t-shirts … I had packed two black t-shirts and two gray ones. That's because we figured if we wore black, somber clothes we'd look more European and wouldn't stand out so much as tourists. But all that black was actually depressing me a little. Johnny Cash I am not, so we bought purple, light blue and dark blue t-shirts. Besides, our tennis shoes (and our backpacks) will FOREVER reveal us as American tourists!

EATING
JOE: Originally, in France and Spain, most of our meals were picnics which consisted of baguettes (hard rolls of bread with a crust), little blocks of cheese, some type of cold cuts like salami or sausage and fruits (usually peaches). A typical picnic lunch cost 5 or 6 dollars for the both of us. We've been craving green vegetables and fruits so we've started eating cucumbers, apples, oranges and bananas with our meals. Unless we go to a market or grocery store (which is rare), we usually end up having to go to several different stores to buy all of this food. There's usually a separate store for bread, another for cheese, another for meat, etc. Jenni has discovered walnut butter, which we thought would be peanut butter but, in fact, is more like chocolate. It's especially good with bananas. Usually we spread our picnic outside, but sometimes - when its raining - people will let us eat inside their shop. By the way, I think Jenni has gotten a little burned out on picnic food, so we're trying to vary more what we eat.

JENNI: Don't get me wrong, I do love a picnic, and they can be romantic too. However, a hot dish of something cooked up and spiced is mighty tasty after a diet of picnics. In the expensive parts of towns, we might share a plate of something to satisfy this need. I have also developed a taste for Orange Fanta - I hear it doesn't taste the same in the US, so I'm not looking forward to that bitter disappointment!

I've expected that the Eastern European countries might also have cheaper food, and that definitely proves to be the case. We now eat more hearty meals at restaurants. And they are usually cheap; a couple of times in Prague we had nice, big (hot!) meals for about $11. That includes a beer each, appetizer and/or dessert. Those were big meals. Most times we eat even more cheaply, about $6 total for the both of us.

LAUNDRY
JOE: So far we are doing laundry about once per week. We've washed four times at the laundromat and twice by hand. We have learned a valuable lesson that, when hand washing, you have to let the soap soak a little in the sink water before washing. This prevents ugly white soap marks on the clothing. We have also learned that, depending on the humidity, it could take 1 to 3 days to dry our clothes on a clothesline. Hand washing is not fun, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be.

JENNI: Laundry is no fun at all, which means we wear the same clothes for some time before they are deemed "dirty". Unless they stink from a spilled beer, smoky bar, or a particularly sweaty day, we wear 'em again and again and again. We have some dryer sheets - Bounce, I think - that we've placed in our clothing bags to try and freshen things up. It seems to be working. We also bought some good-smelling laundry detergent in a smallish bottle that we can use in the sink or at a laundromat.

HEALTH AND EXERCISE
JOE: My allergies were horrible in Germany, but are much better now. We both still get runny-nosed more often than normal, but I think that's because we're not accustomed to spending 15 + hours outside per day. My upper back and neck are very tight and get sore quite often (a chronic problem I've had for a couple of years), but we are spending some time every other day or so stretching and that helps. Despit these minor problems, I feel more healthy than I have in years. I'm also sleeping quite well, usually 7 or 8 hours a night. We are definitely getting a lot of exercise purely from sightseeing. I think we're walking about 8 miles a day on average. Many times we're climbing long staircases. We've also pedaled bikes in a couple of places. We've been stretching about 2 or 3 days a week and I'm doing some sit-ups and pushups but only once a week. I feel myself getting stronger, but I think I'm balancing the exercise with a lot of bread to the extent that I have only lost a little bit of my beer belly. I know, however, I'm in much better shape.

JENNI: It's really wonderful to not have a car here. We walk everywhere, and it's always at least a pleasant walk, if not absolutely gorgeous. Every city we have visited so far is pedestrian-friendly, so walking is not risky or difficult. When I think of my preference in Houston to drive to the pharmacy merely across the street, I'm embarrassed. But then I remember that it's Westheimer I would be walking across if I didn't drive, and that's a category of risk all to itself. We're both getting some pains on our necks from carrying the small daypacks, so we try to stretch those muscles out by playing masseuse for each other. Also, my right hip gets sore with much too much frequency. I'm usually pretty flexible, but when my hip is sore, it's almost hard to walk. I'll have to concentrate on that muscle a bit more, I think.

MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES
TECHNOLOGY:
JENNI: Practically speaking, carrying a computer and camera around with us has been easy. We generally carry them with us in our daypacks, particularly if our big packs are in a less-than-secured place. We have a Sony Memory Stick (a kind of computer diskette for the camera) that holds about 600 digital pictures. We also have a card reader that slides into a PCM-CIA slot on the computer so there are no connecting wires needed to move the photos from the digital camera into the computer. (Very special thanks to Matt Lewis, my former manager, for showing me how to do this.) We write our content offline, wherever we want to. For example, right now we are at a University Café in Krakow in the outdoor patio. We also have software on the computer that helps us build the pages visually. Then we just put all the pages and pictures for the site onto a diskette, visit an Internet café, and voila! - the site is updated! (Actually, it's usually not SO simple…most of the time we have to download an FTP client program off the Web, install it on the machine, and THEN voila!) That whole uploading process usually takes an hour or two.

JOE: Exchanging e-mail and uploading our Web site have been much easier than we expected. Internet cafes are very common throughout the tourist areas we've visited in Europe and we have not had any trouble at all finding them. Usually they are cafes, but sometimes they are just office spaces with 20 or so computers lined up on desks. Its costs anywhere from $1 - $3 per hour to use a machine. In France and Spain it seemed like most of the customers were kids spending their time playing violent video games like "DOOM." In most other cases, however, the customers have been backpackers, usually college students, from the U.S., Britain, and other Western countries. Despite this prevalence of Internet access for travelers, the digital divide is still huge here. Most families do not have access and that's because, in many European countries, Internet companies are still charging customers for the amount of time they spend online, instead of just a monthly fee (remember, that's how it used to be in the U.S. just 5 or 6 years ago). And, since the connections are slow, it can take a long time just to pull up Web sites. On top of that cost, the phone companies also charge people for the time they spend on the phone. Even for local calls, customers are charged by the minute.

LANGUAGES:
JOE: So far, dealing with languages hase not been much of a problem, but it still can get stressful at times. Most people here speak at least a little bit of English. In Spain, we quickly realized that we know more Spanish than we realized. I was talking in full sentences by the end of the week there and Jenni was usually understanding the flow of the conversation. In the other countries, we've gotten in the habit of looking in the guidebook and figuring out the 5 or 6 most common words and phrases like, "hello," "thank you," "please," "what is the price?" and "give me a beer." We memorize these phrases by quizzing each other the first day we are in a new country. Generally, if a clerk or waiter doesn't understand us, we can usually point either to the item itself or the menu and figure it out. If that doesn't work, we get by with grunting and pantomiming. You know, like playing charades. As we move further east, though, the languages are starting to look very different from English and it's harder to both understand the people talking and read the signs. It can be frustrating and stressful, especially if we're in line at a store where little old ladies are constantly elbowing us out of the way and almost always express their dissatisfaction with the foreigners who are taking forever in line!

JENNI: I have a weird problem with the languages…since I've only studied Spanish, I associate all foreign languages with Spanish. What results is that I find myself saying, "Si" in Poland, or "Cuanto cuesta? in Germany, to name just a few of my gaffes. It's some sort of strange brain synapse, so I've really taken to our habit of quizzing each other on new phrases. Joe is much better at it than I.

TRANSPORTATION:
JENNI: We take the public transportation systems where we can and when we feel like it - and everywhere so far has been pretty easy to understand. By far, Paris was the most complex (but still easy to figure out) and Prague is the simplest with only three subway lines. Something interesting about the Prague metro - it's very deep underground. There are very long escalators that take you up and down into the tunnels, carrying you well below the depth of the river snaking through town. The only negative thing about relying on public transportation is that is stops running at inopportune times, usually when we want to come home after midnight. We're left then with walking, since we have yet to learn the details about after-hours public transportation!

JOE: Transportation is easily our biggest adjustment. Back home, we would just jump in the car and go. We'd never take the bus and don't even have trains or subways in Houston. And forget walking! We lived right next door to a Wal-mart in Houston and would ALWAYS get in our car and drive there, even though it took twice as long to drive and find a parking spot and then walk through the Wal-mart parking lot to go inside. Walking was just never an option. Here in Europe, we walk and take a train, tram (light rail) or city bus everywhere we go. That means we always have to carefully study the map of the city, get a ticket (usually we get a pass that's good for a week) and hope that we're going the right direction every time we get on. So far, though, we have not gotten terribly lost. Subways are amazing and so is light rail. I wonder if we'll ever figure that out back in Texas as a solution to our traffic headaches. By the way, we've made it a rule not to take a taxi, a rule we've broken only once so far after a night of drinking vodka in Krakow.

JENNI: That taxi rule is self-preservation…not only are the taxi drivers in the Central and Eastern countries notorious for overcharging tourists, we also don't want to get used to hailing a cab when we feel tired or can't figure out the public transportation. Part of this trip is meant to stretch us, even if it is uncomfortable at times.