Steal Something in Every Country

Every time I travel, I tell myself that my next trip will be done at a more leisurely pace. Somehow, it never quite works out that way. This winter break, I had planned to hang out in London for a couple weeks, watch as many professional soccer matches as possible, and if I got bored of London, maybe mosey over to Paris for a couple days. Nothing too ambitious, or so I thought.

Well it turns out to be quite a bit more difficult to obtain tickets for the soccer matches than I imagined. The clubs have membership policies, and many seats, including the after-market ticket exchange and away match tickets, are sold to members only. The membership for my favorite club, Chelsea, costs 90 pounds for non-Europeans (over $180), requires photo ID, and takes a month to process. So as it turns out, instead of half a dozen games, I bought an $800 plane ticket to attend one, yes, a single soccer match: Aston Villa at Chelsea, Boxing Day. Now you might say that I should have started shopping for the match tickets at least a month ago, and you would have a fair point there, but that is simply not the sort of person I am. In all fairness, nothing in America quite compares, and my cursory investigations at that time lead me to believe I could purchase the tickets within a week or two of game day, when in fact some of the matches may never actually go on general sale at all.

Travel can be like that. You never quite know. Some people would see an occasion such as this as a pretty strong argument for more fastidious planning. I call it bad luck, choose not to linger on the disappointment, and look for something else to do instead. After all, part of the appeal of travel is the unknown. The point is of it is to escape the routine and over-familiar, so everything you do carries some risk of the unknown. I like that risk.

So the semester is over, and my grades are done. Personally, academically, and professionally, I had a bad semester, but I finished strong, and I am looking forward to a better semester this spring. I think I have some good ideas for the new term. I am still thinking a lot about staying here for another year or two or three. It is totally unexpected, but the thought is making me happy. I think there is freedom that comes from realizing that happiness is not escaping a place or a situation, but rather accepting it and making it my own. Then I come to realize there is so much to love about my job, and there is so much good I have left to do, and there is so much more that I can be, here, without leaving. And in fact, leaving would only disrupt it. I think I very well might stay, and then of course, every chance I get, I travel. 

So I have no idea yet quite where I will be this New Years. Guess I plan to spend half a week or so in London, then move on, perhaps eastward to the Continent. I have a hankering to see Central and Eastern Europe, countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and so on. Not sure quite how I will get there, but I have this vague idea of renting a tiny car and road-tripping it. But that seems too isolated. I might look into trains, but that seems slow. Maybe I'll look for hitchhikers to pick up. Dangerous? Perhaps, but I have this really strong urge right now to push my boundaries and do something risque or at least unusual, something I've never done before. I just haven't quite figured out what it is yet. Maybe not actual stealing. But, you know.