Burning the Inheritance

(Note – For reasons we don’t need to get into, we’re a little behind on the blog and I am feeling some heat from the Editor in Chief. So, providing this brief interlude basically to buy myself a little more time. Enjoy!)

July 4, 2023, which we spent in Giovinazzo Italy, marked six months on the road (the first third of our planned 18 month trip around the world), so it seemed like a good time to take a minute to look back at where we’ve been so far and see if we’ve learned anything worthwhile along the way.  Over the last six months, we have traveled just over 35,000 miles and visited a total of 12 different countries (not counting the U.S. or Slovenia, which continues to be a point of contention between Colleen and I), over 40 different cities, and over 20 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Travelling for six months has certainly changed our perspectives on many things, but maybe the most notable is in the way we view current events back home and their relevance to us.  For the most part, our following of events in the U.S. has been pretty haphazard, driven primarily by notifications and pop-ups from our e-mail accounts and a very limited NY Times online subscription. (I just upgraded to a full-blown e-subscription, so it will be interesting to see how things change as a result.)  We do stream a couple of radio stations from home, but due to the difference in time zones, the only news we listen to with any regularity is the BBC World Report.

Compared to what, from afar, seems like a pretty constant media bombardment of the news back at home, we now find ourselves in a position where we are very much able to pick and choose the news we want to hear about.  To some extent, I think we are starting to adopt the mind-set of foreigners (or ex-pats at least) who are only interested in U.S. news to the extent that it has a direct impact on us. 

As an obvious example, while we’ve been aware of the heat waves in the U.S., we are generally more concerned with the weather where we are and where we are going next. (And, we are currently in Jordon where it is 110 degrees – 115 degrees “real feel”, so the supply of sympathy over hot weather is a bit thin here.)  As another example, the wildfires in Greece have been of more concern to us than those in Canada (although we were indirectly impacted through our children who live in New York City, Philadelphia, and between).

I can’t speak for Colleen, but I for one am very happy to have absolutely no idea what any of the Kardashians or Jenners are up to these days.  And while we have as much as possible avoided following the political antics building up to the next presidential election (which, if anything, seems even more farcical from afar), we have very closely followed political unrest in Peru, protests and strikes in Paris over the raised retirement age, and more of the same in Israel over the change in court power.

Unfortunately, while we have not gone out of our way to hear about it, we have nonetheless been painfully aware of is what seem to be daily mass shootings in the U.S. (just read this morning that we are actually averaging two per day so far this year).  It may seem odd, but the senselessness of these acts seems ever more apparent to us since we began travelling.  Perhaps we would feel the same were we home, but it might be because we are travelling to places which are considered “dangerous” by some standards, yet things like that don’t happen there?

 In any case, it has been quite an adventure thus far, with plenty more to come no doubt!  While we’re pretty sure we don’t have a mass of followers of this blog, we hope those of you who are reading it enjoy it.  As always, your comments are both welcome and encouraging. (Way more work to do this than I ever imagined, couldn’t even contemplate doing a video blog!).