Reflections on Konstanz

So this will be a fairly massive update as I have not posted in quite some time. There was something about Konstanz, and more specifically our pace, that left me uninterested. What I learned, overall, is that on this trip, one month in a single location is too long. It too short to really integrate into a location and make friends, but is too long to perpetuate a sense of curious wondering; basically I lost my itch to explore and didn’t replace it with anything. Sounds kind of depressing, so I’ll focus mostly on the good stuff.

The family had fun, I had fun. We ate well, we started exercising again which is surprisingly difficult to do when every travel day deals new schedules. We didn't get int he car and drive to local area attractions as much as I think we could have. Parking was somewhat challenging, so when we got a parking stop I think we were reluctant to give it up.

Food

Konstanz was beautiful and while it didn’t have stellar German food, it had a wide variety of fantastic dining options: Vietnamese, Chinese, French, Turkish, Döner, Sushi, Italian, etc. Everything was walkable and we ended up going to the grocery store almost daily to buy just enough ingredients to cook dinner for that evening. We likely cooked it home four days per week.

The highlight for me was a bolognese that Zoe made that took four hours of cooking. We had it on a simple spaghetti and it was truly divine. We rushed it to four hours (10pm was as late as everyone was willing to wait) and the unused portion stayed on the stove for 3 more hours... that was doubly divine the next morning.

Our last night there, we went out and had sushi on a conveyor belt, it was fantastic and Gianna was highly appreciative; she’d been without sushi for so long she was starting to twitch.

Oktoberfest began while we were in Konstanz and right here on the border of Switzerland and Germany, they throw a very nice Swiss/German Oktoberfest and it is wonderful. The kids like the rides, the food and the atmosphere and Lisa and I enjoyed the beer, the food and the atmosphere. German beer should always be served in 1L steins.

My friends back home know I like me some Schnitzel; it is one of my favorite foods. It it kind of funny because it isn’t fancy, it really isn’t amazingly flavorful, and it is drop-dead simple in both preparation and presentation; it’s like the adult version of a kids chicken goujon (nuggets) meal. All that said, I like it a lot and there is plenty of it around the Konstanz area. I’ve been thinking quite a bit on whether I like veal or pork schnitzel more and I’ve decided that some questions just don’t need answers.

Lodging

The airbnb host claims we did some cosmetic damage to the walls, however that damage was preexisting; we’ll see where that ends up. Aside from that somewhat sour finishing note, the apartment was quite nice and in a great location. The TV was small, but had an HDMI port so we were able to watch movies and shows and American football, which we only did about twice per week.

Work

A lot of my friends think that I’m on a year long vacation. I will say that worrying about the budget and logistics of this fast-paced trip and the safety of three kids in about thirty five different countries is far from relaxing. Most of the things people do preparing for and concluding a trip to another country (budget, lodging, reconciliation, currency exchange, legal issues, immigration issues, etc.) are done before and after the trip. In our case, we have to do a significant part of this while on the road. So, while I had intended to stop working to focus entirely on the trip, that did not happen and we’re doing the trip and I am working at the same time.

I did a lot more work in Konstanz than I'd done at any other previous stop. The Internet there was annoyingly unreliable, but passable for work. I worked more than eight hours per day quite often. I re-learned quite a bit about telecommuting as I’ve not done that extensively in a while. I miss in-person interactions with people and I miss the team back home. They’re awesome and it is nice to assist from many thousands of miles away, but the types of interactions I enjoy most are lost. I suppose it would not be so bad if I had a vibrant social life here in Konstanz, but it wouldn’t completely fill the void.

Logistics

I mentioned above that logistics are a lot of work. Lisa and I didn’t use a travel agent for the trip (aside from our upcoming three-week stay in India), and given how things are planned, you can’t really plan things a year in advance. That means the second half of the trip was an idea, not a plan. In Konstanz, we had to make those ideas into actual travel, lodging and activity plans. Honestly, activities don’t always get planned. With five people, travel and lodging must be planned well in advance.

We’ve booked our second half macro tickets and updated our online itinerary (for those that follow along). What’s a macro ticket you ask? I made it up, so I should explain. The “around the world (RTW) tickets” with most airlines limit you to a certain number of segments and total mileage. We’re using StarAlliance which limits to 16 segments and 39k miles. So, if you are doing a lot of country hoping, you find other ways to get from point A to point B inside a tight landmass to save segments. An example is that our current RTW tickets take us from Singapore to Thailand to New Zealand, but we’re visiting Cambodia and Vietnam as well. So, we booked our own separate tickets (what I call micro tickets) from Bangkok, to Phuket, to Siem Reap, to Phnom Phen, to Ho Chi Men, back to Bangkok.

We’ve book our next round of macro tickets from Houston to Dulles (via Ecuador, Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong and Istanbul). Now to backfill all the micro-tickets and lodging. It’s incredibly time consuming and requires a good Internet connection to make progress.

Shopping

We’re going to a lot places on this trip that have great shopping, but we’re really not a shopping sort of family. I suppose if we see something amazing that could be a home furnishing then we could buy it and send it home, but so far that hasn’t happened. The idea of buying “stuff” and not shipping it home seems insane; why would we want heavier packs?! However, I broke that rule. Through a variety of circumstances, which I will get to in a moment, I want to take pictures that could potentially be printed enlarged to “quite large” sizes and I truly missed my DSLR from home. I love the Sony RX100III, but there’s something I like much more about a DSLR. I had an old Canon 20D at home and some beautiful glass, but I didn’t bring it because I though it too cumbersome. However, as we move toward more exotic places I’ve never been (Africa, India and Southeast Asia) I’ve been feeling the need for my DSLR.

Now that all modern cameras are digital, it really is a “go new or go outdated in a year,” so I did just that. I bought a Canon 5DS R and it’s nuts! I changed from my should-sling day back to an actual day backpack and ultimately added about seven pounds to my overall load. A few of the pictures I’ve taken have left me quite satisfied with my decision. A good photographer can take beautiful pictures with almost any camera… a good photographer I am not. I believe I’ve just upped my chances and preliminary empirical evidence is substantiating that.

Love and marriage

Diving in a bit more personally than I usually do, Lisa and I are more of a team now that we have ever been.

People often joked that I’d return from the trip divorced. I suppose that should be put in context. It wasn’t a statement about me or Lisa or the two of us in particular, but more of a general statement of a married couple that is habitually used to so much individualize time and purpose suddenly being joined at the hip for everything always. And, reading that sentence to myself, I actually understand why they brought it up… that could end badly. When we left I wasn't sure we'd always get along swimmingly, but we've been through some tough stuff and I was not seriously concerned about falling apart.

Now, everyday we interact and I remember why I fell in love with her, why I wanted to marry her, and no matter where I am in the world I feel at home with her near me. She is absolutely my other half.

Well, we left Konstanz for Seville via Italy, but that’s another post.

Getting Married!

Not me... not me... I'm not getting married. I shall remain married to my lovely wife. However, my colleague Heinrich Hartmann was married today and he invited us all to the wedding. When you pack a single backpack per person for twelve months, I can say with confidence that we should not have (and did not) pack appropriate attire for a wedding. So we managed a quick outing this past Monday to some local shops and acquired some passable attire. Let me say the ladies have it easy compared to the guys.

A long but worthwhile trip

The wedding was held in the beautiful country-side town of Stemwede which is (perhaps not-so-conveniently) located a seven hour drive north of our place in Konstanz. The beautiful and "as-fast-as-you-like-it" autobahn of Germany was more like the flickstellebahn or gestopptbahn. What should have taken just shy of seven hours without "going fast" actually took over nine hours. Long day. It, however, ended with one of the best meals I've had the entire trip. Lamb on potatoes with lima beans, snow peas and sun-dried tomatoes with thick au jus.

Speaking at a German wedding, in English

About four weeks ago, Heinrich reached out to me and asked me to speak at his wedding. Honored and flattered does not do justice to my feelings. The wedding was in German and his childhood friend Sabine helped translate (and did a phenomenal job). He asked me to speak on the subject of work-life-balance. This is difficult because I feel I've managed to get this entirely wrong for the majority of my adult life. Those that think I have it all figured out because I'm taking a one year sabbatical with my family fail to understand a deeper more complicated picture. I thought it would be good to share the words I spoke there here on this blog.

Work life balance advice, dedicated to Heinrich and Lena

A few weeks ago Heinrich asked me to speak on the topic of work-life-balance. I was quite surprised, because I’ve always thought that was something I quite screwed up. I am, with my wonderful family, taking twelve months of minimal workload and traveling the world. Lisa, Zoe, Gianna, Tori and I are together for an adventure. From the outside, this might seem like the actions of a true master in the arena of balance. The truth is that I see it as radical recompense for poor balance decisions made throughout my career.

I must first confess something important and germane to my challenges balancing work and the rest of life; I’m a workaholic. I, like many others, cannot release grasp of a problem, until satisfying progress has been made. I spent the first five years of my career working 14 hour days for 7 days per week. This was before I had children, but not before I had a wife to ignore… and I can say, with certainty, I ignored her far too much. More times than I can count, I put work before family and it took our relationship to the breaking point again and again.

Lisa, on multiple occasions, looked around our nice house, filled with nice things and then looked at me and us and our stress and said: “I didn’t ask for any of these things… I asked for you.” Sage advice.

Advice is an interesting thing alone. It can be good and bad, it can be welcome or not, and there seems to be a never ending supply of it. Most often we are deaf to the best advice until the right precipitating conditions allow for its absorption. I’ve found that some of life’s best lessons are gleaned through observing the failures of others; not that they are enjoyed, but they are real, they can be close to us and exhibit uncomfortable clarity.

Many years ago, my father’s health took a slow but incredibly decisive turn for the worst. He has neuropathy: a life of constant pain and progressive debilitation. As this occurred, I saw my parents' dreams of “what we will do later” erode. These were my precipitating conditions. There might be no next years, or “after the kids grow up.” At least, not as I had envision them.

To me, the meaning of the Latin expression carpe diem stopped being about spontaneity and risk taking and began representing balance. I want a great job and I want a career that takes me to the top and be lucrative and I want that career to afford me the opportunities to change the world; I want a wonderful wife with whom I have wonderful (wonderful) times and make wonderful children who grow up to be wonderful people and make the world an even more wonderful place. Another quick piece of advice, what you want isn’t so important, the act of pursuing what you want is; that is where the passion and the pride are. During the course of pursuing all that I want, I found myself making fantastic progress toward one thing while all the others slowly slipped away.

The goal is indeed balance. At any point, I want to be able to stop and reflect on my progress toward my goals and be satisfied with everything. I certainly haven’t mastered this and I don’t have the answer.

The first step is to change the "I" to "we." Then all you can have is a vision, a lot of patience… and a partner who shares both.

Settling Down in Konstanz

The title is a lie... for now at least.

We spent the better part of 9 hours driving from Berlin to Konstanz. That included gas stops and food stops and stops in general. Nevertheless it was a long drive and our landing was highly imperfect. We have a nice Airbnb here, but the hostess thought her husband sent us a welcome email and the husband thought his wife sent it. Needless to say, we were not welcomed in Konstanz. After a long drive, I said "fuck it all, get a hotel." All ended well when the husband showed up moments later with some wine and keys and parking advice. We all landed in our apartment here and went out for a quick three-hour dinner at the quaint French restaurant around the corner.

Waking up the the next day, I managed to reason about our situation a bit more.

The next day

Konstanz is beautiful. The old city is quaint, very walkable and has almost every kind of shop and service one would need for living without an automobile. We have an upcoming wedding that we need to attend, so the five of us need to get some more suitable clothing as the event does not have a "traveling nomad" theme. Luckily, less than 100 meters from our doorstep, the old down of Konstanz sits with all of its fantastic shops from tiny boutiques to shopping malls with H&Ms. While I like little local shops, I don't particularly enjoy clothes shopping, so I prefer to just hit a mall or something because it will take less time. I suppose this is funny, because I can stand in a food market, a wine store or a beer shop for hours on end searching for the perfect indulgence.

Luckily, in Germany they treat alcohol as part of one's diet. So, at a decent supermarket one can expect to find a good selection of all three of these things. Maryland could learn a lot here, but I suppose we've never been about consumer convenience when it come to consumer good, we've always been about controlling supply and distribution for profit. Sad.

Today was the easy day, it gets more complicated.

On being absent

I was told and I understood that being a US citizen outside of the US isn't particularly difficult, but handling affairs at home could be challenging. Well that's a fucking understatement. It turns out, through a variety of unexpected circumstances, we need to deal with some real-estate issues while we're away. This requires a power of attorney. Luckily, we have much family at home that is both willing and has the capacity to serve as such. Assigning power of attorney while living abroad is (in theory) easy, but while traveling abroad is ridiculously complicated.

1. Find a print-copy-shop and print your docs.
2. Go to a US Consulate and have them notarize the document.

Well, sounds easy except our documents we need two witnesses and (a) we cannot serve as each other's witness and (b) the consulate will not provide/act as a witness. Additionally, you need to make an appointment at a consulate and most have a two week waiting list. We aren't in any given place (until Konstanz) for more than 7 days and we don't have two people outside the family to serve as witnesses. Additionally, Germany's consulates are quite far from Konstanz.

A few weeks ago, I made an appointment at the US Consular Agency in Zurich and asked on Twitter if I knew anyone who could help out. Luckily, two wonderful gentleman in Switzerland who knew me offered up their time.

So on Wednesday, we packed up the kids and our documents and drove from Konstanz, Germany to Zurich, Switzerland. Marc and Tomas met us and we went through the rather fantastical security of the facilities there and had our documents notarized. Honestly, I feel like it would be more secure if I had a notary in the United States that I already know watch me sign the docs over telepresence and then notarized them two days later upon receipt over telepresence as well. Sadly the process to keep people authentic actually reduces the authenticity... surprise!

We returned home to Konstanz and attempted to find a place to mail them out: DHL or UPS. Four miles of walking resulted in complete and utter failure and depression of our party of five. It turns out there was a recently moved Mailboxes, Etc. 100m from our apartment. We got the new location address and Lisa and I ventured out Friday morning to mail it out.

The world is unifying and people are beginning to not care where they are in the world as they interact with other people and services remotely. The elements of identity, law, citizenship and rights simply are not caught up with modern reality. It most certainly won't make realizable progress by the time our trip is over.

Anyway... this frustration is over, at least for now.

I said we're settling down, but the irony is we get in the car tomorrow and drive far away for a wedding!