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eudaemonia - August 14th, 2002

About August 14th, 2002

scratching an itch 11:17 am
Last weekend, I decided to do something I've always dreamed about. Travel. Alone. Unrestricted and for an indefinite period of time.

There are at least two important things I want out of this experience:

1. I want to increase my personal freedom by learning to thrive on very limited financial resources. (Get off the consumer treadmill.)

2. After working almost non-stop since I was a teenager, I want to recreate myself through exploring new and old interests, meeting new people, interacting with strangers and surviving in unfamiliar and difficult surroundings.


I decided to start keeping a live journal so that my friends back home and people I meet along the way can share the experience with me and stay in touch.

I have limited means. The circumnavigation aboard a yacht or even a small sailboat that I have been dreaming of since I was a boy is not an option right now. While a more pedestrian affair seems likely, I am no less excited. This will be a great adventure.

I will sell or get rid of most of my posessions. and keep one trunk of important stuff here in the States as well as my golf clubs and sailing gear. The rest will go. I need to do this in two weeks so I can get out of my expensive apartment.

The details of my trip have yet to become clear. My general plan is outfit myself with a backpack, simple camping gear, a few changes of clothes and such as recommended, and buy a one way ticket to Europe. I plan to spend most of my time in places where the dollar will go a long way. I want to start with places I wont want to be when it gets cold. So, England, Germany, Chezch, Poland, are first on the menu. Then I will head south through France to Spain where I plan to spend as long as I can in the warmth of Andalucia and the Coasta del Sol. Three years of high school Spanish and growing up in South Florida give me a prayer of being able to acquire this second language.

the plan comes together 10:03 pm
One part of the plan has revealed itself to me. I shall winter in the Andelucia region of Spain where it will be mild and sunny.

Before I settle there for a while, I want to do some hiking somewhere interesting. Central, Eastern Europe seem devastated by floods right now. There is a great trail (the "Green Trail" ?) from Prague to Vienna through Bohemia, but with images of Prague under water playing at the moment on CNN, I think I will steer clear of that.

I really want to check out Vienna eventually. Perhaps in the spring. Some sort of art scene is supposed to be happening there right now -- this according to the exhibit I saw at MASS MoCa this weekend. The exhibit was hard pressed to explain what were the essential identifying elements or concepts of the new Viennese movement or whatever. They probably can't afford good marketing.

I particularly enjoyed the work by Peter Kogler. If one understands the rudimentary mathematics behind the visual trick of his installation, the possibilities for enhancement and interactivity immediately suggest themselves. It is a dizzying piece of art that provides a visceral lesson in matricies and transformations. I imagine a big knob or steering wheel in the room which would allow the observer to control some parameter of the transformation. Or better yet some kind of motion or heat detector that would combine the input of several individuals -- a kind of "democratic" interactive art. The experience would not be controllable by any one person but would arise in a barely perceptable way out of the combined actions of a group. I would love to produce something like this for the same format installation.


I know for American Expats of ten years ago, Prague was the place to be. By the mid to late 90's, the notion that Prague was no longer so hip began to circulate. The cool new place to be was Krakow. This may still be true. Vienna's happening period seems over by about a century, but I will look into this also.

Today I sat in the travel book store for several hours reading about different hiking trails, cities and countries in Europe. At the moment the GR5 through the French Alps from Geneva to Nice seems like it would be a good start for my adventure. There is a system of foot trails through Europe which has established names for the trails of the form, "E-something", where something is a number. I want to find a catalog of these trails which is not country or region specific. The GR is a French trail designation which so far I have heard only applied to the Alps and the Pyranees. There are some trails in the Spanish Pyranees labeld GR-10 and GR-11 although French maps do not cover them adequately. I found some Englishman's catalog of these trails, however, by the time I am in Spain, I think I will prefer to stay in the South.

At Bob Slate's in Harvard Square, I bought an actual dead-tree journal as well as some mini-notebooks which I will use for notes on foreign languages. It occured to me that I should print business cards with my livejournal URL to give to friends I meet along the way.

Tomorrow I will buy a trunk and start packing.
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