Sixth Base

Captain's bLog: 20 weeks.

I read a lot of travel guides before embarking on this trip, and if I learned anything from them it is that Rick Steves does not know what "through the back door" connotes.

Otherwise, I'm with him on the philosophy, and we have taken many of his handy tips to heart: we are trying our darnedest to shed our Canadian notions and habits and become "temporary Europeans" while we're here. I mean, we're definitely not succeeding in it, but at least we're trying. 

I would even suggest going a step further than Rick Steves wants you to - let's call it sixth base - and try not only to live like a local, but to really suffer like one. Like, how can you fully experience regular life in a new place if you're sequestered in a private car? Get thyself some bus tickets and learn to sardine-can your way around town like a proper local. Unless you're in Italy, in which case the insanity of driving is a suffering unto itself, so definitely do rent a car for a few days. Count how many times a day you nearly die of a heart attack! Why are we all honking? Where even are the lanes?! (October 2020 update: P.S. Be sure to budget for the $300 traffic ticket you are definitely going to get in the mail six months after you get home.)

The locals don't have clothes dryers, so why would you? Learn to relish the lingering dampness of clothes you've line-dried in places where the humidity never dips below 80% - oh, and by the way pigeons have shitted on your clothes again.

The locals would never deign to eat anything other than their food, which is obviously the best food and should therefore be the only food, so learn to bear the frustration of having all the corn and tomatoes in the world, but none of the chips and salsa.

The locals live in old buildings that have been retrofitted into small and often awkward apartments, so stay on budget and really sink your teeth into the local experience of less personal space, no counter space, and a quarter of the plug-ins that modern, connected life requires. Surprise! The toilet is in a different room than the sink! Bonus like-a-local points if you somehow manage to perfectly align your menstrual cycle with all the apartments you've rented with this feature.

"Through the back door" is - well, I'll leave that definition to Rick Steves. But sixth base is all about getting past that fresh, sexy love it's so easy to have for a new place and developing a deeper relationship with it... discovering as much of the "warts-and-all" of a place that you can in the time you have, and then transcending the warts...

Or something like that. I'm still pretty sore about the pigeon shit so my transcendence might have to wait a few wash cycles more to kick in.