Achtung Baby

In a couple of hours I am getting on a plane and flying to Germany for a vacation. If anyone had told me a couple of years ago that I would be heading to Europe for a holiday, I would have thought Germany would have been about the least likely destination for a trip. Other than a fleeting thought which rocketed through my mind a few years ago, I had never seriously considered vacationing in Germany. Maybe by now I should be getting over it, but to me Germany was just a nation that tried to invade my home country of England twice in the last 100 years. It was not a place to be visited or celebrated in any way.

But a couple of years ago I determined it was time to get my friends Mike and Bryan to the mainland of Europe and started looking for destinations that might suit the three of us. Mike and I visited as far into Europe as Great Britain in 2007 and Bryan has never been to Europe so it's about time in my opinion that they spend some time in a place where English is not the first language. I had Spain and Vienna high on my list but Spain seemed too romantic for three dudes to roam around and I couldn't see the three of us drinking coffee and looking at Art Nouveau architecture in Vienna together. So I moved on to other countries: the Czech Republic, Greece, Italy and rejected them all for one reason or another.

Then I started looking at Germany and saw a country with a rich beer culture, some pretty spectacular scenery, architecture which stretches all the way back to before the Holy Roman Empire and significant historical sites. I thought it might have potential. I started out with an idea of doing a country wide tour, spending a few days each in Cologne, Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt but the more I dug, the more interested I became in spending time in Bavaria. And as that idea developed, it seemed like we could easily spend a week and a half there and not run out of things to do (not running out of things to do on vacation is important to me; I like to explore and pack as much as possible in).

Germany as it currently exists is very definitely a late nineteenth and twentieth century notion. The country as it stands today was mostly assembled after the Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871 and is made up of multiple states whose borders have shifted around over centuries. To make things more complicated, the country was split into East Germany and West Germany following World War II and reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But Bavaria, which is the largest state in present day Germany, has existed largely as it does today since the middle of the first millennium. Therefore the place has to a great extent maintained its identity as Bavaria first and part of Germany second and that appealed to me far more than doing a country wide tour. There seems to be plenty of beer to drink, awesome scenery and some interesting history to explore (although not all of it is pleasant).

So tomorrow, I'll be in Munich trying to stay awake as late as possible before the six hour time difference and the four or five hours of uncomfortable sleep I get in Lufthansa coach kick in and I crash. Starting Saturday, I'll start exploring. Can't wait!

45

Today is my 45th birthday. I'm excited and very grateful to have made it this far. Hopefully this gig can go on a little bit longer and I can continue to do the things in life I love with the people I love while staying healthy and happy most of the time. I know I am so fortunate in so many ways. I don't take any of this for granted.

Of all the wonderful things in my life, I am most thankful for my parents and everything they instilled in me and my sister. It is because of them more than anything that I am the way I am today; I know they have had a much greater influence over the person I am than any other people or any other event in my life. Among the ways my parents have shaped me, one of the true debts of gratitude I owe them is my love of travel.

Since I was brought into this world, my parents made a point of taking me and my sister on vacation every year. From our home in England they took us to Spain, Portugal, France and all over the island of Great Britain. After we moved to the United States in 1979, we continued to explore our new home and land that I have come to love so much, including venturing north to Canada and south to the Caribbean. With my parents I've sat on beaches, conquered castles, seen wonders of nature, explored museums and so much more.

Spain, 1969: My first trip ever. On the beach with my dad.

I stopped traveling for a while when I went to college but as soon as I graduated in early 1994, I vowed to make travel a part of my life again and I was determined to take at least one trip a year where I got on a plane and went somewhere new; hopefully far away from where I lived, if for no other reason than to just get away. In the last 20 years, I've explored most of the United States, having now made it to 41 of the lower 48 states, in addition to visiting Finland, Paris, Belgium, the Netherlands and re-exploring Great Britain twice.

I first traveled as an adult with a chip on my shoulder, seeking out all the great works of architecture I had learned about in school but which I had missed when I decided not to study abroad in graduate school. Later, as I matured and my interests broadened and developed, I started exploring our planet with a different purpose. My first non-architecture trip was to Tennessee and Kentucky to find great music in Memphis and Nashville and learn more about bourbon. Maybe not the most noble of goals but it made me happy and since then I've taken a number of trips that have not been architectural pilgrimages.

I generally have a really good memory that serves me well in life. Throughout all the trips I've taken, I can remember a lot of what I've seen. But I can't remember all of it very well and some stuff I've just plain forgotten for whatever reason. Some of the things I've forgotten are small. I'd love to be able to recall the whole conversation my friend Mike and I had with a Scottish electrician over rusty nails in an Edinburgh pub halfway up a massive set of steps. I remember he tried to hook one (or maybe both) of us up with his daughter (he didn't like her boyfriend) but little else.

Other memories that have faded are more significant and I wish I still had them. I remember virtually nothing about flying into the Grand Canyon in what I think was a six seat plane. I can recall going over the rim and watching the ground fall away but I've lost everything after that. I'd love to remember the house we stayed in one summer in France that my mother swears was haunted or cursed in some way or the name of the bar in Mexico where I had the second best fish tacos in my life (Larry's are still the best) while sipping Pacificos right on the edge of the sea. I'm convinced writing my experiences down as they happened or taking more pictures would have helped my memory. Unfortunately I can't go back.

For all the worldliness I sometimes think I have, I realize I have explored only a small fraction of the globe and my journeys are remarkably well concentrated. There are seven continents on this planet and I've only been to two of them. While I've been to Europe several times, all my travel is in western Europe. And even though I've covered most of the United States, I haven't even considered setting foot in the newest two states of Alaska and Hawaii. I've been safe and cautious and sheltered.

So I think it's time to travel more and I think it's time to do it before I get too set in my ways to venture further afield. I also think it's time for me to put it out there for everyone to read to hold myself accountable to the world to fulfill this mission. And so here's my commitment to myself: by the time I am 50, I need to have a lot more of the world under my belt. I need to have visited at least two more continents, have been to one or both of Alaska and Hawaii and filled in the gaps in Europe and the United States that I've been saying I should visit but never have. That means I finally need to stop saying I'm going to Barcelona and go. No more procrastinating.

And along the way, I intend to take pictures and write about what I have seen so I can remember which breweries I visited in Bruges or exactly what I talked about with that guy in that bar in Santa Fe that I know I thought was so strange but I cannot articulate anything about our conversation. It all starts next week. Bon voyage! To me.

About a half hour into Yellowstone National Park with my friend Bryan in 2011, hoping to God the bison behind us doesn't charge even though it's not even looking at us. My last great trip. To date.