The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
St. Agustine
Many people would say we’ve already lived adventurous lives. Jason served on active duty for 29 years in the Army, was deployed five times to combat zones, was stationed in Germany twice, traveled in many countries, and has lived in five states. Jennifer has lived in Germany, lived in four states, and has solo-traveled to many, many countries. We used to attribute all the moving around to our careers, but now that our lives are in our own hands, we realize we still want to wander! So, today marks the first day of what we hope will be a year of wandering the world.
We are not unique in our desire to travel and to wander. We have met many people on our past travels who are like us. Either military and retired, child-free, remote workers, or travel lovers. But we also acknowledge that we have many resources others might not. A life of selfless service to our country and hard work have earned us some benefits that take others a lifetime to achieve: affordable, lifetime health insurance coverage; a comfortable pension at an early age; college educations; supportive families; and generous employers who allow us to work remotely.
This blog serves several purposes: a way for our family and friends to keep up with us, a place to chronicle our thoughts and locations, and a resource to those who might need some practical advice, or some play-by-play, on the logistics of traveling.
This blog should be interesting. Anyone who knows us knows that we are VERY different from each other and have VERY different perspectives. So, this blog is an attempt to capture both sides of the story with SHE SAID and HE SAID commentary. We’ll try to be as transparent as possible to be helpful—without sounding like Archie and Edith.
To know you are hearing Jen’s thoughts, the font will be purple.
To know you are hearing Jason’s thoughts, the font will be blue.
So, our hopeis to travel for one-year to “live” in as many places as possible. We say live, but what we mean is that we intend to use AirBnBs and live like locals for at least three weeks. Eating out will be minimum, laundry must be done, use of public transportation rather than rental cars or taxis, and finding the grocery store is priority rather than the closest cocktail bar. We plan to do a culture/history walk at each new location and to learn as much about the location as possible during our stay.
Our first trip is to Italy, where we have rented a flat in a small Tuscan town called Figline Valdarno. Italy was and is on our future plans. Part of this trip will be to look at some long term apartments. One possibility is to move to Italy as our home base for this year of living abroad because it makes trips so much cheap and easier for transportation.
For the next blog, we thought we’d post and answer some of the questions our friends and family have asked us.
Obviously, Jason has had a hand in the planning of this potential year of wandering, otherwise there would be no answers for these questions because I would have dropped everything and said: We’ll figure it out as we go!We’ll figure it out as we go. Let’s GO!
Most of these are answered by me because Jason has no friends. Just kidding!
Fine by me.
**Please note that this blog began on March 8, 2020—the day before we left Louisville for a Space A flight from Dover, DE to Spangdahlem, Germany. After landing in Germany on March 10, 2020, we learned that Italy had instituted a lockdown due to the spread of the coronavirus.
For now, it is in the house we are renting in Louisville. The lease is up in August and we’ll see what lays ahead for us.
My stuff is wherever my wife puts it.
Where are all your animals?
We lost Eris to cancer this past Fall, and our world got really small. Since Dakota moved out, he has his girls with him now. Dylan is staying at our house taking care of Titus and Squeakerton and Wha ChuChu, and his kitty, Mercury.
What she said.
Are you both working?
I am still working. I am currently teaching two courses online for UofL, doing course design and teaching an online course for the University of Maryland’s Global Campus.
I am a full-time graduate student at UofL. And I am trying to avoid working as much as possible for now.
How did you choose the font colors?
They are the colors of our toothbrushes.
Are you being sponsored? Lots of travel bloggers have sponsors.
Your tax dollars at work—thanks for the retirement.
We are not sponsored. No free flights, no free hotels, no free meals.
How can you afford to travel for a year?
Flying-We will fly military Space A as much as possible.
Logistically difficult, but cheap. It’s an earned privilege for all those difficult years.
Housing/Lodging-It’s cheaper overseas. If you want to live in Rome, that’s going to be expensive. Our first trip is to a small town in Tuscany, 25 minutes by train south of Firenze (Florence). It’s a small studio loft apartment but we’ve rented it for six weeks and it’s less than $800 for the entire stay. That includes utilities and internet!
We plan to keep a budget that we’ll share. If Jason wants to do that work because I don’t do numbers. English major—give it to me in words, per favore.
Are you worried about not knowing the language where you go?
I am a little. But, in my experience most of the languages where we will go peaople speak some English and sometime their words sound similar.
Not worried. I’ve been to many countries and have not known the language. Besides, a genuine smile speaks all languages.
I thought you guys were moving to Italy?
That’s still in the plans. In fact, our first trip is to Italy to look at some apartments. We are sure we will qualify for the Elective Residency Visa with the military pension so one plan is to sign a lease, apply for the visa, and use Italy as a home base.
It would be easier to travel the world with Italy as a base—and more economical.
Where would you like to travel on your year of wandering?
Back to Scotland for an extended stay. In Europe to do a WWII battlefield exploration. Back to Italy—near the coast.
Marrakesh. Casablanca. Tangiers. Croatia. Albania. England. These are places we’d like to stay for at least a month each. It’s not meant to be a year-long vacation. If we decide not to pursue the visa, we’ll add some places outside the Schengen Area, and some places in North America.
With the current situation, we’ve been answering questions about the coronavirus threat in Italy. Our thoughts:
I have been, and we have talked about it, having problems connecting the true threat based off of my thoughts versus what is being reported.
What do you mean?
My gut instinct, even though thousands have it, it is still a small percentage who are truly threatened by the virus. I don’t feel threatened by that. And the news is so sketchy.
You mean like the news story a few hours ago about the port authority of New York and New Jersey having the virus with no details.
Right. How did he get it? In his everyday activity or did he travel to a threat zone? It’s difficult to pick out the truth in the reports.
Not even the truth, but the lack of details keep people from making decisions for themselves. Instead, the government issues warnings and threat levels when they should be explaining the logical connection between the spread of the virus and the actions they are taking to prevent it.
We’ll go, but be smart about things.
Agreed. If we were going on a 10 day vacation to Italy, we should probably consider it. But, we aren’t on vacation. We can quaratine when we get there if need be. And, if the threat is what they say it is, then it’s coming to the US with or without our trip.
If you have any questions for us, we are happy to answer them in the blog. Email us at
We booked an AirBnb-like room (for Ktown) in that it has a lockbox with a code to get in and we won’t have to inconvenience anyone getting in so late. It was available on Booking.com, which I use for one nighters, for last minute bookings, and booking hotels near airports for early flights.
As we mentioned, AirBnB was founded on the philosophy of “home stay” and we don’t use them for one-nighters because, though the price can be better, we think it’s rude to stay one night in a home and then they have to clean everything.
If you aren’t staying in a big hotel, it’s often difficult to find your place in an unfamiliar city—especially in a foreign country.
A lot of places like this will post pictures of their doorways and the ones around them though. So, you shouldn’t have “too” much trouble finding them.
For “Rustic Apartment” that we booked in Ktown, we were sent the following helpful information.
As wifi can be sketchy, and you want to avoid, data charges on your phone, always take a picture of the route you need to take, and save images of the room directions.
Image of the route from the train station to the room.
The same for train trips. The speakers (the actual speaker and not the person speaking) on some of the German regional trains are so awful that you can’t make out what they said. So, screenshot your trip itinerary so you can make sure you get off at the right time, anticipate how long until you need to deboard the train so you can gather all of your stuff, and remember your transfer stations.
This of course does not help you to find the correct platform, as we noted in our missed trains, but it does help. Some trains have digital displays or monitors with the stops and they will list the platforms for connections as well.
We’ve only had a layover in Spangdahlem before, not as a destination. And once when I flew by myself, I came to Spangdahlem to try to catch a flight and didn’t get on.
But, one military base is much like the others. The process is to get a taxi to the train station, if there is no shuttle, and then the train to wherever you want to go. The first step is to figure out which train station was closest to the military base. We landed in Spangdahlem (pronounced Spang-dul-lem) and deboarded fairly quickly.
Once you enter the terminal, it is the same as a regular airport: you go through border patrol/immigration and get your passport stamped, then get your luggage, and then go through customs. Some countries have rigorous agents. And others, not so much. But given the current situation in Italy, we decided not to say that Italy was our destination. We opted for the standard retiree response of “travel around Germany.” Since you are Space A, they never really ask how long you plan to stay. The immigration agent was nice and he joked about the weather being so crappy. It has been raining in Germany for several days straight.
Once in the terminal, everyone was trying to organize taxis. The taxi stand phone number on the courtesy phone was wrong. So people started to get annoyed because the terminal crew, who were in civilian clothes but clearly military, were unhelpful and unconcerned. Yes, they acted like nobody was even in the terminal let alone needed assistance. I never panic when there is coffee. Jason got me some coffee and we let things play out in the terminal until one of the crew announced that there would be a bus to lodging for the active duty guys but would take other passengers if needed. Lodging was closer to the gate and hopefully the staff there would be more helpful.
The family of four, us, and a couple of the single guys ended up at lodging. The airman and the hotel clerk were very nice and very helpful.
Rewind: When I knew we had made the flight to Germany, I used the wait time in Dover to look up the details on Spangdahlem. So, I already knew that the nearest train station. Speicher (pronounced Spy-ch-er), was only 15 minutes away. I also knew that even though Munich (a 4.5 hour train ride from Spangdahlem) was our technical first stop, we needed to get to a place somewhere closer and travel to Munich the next day. So, we had already decided to go from Spangdahlem by taxi to Speicher to Kaiserslautern, a fairly big train station. I booked a place to stay on Booking.com for Kaiserslautern that was accessible by a key box and not a traditional check in because we would be late.
Back in Spangdahlem: When the airman called the taxi, it was going to be an hour. No one is ever in a hurry in Europe—that’s a thing.
Yes, it can get annoying if you are not ready for that.
Still, we had time but about 15 minutes to make the train. I knew that Speicher was a small train station with no ticket office. I was fairly sure that there would be a ticket machine, but I took advantage of the secure wifi to buy tickets on the Omio app.
There are several great apps for traveling by train. Trainline and Omio are both good. Used in conjunction, they are nearly flawless.
The hardest thing to do when traveling by train is to estimate how much time you need to get to your train.
Omio has the option to purchase tickets, but Trainline doesn’t always offer the option depending on where you are going.
And then….the taxi was late. So I had to rebook for the next train and we were out $38.00 for the tickets.
Frick’n, Frack’n, %$#%^! (and not the only time)
Still, no big deal. While in the lobby, we met the family that was traveling. They decided to book a room in the lodging and start their trip tomorrow. They were from Vermont and they were trying to go see their daughter who was studying in Berlin. They had wasted two days in Dover trying to get a flight out and only had 6 more days for their trip to get back to the Space A terminal to fly back.
Hope it works out for them.
Jason had walked outside and ended up chatting with the young guy with the limp. So, he joined us in the taxi to Speicher but his destination was Frankfurt to try to catch a flight to Morocco. He was on terminal leave before being medically discharged.
Terminal (now called transitional) leave is when you are getting out of the military and you use all your vacation days. Yes, you can cash some in, but if you did it right, you have way more days than you are allowed to cash in. You also get what is called permissive TDY, up to 20 days depending on your situation. For example, when I retired, I had 75 days leave (vacation) accrued and got authorized 20 days of permissive TDY. So, I got paid by the Army, and was still “in,” but did not have to go to work for 95 days.
And we used that time to get priority on Space A flights and went to Europe for two and half weeks and did several amazing trips to France, Amsterdam, and traveled along the Rhein. Thank you, Army!
The Speicher train station is a typical small town station in Germany.
It is exactly how I remember Germany. Train stations always look exhausted in a romantic kind of way.
Looking down the tracks at the trees on a chilly, gray, wet day is exactly Germany to me.
Our destination was our room in Kaiserslautern, which is near the big air base, Ramstein, where we have been several times. Military call it K-town. But the train stops first in Trier, and our new little friend…did we get his name?
Of course not, even if we did, I would not remember it!
He was catching a connection to Frankfurt. When we boarded the train, there was an old German woman and three dogs on the train. Along the way we learned a little about her. She was very well educated and she teachs English, German, and French. She was traveling to Trier to take one of the dogs to the vet. They had already driven two hours from where they lived to the train station in Köln (that’s Cologne) and the three hour train ride to Trier to get on a bus to the vet. The young dog had some sort of awful growth on his face. She said her vet in town had already said there was nothing they could do and she was going for a second opinion. I was stunned. This lady was clearly in her 70’s, had a cane, three bags, two coats, and was traveling by herself all day on public transportation with her three dogs. That’s not something you would EVER see in the states.
It was impressive she was travelling so far.
We shared a nice conversation with her about how hard it is to lose fur family. I even showed her a picture of our girl Eris and our Titus. She couldn’t believe how beautiful our girl was.
As we pulled into Trier, everyone was focused on getting off and making connections, so partings were quick. I will always remember that lady when I think about resiliency.
We missed our train to Kaiserslautern—we found the track but our train was really far forward and by the time we matched up the numbers of the trains to the platforms our train was pulling away. So, trusting…
More like guessing
…we had regional train tickets, which meant that we could catch any regional train that day as long as we got off at our stop and not a later one. We decided to not purchase new tickets.
So, we had to wait about 35 minutes until the next train. The great thing about train stations in Europe is the beer. Well, I should say…the best thing is public drinking. Beer or wine or whatever.
I am in my element at this point. Besides dragging luggage, I love this. I am such an energy junkie that I love train stations, airports, cities, busy cafes, taxis, tickets! We had been traveling for 26 hours at this point. We hadn’t eaten a meal, or had any real sleep. But I wasn’t worried, frustrated, or exhausted. I took advantage of the free wifi (the mobile hotsport SIM I had purchased was for Italy, so it needed some tech attention to make it work in Germany) and sent some texts to the boys and others.
This is why Space A travel is not for everyone. There is no guaranteed arrival time—so you can’t make any real plans un advance. I’m okay with that. And you seem to be too…
Missing plans you made due to unforeseen circumstances can be especially frustrating. This is why I like not having set plans and enjoy Space A… the key is if you have the time.
So, it means that you can have a very long day of traveling—and this was turning out to be one. Here is a screenshot of our train details to Kaiserslautern. In Trier, we had missed our train so we wouldn’t be getting to our place in Ktown until really late.
We had a transfer in Saarbrücken. A short one. So, I stayed on the platform while Jason headed to the shop to grab two more beers for the two hours train to Ktown. As we waited, a guy approached us and asked if we were military. Turns out, he was an Army Ranger who had been medically discharged years ago. He and his girlfriend were in Germany visiting an old friend and visiting where he had grown up because his Dad was also stationed here with the military in the 70s and 80s. They were headed back to Munich tonight. Munich is a four hour train ride from Ktown. Which means they had at least six more hours of traveling tonight. Munich was our destination too—but I was so glad we were stopping in Ktown.
We would not have gotten settle into Munich until like 2 am if everything else went according to plan.
In hindsight, we should have exchanged info and met up with them in Munich for a drink. But, I like the mystery of knowing those people exist but not getting involved in their lives. At this point in the day, we had met three interesting people: the little Airman who traveled with us from Spangdahlem, the nice German professor and her dogs, and now this Veteran. This is something that only happens when you travel.
We made our train and arrived in K-town for the short walk to our room. I had jumped on Booking.com to get a room back in Dover. I choose Booking.com instead of AirBnB when we are only staying one night somewhere.
Why? AirBnb began with the philosophy of a homestay experience with a host who could provide you with the comforts of home without the standard hotel amenities. It was designed to be an experience, so I avoid them on one-night stays. (Check out the next blog for a ProTip).
Once in our room, all we could think about was food and it was already after 2100. Things close early in small European towns. I googled places around us and found that there was a “pizzeria with take away” at the end of our street. It was a beautiful night and I was ready for a little walk without luggage. Once we got to the pizzeria, I realized the info was wrong—this was not a take away joint. We were road weary and disheveled but hunger overtook us and we went in.
Uh, I was still in pristine shape, not disheveled!
The pizzeria was a lovely Italian-themed restaurant. Mouths watering, I asked if we could still come in because the sign said they closed at 2200. I think it was just after 2130. The man spoken a little broken English and smiled and showed us to a table. We were the only ones there and we started to feel bad that they might have to dirty something they had already cleaned. But, again, hunger.
I was happy to see Montepulciano on the wine menu and got a glass of that and Jason got a beer. At first we said we’d just get a pizza so we weren’t any trouble. But the sight of so many great dishes won us over and we opted for pizza and lasagna.
You will notice I get beer a lot because Europe is like having about 400 micro-breweries around you at all times so I try many different variations. In general, each smaller region (especially in Germany), make their own beer. It seems to be a bit more commercialized than I remember, but still way better than in the states.
The Idle Traveler: The Art of Slow Travel-Dan Kieran
The Space A process, for us, begins with “signing up” for seats up to 60 days ahead. This is a retiree thing—others are not allowed to sign up until they go on official leave. We sign up, then we watch the Facebook page’s of the terminals to see when flights are available. The various Space A terminals will list flights up to 72 hours ahead (often not that far ahead). They may also list the number of seats available but that they are tentative.
This is the Facebookpage for showing two flightswith 53 tentative seats.
We have flown in or out of McGuire, NJ; Andrews, MD; and Westover, MA.
We choose a flight, then we rent a one-way car, drive to the terminal, and mark ourselves present for the roll call. Then, I wait with the bags while Jason returns the rental car and catches an Uber back to the terminal. Then we wait for roll call to see if we make it on the flight.
There are categories that let someone, who signed up after us but has a higher category than us, have priority seating. There are 6 categories and we are category 6—so, we are the last group to be called for seats.
Sound simple? Well, usually.
We saw a flight pop up Saturday, March 7th, on the Dover AFB Terminal for Monday, March 9th to Spangdahlem, Germany. There was also a flight for Mildenhall, England shortly after. Either one was good for us since it is easier to get where you’re going once you’ve crossed the Atlantic. And, we were flexible.
We picked up the rental car from the airport in Louisville on Sunday night. Fortunately, we only live 10 mins from the airport and rentals tend to be cheaper if you pick up at the airport. (Estimated cost with the one-way drop off and the fuel purchase option= $187)
On Sunday night, the flight was scheduled to roll call at 1800. Not to drag this out—after we left Louisville at zero dark thirty for the 10 hour drive, I checked the Facebook page when we were outside of Lexington and saw that the flight had been canceled.
The flight to Mildenhall had a roll call of 2345…that’s almost midnight. So, we decided to turn around and come home for a two hour nap.
Simple, right? I slept for an hour and a half and woke up to check the flight and it had been moved up. We jumped out of bed and hit the road…again.
Dover Air Force Base
We arrived at the terminal leisurely with an hour and half to spare before roll call. As I came out of the bathroom and headed for the desk to “mark” us present for the flight, the Airman said, “Are you guys here for the Spangdahlem flight?” I said yes and he said “You’re just in time. We started roll call 20 minutes ago.” Inside I was screaming “What the hell?” But my face said “Great!” I handed him our papers and Jason started to drag in the bags from the car. I was relieved that with all the difficulty we were still making it on the flight.
I was not sure at all we were going to make the flight. I still had to return the rental in a city (and Air Base) I had never been to at 2100 hrs.
Jason had to grab his military ID card (to be able to get back on the base) and headed out to take the rental to the drop-off. I lingered and kept an eye on the line where you check your bags and decide if you want a boxed meal. I was being deliberately slow, worrying about Jason making it back.
A little about the terminal and the passengers:
The terminal staff tend to be all very young, very low-ranking Servicemembers. Either Army or Airforce depending on what terminal you are at. Whatever ranking supervisor there is on duty is usually buried back in some office. So, in my experience, the terminal often seems a little disorganized.
The terminals are run the same way in a combat theatre also in my experience.
Looking around at our fellow passengers, I take a guess at who, what branch of service, and what their status is. At this time of year, it’s nearly all retired or single-active duty Servicemembers. Today, there is an old, really old, couple, and I am guessing he is retired from the 80s. There is a couple about our age and they are speaking German and they have an ungodly amount of baggage. Which tells me they live in Germany and they’ve been stateside for vacation and/or to visit family. It’s not at all uncommon that a German woman and her sister will both be married to Servicemembers and are stationed or retired in different areas. I hear him talking to someone and say that he is retired from the Navy.
There is an active duty MP with his pretty German Shepherd and his weapons in the terminal. Shortly after I notice him, the Aircrew come out and ask him to go ahead and board. Since he has weapons, he will likely be in the cargo hold for the flight.
There is another older couple, maybe our age but they look older, traveling with two red-headed boys who look like they are seniors in high school. They look like a very nice family.
Then there are various single guys that I am not sure if they are active or if they are retired. One looks like he’s the stand-in for Sylvester Stallone, but younger. A young skinny guy with a slight limp. Possibly medically retired.
The check-in line is empty and I hear the Airman say “Has anyone checked in MSG White?”
At this point, I am walking through the main gate. I am about a mile or so away from the terminal.
It was super weird to hear you referred to as Master Sergeant White! As I placed the bags on the scale, the Airman asked “Is your sponsor here?” I smiled and said “Yes, he’s right outside. Let me call him back in.” Totally lying because you had just texted me you were at the base gate.
It was not quite that simple, “right outside” meant about ¾ of a mile away. I ran from that point the whole way back.
Jason comes in, out of breath from running, and she gets us checked in.
I am currently just shy of 50 years old so “out of breath” was putting mildly.
I do all the talking.
And then, we wait, and wait, and wait. That’s the thing, they never tell you an exact time and you just have to be patient because it’s a free freakin’ flight to Europe.
I ran ¾ of a mile (not in workout clothes) and we still ended up waiting like 3 hours after I got there.
I have done this to Jason soooo many times. LOL. Remember I left the passports in the hotel room in Ramstein when we took the trip to Alsace on the tour bus??
It wasn’t funny then. It’s not funny now.
LOL. I don’t know why I thought we wouldn’t need passports to cross from Germany to France. Anyway…
The aircrew is generally very nice. Once you leave the terminal, you board a bus (an old school or military bus) that drives you out to the plane. There is no fancy awning to protect you from rain. There is no ramp that gently rises for your walk to the door. There is a metal staircase that is ALWAYS wobbly. There always seems to be a gusty wind. The initial step onto the bus and to the plane staircase are incredibly steep. It’s not luxury, but it is free.
I remark on the hospitality of the aircrew because the passengers are not always ideal, and it is not the air crew’s job to be flight attendants. Their job description does not include customer service. On this flight, the old couple I mentioned before… he is obviously retired and she must be his German bride from 1910… okay, not 1910, are both in the elderly category. And the semi-disabled category. And in the heavily overweight category. Heavily.
She has really swollen legs like the one woman at the German American club. Do you know who I am talking about?
No.
Thanks, Cavalry Scout. So observant.
Anyway, this husband carries a folding step stool for her to get into and out of the bus. I am not sure why they don’t wait and let everyone else get on and get off first. But they don’t. And the other passengers stand in the wind, after midnight, to board the bus and to start the staircase. And the aircrew is very nice and patient and willing to help.
And this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a crew be really nice. Remember when we flew from Westover and that woman was flying with two toddlers, the baby, and she was pregnant? She had all those car seats and traveling by herself?
I remember.
There is no way she could have done all of that without the aircrew helping.
To my dismay, the C17 has been retro-fitted with airline seats. I prefer the jump seats. Plenty of space on this flight, so Jason and I have a row (three seats) to ourselves. People have a tendency to spread out excessively. Like the retired Seaman and his German wife take a row of three seats across from each other for themselves. We do not do that because we know that the crew will want to lay down on this flight too. And, there are 5 or 6 active duty Servicemembers traveling together and they should get to lay down also.
Jason is out before they even dim the lights. He’s in his element. Head back against the seat, sleeping the sleep of the dead from all those years of boarding military aircraft not knowing when the next opportunity to sleep will be.
So I stretch out across the two seats and put my head on his lap for the 8 hour flight to Spangdahlem. I breathe deeply. My itchy wanderlust finally soothed.
My legs were cramping because I couldn’t move. If you don’t know why read the sentence above again.
SHE AND HE WANDER 