This last trip had three distinct parts that had seemingly nothing to do with each other. One of those destinations was never even considered until Air France canceled, tossed all their passengers on our original plane, and altered all of our plans. In the end, we spent just as much time in Germany and Austria as we did on the other areas of our trip. Back on our desk at home are about five sheets of paper with possible scenarios with different flights. All included Spain. None included Germany and Austria. Nevertheless, here we are.
If there is any sort of theme to this bizarre trip, I suppose it would be surprises and lots of driving — often getting surprised while driving! At times, it was a bit much, and Nicole was helpful in being a relief driver — especially during long drives in Tunisia and in Malta where the small northern village of Marsalforn was actually breaking me with its construction, closed streets, and one-ways. But without a car, we wouldn’t have been able to see the things we have seen. There is a certain trade off to it, but I would be more than okay if I didn’t have to drive for a while.
I can’t say I’d recommend following the pace of our itinerary. It just had a lot of moving parts. The problem, again, is that there was really no other way to do it. If Tozeur would have let me rent a car, that would have made things easier and I wouldn’t have had to drive a car six hours from Tunis to Tozeur. I quite enjoyed my time in Tozeur and the deserts of Tunisia. In fairness, if you aren’t a fan of Star Wars, there are numerous more accessible deserts around the world. George Lucas could have taken note, but he decided to make everything more complicated than it needed to be. Perhaps I should really be blaming him for all this.
Even so, driving through salt basins and over sand drifts covering the road was a bit of a surreal experience. We felt a bit like Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones drove an Indian hatchback. Tunisia didn’t disappoint in its share of adventures. We got to experience rolling blackouts, and had a candle-lit dinner in Kairouan. I wish I could have said it was romantic, but I could barely see Nicole and the pizza was one of the worst I’ve had in my life. It was as if someone in Tunisia, who had never eaten a pizza, used ChatGPT to figure out how to make a margherita pizza, then translated that information back and forth between English, Arabic, Italian, then ultimately into French and something definitely got lost in translation.
When you go on a German/Austrian, Tunisian, Maltese voyage, you need to consider the following advice. Ready for it? Here it comes! It’s patience. I referenced a previous trip we took a few years ago that had a similar footprint. We were supposed to go to Spain then as well. We ended up in Stockholm instead, then Morocco via Paris, then Portugal and its islands. That still remains one of the most stressful trips of my life because we were just waiting…all the time. Waiting an unusual amount of time to check-in to a hotel or waiting nearly an hour to rent a car in some cases. I felt like half the trip was standing in unnecessary lines.
This trip seemed, on the surface, to have a foreboding similarity right down to the North Africa segment and the lost trip to Spain. Nicole attests that she still enjoyed this current trip despite its share of surprises. And perhaps that’s what made this different than the trip back in 2022. You expect a sense of adventure in Tunisia, and it delivered with power blackouts, off-roading, and negotiations in multiple languages. When one is in Portugal, on the other hand, you sort of expect things to work smoothly and they didn’t at all.
Back to this trip, I would be lying if I said I took the constant traffic diversions on Gozo with stride. Many drivers were called “dickheads” on this trip. Yet even on Gozo, where I would argue driving was actually more stressful than in Tunisia, the small island compensated with free parking…everywhere. It was usually easy to find a spot unless I was in that cursed village on the north coast where traffic cops and old men yelled at me. Dickheads indeed.
Ultimately German and Austrian traffic proved a minor setback. Tunisia just had a lot of driving, but we knew it would, and Malta roads were a little bit worse than we expected. We still got to see everything we wanted to and even then some. We were often making things up as we went along, seeing some new sights along the way. After seeing the hordes at Neuschwanstein, we never again saw crowds on the same level. That helped. When we went to Portugal in 2022, it seemed like that was the year that everyone was going to Portugal. Everywhere was crowded — even the islands, despite being just on the heels of COVID restrictions. At that point, you still needed a negative test to return to the United States and many were still hesitant to travel — except apparently to Portugal.
So we didn’t get to Spain . . .again. We seem destined to never get there. As I mentioned earlier, Spain was the second most visited country of 2024 (after France if you’re curious). So perhaps it’s for the best. Maybe people will eventually lose interest in Spain, or the residents will become hostile enough that tourism will begin to wane. Of course, Salt (everyone’s favorite senior travel couple) along with Bran (the Texas-based couple you may have forgotten about) are about to do a cruise starting and ending in Barcelona. We wish them all the best on their journey.
So for now, Spain will remain on our radar, and I imagine we will get there someday, but knowing how things go, it will occur when we least expect it — like on a planned trip to China. Who would’ve thought we were going to eat so much schnitzel and wurst on this trip? I think we had a healthy amount of — whatever happens happens, and some of it happened and some didn’t. . . like Spain. Until next time dear reader, your beloved Brian from Madrid will have to wait a little bit longer to return to the motherland. In the meantime, he will be enjoying his memories of Germany, Austria, Tunisia, and Malta.
passports & pepto bismol 