Intro In 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Ginny’s Aunt Peg sends her off to Europe with no return tickets, no guidebooks, no maps, no cash, no credit cards ... In some ways, this is a really interesting way to travel, full of adventure. I, too, have ideas on how you should travel! Complied here are thirteen pieces of travel wisdom, the hard-won product of my own mistakes, and the mistakes of my friends, and general observations from the road.           1. embrace your inner obsessive-compulsive child.   Hug that twitchy little scamp! There is no such thing as OCD when it comes to checking your documentation or being on time. Learn from this story: I began 13 Little Blue Envelopes during a long stay in Scotland. When I left, I planned a short trip to Paris to take notes for one of the next scenes in the book. I had a traveling companion coming over from America to go with me. Unfortunately, on the morning we were to meet in London, I got a phone call from him—from America. He had packed and gotten ready to walk out the door. Unfortunately, he hadn’t looked at his passport in ages. When you get a passport, it seems like they will last FOR ALL OF TIME. They don’t. They expire. His had, just a few weeks before. What do you do in cases like this? Nothing. You go nowhere. Game over. So, make sure you have the right stuff with you, and that that stuff is up to date. Check it again. Repeat.   2. (don't) overpack.   I realize this runs contrary to the standard line on this subject, which is that you’re supposed to pack your suitcase with a fair and well-tempered selection of go-everywhere clothes, and then you’re supposed to remove half. Bor-ing! I’ve never done this. I seem to come from that classical strain of traveler—the kind that needs half an elephant to carry their weekend bag. That’s my kind of person. Our motto is, “Why leave it at home?” What this means, of course, is that–unlike my clever-packing friends who whiffle across airports and down train platforms with bags the size of manila folders—I drag behind with entire closets stuffed into obese bags. And I still never seem to bring anything truly useful. My bag opens to reveal a celebration of mismatchedness. The clever packers, on the other hand, whip out perfectly matching separates that can be endlessly recombined into outfits that fit every occasion, from a beach barbeque, to a presidential inauguration, to an undersea expedition. And I hate them for it. Know what? Just bring everything. This is bad advice, but then again, I never promised you good advice. I simply said I would give advice. I want you to overpack so I won’t feel so alone in this and can say, “See! They do it too!”   3. be prepared to strip.   It's a weird world we live in but one of the major bonuses to the madness is that when you fly now, you get to see all kinds of people taking off their clothes in public. And I don't mean it that way either. I mean, there is a certain satisfaction you can get from seeing some really smug, look-at-me-I-travel-so-much-and-I-can’t-even-be-bothered-get-off-the- phone-to-go-through-the-metal-detector yo-yo forced to yank off items of clothing in the most awkward place possible—namely, at the front of a line of 2,000 somewhat impatient people. This is totally fantastic. I should never become a security person at the airport, because all I would do is pull over every snooty-looking person and say, “Hey, you. Lose the shoes. And . . . um, the jacket! And the belt! Take ‘em all off at the same time! Yeah! You heard me! The same time!” And then I would watch them hop and twitch and fall over and yelp, and I bet they would be wearing really dumb socks. Oh . . . the advice part of all this is that it’s kind of a good idea to wear things that are easy to get on and off. And it’s best to just have your jacket off and ready. Makes everything go quickly, and no one will laugh at you as you try to take off skin-tight high leather boots while doing a kind of improvised hopping routine, a la Riverdance. (Like, um, me, for example.)   4. obey the voices.   I am not advocating a life of blind obedience to all rules that make no sense to you. On the contrary, I think people should rigorously question and challenge the systems that govern and guide them. The test of a truly strong and righteous system is its tolerance of scrutiny. But this rule does NOT apply when you’re dealing with the people who are keeping you 42,000 feet in the air. Do anything and everything they ask, even it seems stone cold crazy. If the pilot came on and said, “Ye must give me yer silver and yer baubles, for to give to the sky witches who hold ye aloft!”—I would turn out my purse and rip off my rings in a shot. Why? Because I don’t know what keeps planes in the air. Something about lift and thrust and currents and . . . beats me. As far as I know, birds carry planes. So, while I can’t figure out why I’m not allowed to listen to my iPod on takeoff (which is one of the small pleasures of my life), since they come over the intercom and tell me not to do it, I don’t do it. And if the sky witches want my quarters and my rings, they can have them.   5. landing is not a magic trick.   Don’t clap when the plane lands. It’s supposed to do that. Showing surprise at this fact will only make you look silly or very, very pessimistic.   6. beware the free booze.   I realize that it’s cool to get served legally on a plane, and that some airlines will give you free alcohol on their flights. One thing to keep in mind, though: altitude increases the effects of alcohol. This is not a myth. And one thing you really don’t want is to get really drunk on a plane. It’s not worth it. At best, you’ll get powerfully sick, and your fellow passengers will hate you for it—and at worst, you’ll act crazy and the flight staff will come and sit on you or lock you in the pantry, and then you’ll be arrested when the plane lands. And that will suck.   7. you are never alone as long as you have a drawing on a napkin.   Say you end up like me, at the end of Piece of Advice #1, and you have two Eurostar tickets to Paris in your hand and only one of yourself, and not nearly enough time to find someone to go with you. Perhaps you can do what I did. Once I hit Waterloo Station and got my obligatory huge cup of coffee, I nabbed an extra napkin and made myself a companion to sit in the seat. (Mine was named Napkin Jack, after the absent friend.) It works better than you think. You can even take pictures, then create an amusing slide show with music to show your friend who had to stay behind. Also, you are afforded the rare and tremendous satisfaction of being asked if your napkin person is a ticket-holding passenger and has a right to take up that seat—and being able to produce a ticket and reply, “Why, yes. Yes, he is." Of course, no one asked me. But I was ready. I was so ready. My real point, of course, is that traveling alone gives you a chance to get okay with yourself. There’s a tremendous satisfaction in handling things on your own, and being able to do things as you please. Also, you’re in a great position to make new friends; lone travelers are frequently adopted by other travelers, especially in Europe. (This happens to Ginny, in fact.)   8. getting home again is more important than the opinions of snooty strangers.   Aunt Peg says not to bring maps. I disagree with her on this point. You don’t look cool when you are grasping a gigantic map that flaps in your face whenever a breeze comes along—but that little loss of cool points won’t matter at all when you find yourself on the wrong side of the city, upside down, one shoe missing, and no hopes of ever, ever finding your way back to your hotel or hostel or friends or family. If you need to, do stealth map checks, but have a map.   9. there is no need to add any existing language that you don't know.   I remember learning in some Shakespeare class that old Will added something like 1,500 words to the English language. This was taken to mean that he was exceedingly clever. And it might be that he was exceedingly clever—as he is often thought to be so—or it could be that he was just short of information and a little lazy and was making crap up on the fly because his play was due in five minutes. The actors were pacing around nervously looking at where their watches would be if watches had been invented by that point and calling for their scripts. So he started filling in with the “iths” and the “ooths” and the “gazooms” and hey presto! Suddenly he was Mr. Genius. I make up crap constantly when I have deadlines, and no one is calling me a genius. Yet. Anyway, this is a good one to stick in your pocket while on the road. While it is a very good thing to study foreign languages and make an effort to speak them, there is such a thing as taking a good thing too far. Namely, don’t just make stuff up when you don’t know the words. Take Spanish. Just because you know that “mente” on the end of a word means “ly”—for example, rapidamente means quickly—don't get nervous and put “mente” on the end of all your adverbs. So when the old man who owns the pension where you're staying asks if you're going to the beach, don't answer “Hopefulmente!” He will just smile sadly like he feels really sorry for you, and your friend will take off giggling down the hall because this is NOT the first time you've done this. Or, say that later you are on the beach, buying a drink from some cute guy. When you finish the transaction and are feeling all cool about it, just say “gracias” and leave it at that. Don't blurt out all the related words you know, so that you end up saying something like “Gracias de nada!” Which in the best case he'll interpret as you chattering away to yourself, saying, “Thank you! You're welcome!”—but more likely will interpret literally as “Thanks for nothing.”   10. laughter transcends language.   One of my dad’s favorite things to tell people is that he tried to sell me in Mexico when I was eight years old. People smile politely and laugh, because they think he’s made up a good joke. This is funny to a point—to the point at which I remember wandering through a beautiful market on a sunny Mexican afternoon when I was eight, and my father approaching every merchant he saw, saying, “Hey! Wanna buy a kid? Five bucks!” If they didn’t appear to speak sufficient English to understand this insane offer, my dad would just gesture to me and hold up five dollars and smile. And there is a faint splinter of a memory of a guy actually taking out his wallet and handing my dad five bucks, and then waving me into the store as if he was saying, “You are mine now,” and dad saying, “Yep. I sold you! Get in there!” and my mom yelling “That is not funny!” and whisking me away as my dad and the guy in the shop laughed their butts off. And then my dad bought a huge, sparkling sombrero from the guy and wore it the entire rest of the trip—out on the street and to dinner and even on the plane home. I think I’ve lost my original point here. Maybe this piece of advice should have been, “Don’t travel with my dad.”   11. it's a journal, not a force field.   In 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Aunt Peg makes a point of telling Ginny that she is not permitted to bring a journal on her trip. There is a very good reason for this, and one I agree with. There are good things to be said about journals. It’s very good to write on a daily basis. But a travel journal that can also be used as a shield when we’re on our own, in a strange place, and not wanting to interact with our new surroundings. You can turn your head down and focus on that little book and scribble and scribble—and you might just end up scribbling things you might have scribbled just as well at home. I have seen people so busy scrawling in journals that they failed to notice parades of truly bizarre and wonderful people pass them by, or, tragically, cute and interested strangers trying to make eye contact with them. So budget that journal time, and get out there and...   12. eat something wierd.   And by that, I don’t mean eat the unusual items offered at that German McDonald’s. Sure, you might end up eating some kind of eerie mushroom or chicken feet, but it’s important to try. (This rule does not apply to Marmite, that tar-like substance some British people put on their toast.)   13. enjoy the ride.   This is good for traveling, and possibly for life—assume that stuff will go wrong. And the more rigidly you try to stick to your preconceived notion of how your trip should go, the harder a time you’ll have. Traveling is adventure. Things will not always go as planned. Sometimes, food will be strange, seats will be small, drinks will be warm, people may jostle you, you will have to wait in long lines and sleep in odd beds . . . and this kind of the point. History is chock full of examples of people who did the wrong thing or went the wrong way and made wonderful discoveries in the process. The wrong turn, the long, crazy day, the missed train—these are opportunities to have fun, believe it or not, and they are often the things you will remember most fondly. And if you’re anything like me, they’ll be the first stories you tell when you get home. For an example of this concept in action, check out the book.