Communication Stressors

Back in 2005, when young heads backpacked through Europe, all you had to worry about was securing your train ride out of town, figuring out public transit, finding an Internet cafe at some point early in a city just to book a spot in the next city, and where to find cheap beer and smokes. You know what fixes jetlag? ALCOHOL.

Today is a whole new world, and it probably should be, because I'm talking about technology, and fourteen years in tech is long.

There are no Internet cafes anymore. Maybe...in Romania...but come on, most everybody has a super computer in their pocket, capable of finding and booking an night's stay almost anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. It can also arrange rides by nearly any means, and even connect you with any person of your choice in the chain of people you may have to interact with to make all those things I just mentioned realities.

But what if your pocket super computer just won't connect? What if it can connect only to one specific thing (wifi) that isn't always reliable, or present in public places? What if even though you paid to have your device be ready to accept non-wifi networks, it still won't allow you access to mobile data?

That's pretty much what we faced, and I was reminded over and over again how stupidly reliant humans are on these devices.

In Rome, as we sat on the stoop in the heat waiting until when we thought our host was due to arrive and let us in, unable to message him, Corrie found some buried email message in which he did mention which button to buzz (none of them were numbered, and none of the printed names were this persons). He was inside, waiting for a call or our buzzing the door.

In Villa San Giovanni, our second stay, we found the apartment, but without wifi we couldn't message the host that we were outside. We needed to be on a  mobile network to have access to the AirBnB messaging. They had a phone number listed, and I called it a few times, checking and rechecking the number, only to be told it wasn't a cromulent number. Corrie went walkabout, looking for a restaurant or bar with wifi ("bars" in Italy aren't the same as in the US; sure they sell beer, maybe even liquor, but they're mostly a place to get a bite to nosh on, maybe a coffee, maybe make a bet on some races). After a time I left Lola in the car with a sleeping toddler to go find Corrie, only to be approached by the hosts. I went inside, got the tour and the keys and the instructions, all with no idea where Corrie was.

In Siracusa similar things happened: Lola and I were posted up in the car with Cass and Corrie was off for a while. I was parked illegally and had to move so often that I just started doing laps between the tiny. Somehow Corrie found the lady after finding the spot.

We were so late leaving Agrigento, and had no way of informing our host in Collesano that we were going to be a few hours later than originally planned. We returned to the city proper after driving away from it for a while and after a failed attempt to use a gas station's wifi. We drove around increasingly smaller and smaller streets, ending up in the old-town area (only newer than the temples) until we spotted a "Free wifi" sticker on a cafe's door. Lola and I went inside, I ordered an espresso while Lola doe-eyed the hot baristo, and sent a quick message: sorry, we'll be late. At least a restaurant in Collesano helped out.

In Napoli the instructions were a little more clear, and the gates were open, and that building had a large inner courtyard where kids played and older folks eyeballed everyone who entered. Because we buzzed the "Blue Room" as labeled, the lady there was able to lean out and beckon us, not needing the services of the cadre of residents ready to let her know her tourist guests were there.

That's basically the arrival story of every single place we stayed during the entire trip, and each one had a built in headache because of tech limitations. In one sense, these damn glass rectangles (as I call them at work) have made the reality of international travel just that: a reality. Depending on circumstantial limitations, they can also cause a maddening level of annoyance and stress, and could have really done worse than hinder us.

But look at those stories, also, for the underlying theme: it worked out, through luck, or the good graces of nice people, and isn't that the real essence of this whole endeavor?

If you leave your own little world and go out adventuring in other people's little worlds with honesty and righteousness in your heart, that's how the world will treat you back.

At least that's what we want to believe, and this trip was evidence to that. Our trips produced evidence like this before: how about "Frontera! Frontera! Frontera!" in Guatemala or the motor bikes in Part 7 in Vietnam, or the crazy nice people we met in Paris in 2005...