I continue to read a 1,000-page college text on international business – about one third of the way through that.
Am also reading “Cheese, Wine and Bread” by Katie Quinn. It’s a fun and easy book to read, focusing on the fermented foods in the title. This is an international book as she wrote it after moving to London and spent much time researching in areas of Europe. She and her husband now live in Italy.
Travel Plans?
With the spread of Omicron I am not making travel plans now. Am thinking of background research – perhaps in February or March, depending on what is happening with travel restrictions. Just very general stuff.
Would it be possible to make my first ever trip to Europe next winter?
Why winter for a first trip? It’s the soonest I could travel for one, and second, every year I get a year older. I have no idea how many years into the future I have to travel – and starting from ground zero I have a hell of a learning curve and a goal to catch up as fast as I can. (This pandemic shut everything down literally the month I was to start developing travel skills.)
My thought is next winter (Nov ’22 to Feb ’23) is the soonest I can go (for other reasons). I don’t intend to waste time and will have a very aggressive travel schedule once it is possible to do so.
I hope in the next month or two we hear the world returning to rational thinking and restrictions start to go away, or at least we learn of dates by which they may go away.
Once I see a path forward, I will research possible winter destinations and figure out if it makes sense to do a first trip to the EU in winter.
Will weather be okay? Will attractions be open? Would short winter days be a problem for what I want to do?
This would just be generic research – not figuring details of destinations yet until it begins to look feasible.
Once things are clearer, then I would pick a destination and do a full trip plan.
Past Two Weeks – Vaccination Update
I had my first of three vaccination shots for Hepatitis A and B (Twinrix). Second shot will be in February and the third in July.
Over 18 months, i am “catching up” on missing vaccinations. No health care provider ever talked to me about vaccinations. In March of 2021, as Covid vaccinations began to get rolled out, I looked into my vaccine record: I had only had smallpox and polio vaccines – plus tetanus, flu shots and Shingrix later in life.
I had never had MMR, Hep A/B, pneumonia vaccines. As a child I did have measles, mumps (but not rubella), and chicken pox. This past year I had MMR, three Covid shots, plus influenza. This year, I start Hep A/B and catch up with pneumonia this fall.
As I researched travel, I learned having the MMR vaccine is usually mandated (but rarely checked), and the Hep A/B is highly recommended when traveling to much of the world.
My goal is to be all set to go by fall (but due to a schedule conflict I have to wait until at least next winter).
Finally, during the past 10 days, my wife and I – both vaccinated – have likely had Omicron/Covid-19. Symptom’s match those typically found in the vaccinated. However, no tests are readily available, so we have not been tested.