28.07.2007
Today is the day!
We have been dreaming about it in the last years and been preparing it in the last 10 to 12 months … And it now has turned into reality: we are leaving Vienna for one year!
We finished our last preparations the evening before our departure on Saturday, July 28th. A few plans didn’t materialize - for instance studying the manual for our new camera or Heidi’s ambition to brush up her Spanish had to be taken off the ToDo-list!
Looking back what took up most of our time preparing the trip was the “administrative stuff” in Austria: selling the car, renting the two flats, with a tenant cancelling the lease two weeks before the departures, organizing our financial matters, getting our mail rerouted, cancelling subscriptions, health checks of all sorts, ...
The trip itself was actually relatively easy to plan, especially because we only booked the first leg of our travel - Vienna - Caracas to guarantee maximum flexibility.
There is one point where we clearly missed our target: traveling light! When we packed the backpacks, it turned out that we actually had much more luggage than we would have liked to have. So, at least in the beginning, we will be carrying not less that twice as much as what we had planed or hoped, which already brought Heidi to complain about how heavy the whole stuff was!
It is really difficult to imagine that we are leaving for a full year! Will we indeed visit about 14 countries in the 12 months to come? We hardly can imagine what it really means. We think we will need a few days to work it out and to slow down, for the pace in the last 3 weeks has been relentless.
So we are now on the plane … And the first leg was a very special plane ride! Firstly, because someone had brought his dog along, the poor thing was squeaking in a shrill, nerve-raking manner most of the flight. Secondly and most important, because one of Heidi´s Friends organized that Gilles was able to access the cockpit at least for the approach and landing. A fantastic and very impressive experience, especially because it turned out to be a rather shaky approach, something Gilles will surely never forget!
