Europe 2017: Day #0 A Long and Winding Road

The initial instigator for this trip to Europe in 2017 was the simple fact that Helsinki won the right to host the World Science Fiction Convention for that year. As a past Worldcon chair myself I've always been as interested in the "World" part of the name as the rest of it and wanted to ensure I could support the convention by attending. The fact that Helsinki was in an exotic location (at least for Australians) meant that I had the chance to convince Robyn that the trip was a possibility.

But I had to ensure that the trip wasn't just to an sf convention and not just to Helsinki, as much as that city had been on our bucket list.  A scan of the neighboring countries on an atlas showed an interesting connected flow through a series of countries we had never previously visited and it was this combination that I put to Robyn in about the middle of 2015.

I should have known that once the suggestion had been made, and that she seemed enthusiastic about the prospect, that the planning would basically be taken out of my hands and that she would organise the whole thing.  Prior to about 2012, and our trip to Vietnam in that year, I had been the one who did the bulk of the booking and research for any holidays, with Robyn adding approvals and suggestions along the way. After becoming a bit more confident using the internet and coming up with a very successful Vietnam tour and holiday she took over the job and our roles were basically reversed from then on.

My initial suggestion for Europe in 2017 was Helsinki, followed by the eastern European countries of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and ending in Poland. It only took a couple of discussions between us for that to be extended to include Hungary at the tail end of the trip.  Then I started looking at flights between Australia and Helsinki and realised that if we were to be utilising Qantas and Emirates (to make use of the Qantas club in the various layovers) we would be restricted to only a few days a week for our outward flight.  A side check on flights to Stockholm gave a much better range of options, and, as we'd visited the city only once for a day about 25 years ago and really enjoyed it, we decided to add that on at the start.

Research and various conversations with friends later we finalised the itinerary.  We'll mainly be staying in the major cities along the route, with day or half-day side trips, and traveling overland (or over water) rather than flying between destinations.  The whole area we are covering is too big to really look at the countries in depth so we'll be doing the best we can to get a taste of them while attempting to visit as many World Heritage sites as we can along the way.

We'll be away about a month exactly, and it will be the first time Robyn and I have spent on a trip alone together for around 25 years. Daunting and exhilarating at the same time.

Basic outline of the trip, starting in Stockholm and ending in Budapest.