This is a small tale about our last family travel adventure!
I travel often both for work and to be with my family in Italy, in my Friuli. Traveling by plane gives me a lot of anxiety. I am constantly trying to be better, and flying is the main source of emissions for me, and I particularly dislike it when it includes my whole family. Or at least, the main source of emissions that we can control. Since I teach about sustainability, I share this internal struggle every time I talk to the students.
I do not take flights for holidays, I only travel for work if I consider it extremely beneficial for more than one reason (I have a mental map of what that means, but I missed conferences like EGU and AGU for years now because of it). I also tend to combine trips for work with time off to visit places while not spending too much time “on the road”. Time is an issue, especially if I travel for work, because every time I do I am leaving my husband home with a kid and a dog - and we do not have any family in Sweden that can help.
We decided to take the first trip Lidingö (Stockholm, Sweden) - Belgrado (Udine, Italy) by car with Sebastian (4) and our small dog Frico (also 4). Even better, with nonni´s cool campervan. In the past we have been thinking about it and doing some parts of the trip, but we never took the full trip. Now that I am writing this I am trying to really understand why - before Sebastian and Frico public transport was a better option - maybe (proudly) not owning a car until one year ago played a big role too!
(and of course the small issue of having to take a night train with a dog - when can he pee etc. is a fascinating issue I did not manage to answer - we might try this next)
I write this to share the main stages of our trip and hopefully give a boost to those who are thinking about it. In a nutshell: children should not prevent you from doing this, and they can stay screen-free the whole time. Ours did!
Premises:
- Both my husband Jay and I can work remotely, and we have many days of vacation
- Both Jay and I have set up an automatic responder for emails (I usually don't use it, I tend to check emails anyway and not completely disconnect - this adventure without being able to work has been very healthy!)
- The trip was planned so as not to have more than 7-8 hours of driving, and most days much fewer hours, and to have a fairly long day in the car followed by a very light one; lots of stops (for the dog but also for us!), and changing drivers at every stop
- The trip was planned so that we could visit friends we haven't seen in a while. We've both lived in many different places in Europe and have amazing friends scattered around (unfortunately!)
- We are lucky enough to have my parents' camper, which I took up North with them a month before the trip.
In the posts that follow, a brief outline of our adventure, including kilometers, costs and some choices, some smart and some questionable 😊
Let´s dig in!
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