2. Sowing the seeds of a retirement bucket list

 

 

Image: Wall St. Journal

 

While at university in Galway in the 1980s, I was intrigued by stories recounted by fellow students on their return from a summer spent interrailing. I would have loved to have been able to do likewise, but unfortunately I could never afford to, as my summers were always spent working and saving some money for the following year. So on retiring in November 2022, an Interrail trip was the number one item on my bucket list. I set about planning the trip in February 2023, enjoying every second of the research and the planning. But where would I go?

Through home exchanges, educational exchanges, school tours and study visits I was very fortunate to have visited most European countries. By 2023 the only countries I had not visited were Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia,  Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine. It was obvious therefore that I would be heading eastwards!

 

The Balkans

Initially I wanted to concentrate on both Eastern and South Eastern Europe, as for several decades I had been an avid follower of the many political and social changes all the way from the Baltics right down to the Balkans, and had read John Simpson's excellent Dispatches from the Barricades at least twice, over the years. The chapters on Germany and Poland are particularly good.

Back in late 2001, my wife Patricia spotted a small ad in The Irish News detailing an intruiging and very cheap travel offer of visiting both Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, flying out of Belfast with half-board for a week in Dubrovnik. There were only two tickets left, so we decided to book the trip immediately. It was only when we boarded the plane, and the hymn singing started, followed by five decades of the rosary, that we realised that we were on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje! We were the only passengers who had booked hotel accomodation in Dubrovnik, with everyone else boarding a coach at the airport for the famous Bosnian Marian shrine. 

We spent a week exploring Dubrovnik's amazing old town, which still showed many many scars from the war, which had only ended six years previouly. We also took a day-trip into Bosnia, there was only one on offer, which was to the aforementioned shrine. The trip took us over winding, potholed mountain passes where we saw dozens of burnt out and abandoned or half-built houses. My initial interest in the politics of the area was only heightened. 

One of the best accounts I read of the Balkan Wars, before travelling there was undoubtedly Misha Glenny's The Fall of Yugoslavia, which I'd recommend highly.

The Baltics

 In the early years of this century, three completely separate events all combined to pique my interest in the Baltics. 

Latvia

Back in 2003, my wife, my sister and two friends headed to Riga in Latvia, to lend their support to Mickey Joe Harte from Donegal who was representing Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest that year. The stories and photos they brought back were of a city that was young, vibrant, independent and exciting, yet with an amazing Art Nouveau architectural heritage, and these ideas planted a seed in my mind.  

Lithuania

Also in 2003, I was lucky to receive funding to go on a Socrates / Grundvig weeklong course on De Bono's 'Six Thinking Hats’ in Malta. One of the other course participants was from Vilnius in Lithuania and during the course of the week she recounted her memories and experiences from 1991, leading up to Lithuania's independence. She also showed us photos of the many Art Deco buildings in Kaunas and Vilnius which struck a chord with me. 

Estonia

The following year, 2004, while on a house exchange to Helsinki, we did a day trip by ferry to the third Baltic republic of Estonia when we spent hours mesmerised walking around the cobble stones of the capital Tallinn. We fell in love with the town, its eclectic architecture, burgeoning coffee and hipster scene, coupled with a friendly welcome from the residents who were embracing 10 years of independance at that stage.

It was only a matter of biding my time before I would return to the region to visit the two countries I had not seen, Latvia and Lithuania.

 

From toy trains to the Eurostar

Having spent most of my life in County Donegal, one of the few Irish counties with no rail service, train travel has always been something of a fascination for me - even a luxury. Why Santa in his right mind brought me two different trainsets as a child I'll never know, but it certainly sparked an early interest in trains! The first one was a small basic push-along model, but the second was much more elaborate. I remember it being too big for the kitchen table, and it had to be set up on the floor, but the pleasure of the lights, sounds and battery-powered locomotive were always short-lived, as it always had to be packed up again too soon, as it was in someone's way! And guess what I bought for my baby son, as soon as he could crawl, yes a multi-coloured IKEA wooden train set!

 

www.ikea.com

During my career in education, I must have travelled on a dozen or more school trips to France over the years, mostly travelling over and back on the 21-hour Irish Ferries' St. Killian. How I envied friends who were teaching in the UK, who were able to travel from their schools all the way to Paris via the Eurostar from London. Since its inception in the mid-90s, it has been one of my ambitions to experience travelling on the Eurostar, however I never got the opportunity to do so until now.

So there you have it, these were some of  the random thoughts and dreams that were floating around in my head on retirement last year, which gradually coalesced to form the draft of a bucket list Interrail trip, which would ideally cover Eastern Europe, the Baltics and the Balkans, and which most definitely would involve travelling on the Eurostar! 

The initial plan was to do a month-long what I called "B&B" (Baltics and Balkans) Interail trip, however I quickly realised that this was way too ambitious and would involve more time spent train-travelling than actually experiencing, never mind enjoying any of the towns and cities on the way! Therefore for my 2023 trip, I decided to do just one or the other. I had read of major engineering rail works that were ongoing in the Balkans, coupled with a patchy enough or non-existent rail service in some of the countries I wanted to visit, which would have meant that about half of the travel would have to be by bus, so this influenced my decision - I would combine the Eurostar trip with a final destination somewhere in the Baltics, leaving the Balkans for another year.