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Journey without Maps
Processing first impressions. I still have to process all the impressions of the last days. It’s all very hectic. We have chosen for the gradually road of saying goodbye. We leave now and travel around for a couple of weeks and then we’ll say goodbye and leave for a longer period. It’s incredible what we had to arrange before we could put away the key of the car for real.
Responsibilities Now that I walk around the wagon with nothing but a bicycle key and the wagon key, and no maps!, I feel free from all liabilities and responsibilities. Of course I know I still have some, but they are from a different order and magnitude that I’m used to. How that really works I still figure out. Slow exPRESS E-zine If you want an Up-Date about how we manege this journey, the Slow exPRESS e-zine is the best opportunity to do so! Because we are still on the road, the frequencies of our e-zine can vary but we will do our best to keep you informed with short stories. When you fill in the form below, you will receive a confirmation email. It will ask you if you really want Slow exPRESS E-zine. This is for your protection and ensures it is really you who submitted your address. Only after you confirm your subscription, will we put you on the mailing list.
Radio Broadcast The trip to Hilversum and the conversation with the radio presenter was very fun and I have gained something from it as well. Many of the questions were about the courage that is needed to let go of all securities. I don’t feel it that way. It hasn’t been easy to let go of everything but eventually it’s about so called acquired securities, they didn’t fell from the sky! If all should fail, I still have myself, and I could always rely on myself relating work, earning money and building a career. Letting go what you have isn’t that hard when you know you will be able to acquire it back again. Even on this journey without maps I can prove my capability's.
Reactions After the TV broadcast we have been receiving a lot of reactions with invitations to come over. People from all parts of Holland, with very friendly messages and descriptions of grassland and beautiful places where we are welcome. Although I expected reactions to our calling I never realized expectations from other people would accompany them. This brings forward a luxury problem, are we, or are we not going to make use of all invitations? This journey without maps, becomes more and more a planned one! The pros and cons: In favour because of the nice gesture people make. We ask for an overnight stay and people offer it unselfishly.
Places and Spots Often they’re people that I think I could have a connection with, so they’re fun to meet. Places and spots I have never been before. The fact that we chose a different route than we’re taking now is fine with me. I always thought that we would really be travelling when we would have crossed the German border and that we from then on would be “Frühstücken” instead of eating a sandwich with cheese. I let go of thought long ago. We’re travelling, end of discussion. Against it because we would be travelling from a vision that seemed favourable spiritual as well as pragmatic. A direction instead of a goal, Journey without maps, gives a sense of space and freedom and the feeling that I don not know what behind the next corner. In practice I don’t have to read a map to see if the we are on the right track. During our holiday in Crete we decided we could not take the wrong route, just a different one, and that takes away a lot of stress.
Our first day Yesterday, on our first day, we had an appointment with a good friend of John. Between eleven and one we would be at his gate, wagon and horses, to bring a last book. Unfortunately we were much later because we couldn’t leave after losing our keys, saying goodbye to people, talking to people and because we took a wrong turn twice, remember Journey without maps, and had to return. Dream or nightmare And just that happened in a dream, no more of a nightmare I’m having: we’re making appointments to see someone and I’m reading a map with a sweaty head. Guiding us with a 2.19 meters wagon on a 2.20 meters wide track. What I mean is: what will become of the careless way ( journey without maps)of travelling I had in mind? I don’t now where is this is going, and I mean that both literally as metaphorical. Thea.
More about Journey without maps. a new journey brings us to the German border Want to see which direction we go? How we beat the Hungarian customs Journey without Maps to Ukraine?We plan this journey without a goal just a direction: The Black Sea! If or how we going to manege this is not clear. We always dreamed about the Ukraine area. It's a big country: The total area of Ukraine is 603,700 sq km (233,094 sq miles), which makes it the second-largest country in Europe after Russia (slightly larger than France). Ukraine is divided into 24 regions (oblasts) and an Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
Ukraine is located in the Eastern Europe at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. Most of Ukraine consists of fertile plains (steppes) and plateaus, with mountains found in the west (the Carpathian Mountains) and in the Crimean Peninsula in the extreme south. Anyway; to dream and read about such travel is a nice thing to do! Adventure travel: a way of life once you've discovered it!!
Our slow journey sure is an adventure, and we can recommend it to anyone. But not everybody will be able to take it that slow. Read the www.adventure-travel-tales-and-tips.com website for other alternative means of transport, for many travelogues of different destinations, lists of best of's, tips on budget travel, and more!
Maybe you expected here to find the travel account "Journey without Maps", By Graham Greene! We cant compare with that one! In a way we do the same, Journey Without Maps (Penguin Classics) In Wikipedia we found a terrific brief outline of the book. Journey Without Maps (1936) is a travel account by Graham Greene, about a 350-mile, 4-week walk through the interior of Liberia in 1935. It was Greene's first trip outside of Europe. He hoped to leave civilization and find the "heart of darkness" in Africa. The interior of Liberia was at the time unmapped (a US Government map had the interior as a large white space marked "cannibals"), and so he relied on local guides and porters.
Greene's account provides many insights into what Liberia was like in 1936. The country has not modernized much since, in particular away from the coast, so much of it remains unchanged to this day. Greene did encounter a number of whites along the way including American and English missionaries, a German adventurer, gold seekers and other beachcombers. Most of the primitive villages he passed through had encountered white people before, but it had been years, and so for many of the younger people it was a new experience. Greene documents the deplorable public health, there were only a handful of doctors in the whole country. A long list of diseases visibly ravaged the typical Liberian (venereal disease and malaria in particular were almost universal, with various weeping sores and wounds from insects and occasionally leprosy). Greene drank whiskey the entire trip going through cases of it. He underpaid his porters, who could at times go for 2 days between meals, but he says he learned to love them anyway (Greene never details how, or if, his porters made it back to their home village). Greene traveled with his female cousin Barbara Greene who, in the 1970s, produced her own memoir of the trip contradicting Greene on almost every point. "Journey without Maps", by Greeham Greene.
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exploring the unknown. 
Greene set off from the northern most point of the country bordering Sierra Leone near the town of Kailahun (near Pendembu) and traveled in a south-eastern direction through the jungle highlands. He crossed through a section of French Guinea, going between the Liberian towns of Zorzor and Ganta, before turning south-west and arriving at the coast at Grand Bassa He then traveled to Monrovia.
