Ray’s Theory on having fun while traveling

Rule 1: Get someone else to pay for the trip (thank you Gateway for flying me all over the world while I worked for you all those years ago, and to Northwest Airlines for forcing me to finally use them or lose them by the end of the year)

Rule 2: Find a friend to mooch a place to stay off of where you are going (Thanks Matt & Rebecca as well as Jorge & John, Marnie & Greg, Terry & Frieda, etc….)

Rule 3: Get to know a local pharmacist.

There that is it. Find someone else to pay for the trip, mooch off of friends and get to know the local pharmacist.

So you are reading this and thinking. I can understand 1&2 but what is up with 3?

Well it is the secret of international travel. So you are thinking aaaaahhhhh he is going to tell us how to remedy Montezuma’s Revenge. Wrong, Boy Wonder. The international language of drugs is English. Thus, in just about every country that I have been to I have found that pharmacist can at least understand written English if not spoken English.

Writing things out works great when you are trying to communicate with someone who understands a bit of English. Heck, half the time I can’t understand a word that Sheila says since she speaks Bostonian. She called my Shaq SHAAARRRRKK for the longest time. So I’m listening to her and thinking whom the heck is SHAAARRKK. Finally Roger translated for me. I have been steadily learning Bostonian but it is a darn hard language to learn. You have to have large lung capacity to pull it off. In English we would say Bar in Bostonian they say Baaaaaaaahhhhhhhh. I found learning Russian, Japanese and Chinese much easier.

Oh and the final rule is be gracious to everyone. Even if things are going wrong, the sun will still come up in the morning and as Scarlett O’Hara said “Tomorrow is another day”.

Now for the stories (nooooooo not the stories)

If you find yourself in Rome and you are trying to cross the street (first off I would question your sanity) you have to make eye contact with the motorist. If you do they will stop for you. If you think for a second that just because you are at a crosswalk and you step into the street that people will stop for you then you are sadly mistaken.

Ok, one more story. (You will find that Ray has lots of one more thing stories). Poland was “occupied” by the Soviet Union for several decades. As a result most everyone had to learn Russian as well as their Polish. So I go to Krakow a couple of months ago. I am a bit lost so instead of using my patented find a Pharmacist rule I stop someone on the street and ask them in Russian. They ignore me and walk on, so I stop another person and ask them in Russian same result. Later on I find out that they probably understood me perfectly but they consider speaking Russian to be an insult as they consider the only reason that they learned it was because they were forced to during the “occupied” years.

So there you have it. Useful information that you can use on your next trip. Get someone else to pay, mooch off of friends and become friends with a Pharmacist, make eye contact with the driver before trying to cross the road and for heaven sake if you find yourself in Poland do not ask someone a question in Russian.

We hope you enjoy our adventures which will start on Oct 22 and be updated daily. So instead of getting a long-winded email from Ray you will get a brief little note saying to go to the blog and see what has gone on. This way everything will be in one place and you can go back and read the postings over and over again and share them with your friends and family.