More Travel Musings

Having spent the last month on a variety of trips small (Mexico City) and large (Tuscany, Slovenia, Malta), here are some updates on what I noticed on the travel portions of the agenda:

• I can strongly confirm my initial impression from last year that more and more people around the world are adopting the ultra-casual style (sartorial and behavioral) of Americans, even American tourists. We were off the beaten path in Europe, in small villages and mid-sized cities, and I kept saying to Judy, “that table next to us in the restaurant? They could be in Cleveland!” Sweatpants and leggings, baseball caps and English-language print t-shirts. Tats for everybody, piercings, sometimes a little too much body fat, all faces in screens. Breaks from the cells resulted in conversation a bit too loud for the environment, whether it was a small restaurant or a museum. And none of them were Americans; although they all spoke English–the lingua franca of our day–when the waiter came by. I say all this without judgment: just noting something very different.
• One poignant memory from a restaurant at a castle site in Slovenia: a table with an elderly grandfather, in a nice-looking suit, talking to a middle-aged man who was probably his son, in a casual collared shirt, who glanced at his phone sitting on the table, while his (probable) grandson of early twenties years stared open-mouthed (complete with nose-ring) at the video game he was playing on his cellular. Can evolution work both ways?
• I mentioned before that the crowds are back, and they are, with a vengeance. Airlines, hotels, trains, and rental car companies are catching up, but there is a high probability of failure, delay or something going wrong in your travel itinerary. And because the system is overloaded, once it goes wrong, it may take days to fix. On more than one occasion we ran into people simply stranded at airports. Our daughter and her family slept in their car at airport parking after a sixteen hour overnight delay at a regional airport (RyanError! How did you know?). We met a woman with a child who had been in Atlanta’s airport for two days due to cancellations, and Judy vainly tried to comfort an elderly Salvadoran abuela in a wheel chair who was crying after being abandoned at a departure gate in the same airport! So if your trip goes to plan, count your blessings!
• As always, there is an opportunity in all this chaos. If you have the time and flexibility (retirees and leisure travelers, I’m looking at you), the system glitches can work for you. We heard offers of as much as $1800 US (plus hotel, plus food vouchers, plus re-booking) for those willing to voluntarily give up their seats on overbooked flights. We took advantage of one for $700 US (each) and spent an extra day in Atlanta. Doing well while doing good.
• Things we learned about accepting such an offer: make sure they re-book you immediately at the same class (at least). You don’t want to give up a sure seat one day for vouchers and a stand-by promise the next. Do your research about the hotel vouchers: you’ll be stuck where you go, so does it have a pool? a gym? a restaurant? Those vouchers for food might only be good in the airport, which is not a problem, as there are quality restaurants in most major airports now. Oh, and make sure you have enough clean clothes to last another day, or you’ll just have to go shopping at the airport (ouch!).
• On Friday morning, as we approached security check-in at ATL, the regular line was a thousand-plus long and stretched through the concourse. The regular line for people with CLEAR (a pay biometric identification service) was a few hundred long. The line for people with TSA PreCheck was about one hundred people long. And the line for people with TSA PreCheck AND CLEAR was . . . about five people long. And it led to the security section where you don’t remove your liquids or electronics or shoes. If you travel more than once a year, or internationally at all, look into CLEAR, TSA Precheck, and especially Global Entry.
• If you don’t want to get Global Entry (which requires an interview and background check, but brings TSA PreCheck for free), at least download the MPC app from Customs and Border Protection. You pre-fill it out with personal data, then complete it when you arrive, and it automates going through immigration. There were still lines, but they were much shorter than the regular lanes. And there are no lines for Global Entry. You walk up to a kiosk, it reads your face, then sends you to a special agent who acknowledges you by name and sends you through, cutting in front of the MPC customers at ATL, for example. Global Entry costs about the same as an airport dinner for a family of four, and it lasts five years. We have used it multiple times for over a decade at ATL, ORD, LAX, CIN, BWI, DCA, IAD, MIA, BOS, DAY, and a few I’m not remembering and not once has there been a faster way into or out of the airport. A few times it made no difference, but most times it saves about an hour of standing around in long lines at either end of a trip. And if you have heard you can’t get an interview for Global Entry (initial subscription requires an interview), think again: CBP has a walk-in program (they don’t advertise it much, for obvious reasons) at airports when you return from international travel. You have to complete your application and submit it first to walk-in, you can’t just walk -in to start the process.
• We learned something new this trip, driving into Slovenia. Some countries (Slovenia, Switzerland, and Austria, just to name three) use a road toll or tax system known as vignettes. Instead of toll booths, you prepay to use their roads and receive a sticker for your car, which is automatically read on the highway. Some countries require it for all roads, others just for what would have been their toll roads. Slovenia uses an electronic vignette and just for the latter, so we didn’t even need a sticker. I never heard of this system before, but now you have!
• I previously predicted the return of Chinese mass tourism. If you missed it, Chinese tourists replaced American tourists as the largest group of international travelers just before the pandemic hit. While all Western nations have experienced a resurgence in international tourism, some calling it “revenge tourism,” the Chinese are still staying home. We saw some Chinese tour groups, but only a few. It will be an interesting phenomenon to watch for the next few years.