LET’S TAKE ROAD TRIPS ACROSS EUROPE WITH SPORTSCASTER ANH NGOC
Anh Ngoc shares with readers the emotional experiences of the road trips he and his family took together during their time in Europe.
NOT ONLY IS THE SPORTSCASTER CAPTIVATING THE HEARTS OF MILLIONS OF SOCCER FANS, JOURNALIST ANH NGOC IS ALSO AN AVID TRAVELER AND PARTICULARLY LOVES ROAD TRIPS. IN THIS ISSUE'S TRAVEL TALK, ANH NGOC WILL SHARE WITH READERS THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES OF THE ROAD TRIPS HE AND HIS FAMILY TOOK TOGETHER DURING THEIR TIME IN EUROPE.
After years of European road trips totaling thousands of km, I sometimes wonder if I was a long-distance driver in my previous life. My obsession with the highways across the countries of the old continent is so great that sometimes, in dreams, I find myself sitting behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Golf with an Italian license plate, dashing down the road...
I remember a winter morning in a small town at Slovenian-austrianitalian borders, the air cold and crisp. Steam fogged the window glass, mist blanketed the valley and snow ran from my house to the horizon. There was endless white and cold. Then, suddenly the sunshine came, first a ray, then a beam of sunlight spread, gradually lifting the white veil of mist. In the distance, chimneys gradually appeared then the roofs, the pine trees and the church bell tower of a village. It is one of the most beautiful images that my family and I witnessed on so many trips in Europe. It was a special trip, because it departed from Rome, after my family had just attended the Pope’s Christmas Mass in the Vatican. Then we stopped to spend the last days of the year at Lake Garda, Northern Italy, went to the Christmas market in Bolzano, welcomed New Year and watched fireworks, and arrived in the small, romantic and peaceful town on the first day of the new year. I remember the roads across France that I wandered through years ago. At first I thought this trip would simple but it turned out to be complicated, because France is so wide, so beautiful and has so many places to go, so many areas with different cultural, culinary and historical features. On that trip, I drove alone from Rome along the old Via Aurelia where the old Roman armies once marched, along the Mediterranean, then to southern France and began to explore the coastal cities of Cannes, Nice and Antibes, before headed up to Bordeaux, plunging into the green grape fields of the famous wine regions of Saint Emilion and Cognac, then crossed to the east to Lyon and had a moonlit night happily eating in a “bouchon” (a type of restaurant that serves traditional Lyonnaise cuisine).
EUROPE IS BEAUTIFUL AND FRESH IN EVERY STREET, WHETHER IN SUMMER OR SPRING, WHETHER IN CHRISTMAS OR AUTUMN; IT ALWAYS IS EXTREMELY BEAUTIFUL AND ROMANTIC.
There was one time, I drove south again to visit where d’artagnan, my childhood idol, was born. From there, I drove down further, to the sacred site of Lourdes and drank holy water before returning to Bordeaux. On the next leg, I stopped for a week in Paris for a small journey in the old streets of the Capital of Light, where the literati once spent time in sidewalk cafés under the trees, to the Père Lachaise cemetery to put flowers on the grave of singer Edith Piaf whose “La vie en rose” (Life in pink) I loved so much. That time, we left Paris in mid-july, ran across France to Le Mont-saint-michel, a tidal island topped by a medieval monastery, then had another short trip to the castles on the Loire.
ENJOY THE BEST THINGS
In an article, it is hard to tell about all the trips that my family and I have made across Europe during the years we lived there. Europe is beautiful and fresh in every street, whether in summer or spring, whether in Christmas or autumn; it always is extremely beautiful and romantic. Those trips taught us many things, not just skills on how to prepare for a journey, from planning a journey to eating, sleeping, resting and playing along the way, and a basic understanding of vehicles, but also how to come together as a family. I was a driver, my wife became a helpful companion by reading the map and our daughter was assigned to collect information about destinations. The trips become occasions for our whole family to prepare together and then, enjoy the best things.
We did everything together: driving on the road, visiting museums, drinking coffee in the central squares, watching the sunset on the active volcano, riding on the big ferries across the Mediterranean and reading the map of the upcoming journey in a roadside station. My family has so many good memories of these times. There are even romantic moments such as when we drove at night in an Austrian solitary forest, while the radio playing “Carry you home” by James Blunt; when we drove in Romania on a
snowy night in the last days of the year; when we got lost in Serbia and Croatia, when the faulty GPS and the map didn’t help. Of course these trips are not always perfect and absolutely fun. There are times when we had to abandon a trip for some reason, when our plans had to be changed, when we quarrel over some nonsense on the road.
IS IT EASY TO DRIVE ACROSS EUROPE?
Occasionally, some of my friends ask me if it is easy to drive across Europe, and how to drive thousands of km on the roads crossing different countries with different languages and cultures. I can only laugh and say, nothing in the world is easy and no road is really as romantic as we dreamed or expected. It is only that when you sit behind the steering wheel and the engine starts, you will see the whole world ahead, and you will also realize what people often say: “happiness is a journey, not a destination”. I can confirm that this is true after many trips, through all emotions, including troubles, fatigue, and of course, happy moments. And every time I returned, filled with images, data and emotions, I could have written a whole book about what I had heard and seen. Perhaps it is not a fascinating novel like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”, not a best-seller like Paul Theroux’s, not full of philosophical sentences like Pico Iyer’s but it will be true, lively and full of stories along the way. Each long trip always begins with small roads, day trips, and so on, and it can last from a few days to a whole week, and even months to wander around in a car. In the car, there were always loads of maps, long-distance logistics, blankets and pillows, and books to read at the roadside station. But the most important thing, on that car are hearts and souls longing to reach out to the world, making friends with the roads everywhere.