The Traveling Sisters
I'm Angela (on the right) with my big sister Teresa (on the left). We love to travel.
We also love history and climbing to the tops of buildings and eating good food.
But we had never taken a trip together, just the two of us. This is our story.
Sisters...
The last time my sister and I traveled to Europe together was in 1979 when I was 16 and she was 18. Also with us were my 13 year old brother and my parents. My mom had a degree in Art and my father was a high school Social Studies teacher. Bless my dear departed parents’ souls for taking three teenagers on a grand tour of Europe. We were not pleasant company. We whined. We complained. We were a pain in the butt. My parents were especially disgusted with us kids when we walked into the Marienplatz in Munich, took a brief look at the Glockenspiel (“Is that it?!”) and made straight for the first McDonalds we had seen in weeks. They, of course, grabbed a couple of brats from a street vendor and tried to pretend they didn’t know us.
Life Changing
But as clueless as I was during that trip, like most travel, the experience changed me. I saw things I never imagined existed and met people I never would have engaged with. In short, I was hooked. That trip inspired my life long passion for travel. Perhaps traveling with my bickering siblings and exasperated parents was what inspired me to most often travel alone. As an adult, I worked until I had enough money to travel. It didn’t really matter where: Europe, Australia, Asia, the States. But then I got married and had a child. And it was a good ten years without travel in my life. Once my daughter turned seven, though, I was back in business. She didn’t care where we went either. She just loved to go somewhere. The first trip I took her on was also the first trip my mother and I had taken to Europe together since that first one. My mom was still interested in art and history and food, but not so much the climbing. For my daughter, climbing was the only thing that mattered. If there were stairs, she would climb them. Only gelato or Swiss pastries would slow her down. She was hooked.
Together Again
Now, many trips later, both my parents have passed. My sister, Teresa, retired last summer after 35 years of teaching high school Social Studies and we thought, “Let’s take a trip together. Just the two of us.” No kids, no husband, just us. My sister suggested doing a Rick Steves tour—The Best of Eastern Europe. I had never been on a tour, but thought, “why not?” Neither of us had ever been to Eastern Europe, but our parents had. They went just after the Iron Curtain fell in 1990, and it was only their second trip to Europe. They had high hopes of seeing as much of Eastern Europe as possible. Unfortunately, it was not to be—they did make it to Budapest, finally, but they both admitted the logistics were too complicated for their skill set and the trip was a bit of a bust. So my sister and I thought our tour to Eastern Europe would be perfect for us—as life long students of history—but would also be a redemption of sorts for our parents. We would take the trip they would have wished to make.
And so we began.