100 days

So December 5th marked our 100th day out on the road. I thought  it might serve as a milestone and opportunity  to reflect.

We have covered 12 countries thus far, touching 3 time zones, and depending on how you  want to count Turkey, 1 or 2 continents.

We have stayed in 8 hotels, 7 apartments, 8 hostels, and 1 home stay, meaning we have moved on average about every 5 days.

We have played on average, one game of  cribbage every other day.

I have written 176 journal pages.

I have read 6 books:
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson- A captivating account of Berlin in a curious time
Towards Zero,  by Agatha Christie -A fun detective fiction where the murder is not revealed until the end, ie it moves towards the zero hour of the crime, instead of kicking off with it. Straight forward Agatha.
Bossypants, by Tina Fey-Funny and a fast read. Finished it in two days.
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt- Over 800 pages long,  more than half of them are unnecessary. Do some Coke and e, and watch the Thomas Crown affair and you'll  probably have a more fun  time with similar subject matter. In short, don't bother with this one.
Sharp Objects, by Gillian  Flynn- Dark, like the rest of her novels. Slow to get started, but the last 30 pages move quickly and pay off.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee- Still poignant to race relations  in America  even 50 years later.

Favorite places, so far the B's have it: Bergen, Berlin and Bled. Least favorite: Mostar.

Best single restaurant meal: Mundoaka in Zagreb, Best street food: Döner in Berlin, Best hospitality : Sandy's  house, nothing beats home cooking

A question  I'm still pondering, posed by a fellow hosteler in Sarajevo,  "Are you guys backpacking,  or on a trip?" I answered backpacking, since we are using backpacks, but really, the question is worth considering, are we backpacking? What would that mean say as opposed to traveling? If I had said, we were on a trip, would we have been perceived differently?  The vocabulary  begs definition and would need to include details like, I think, purpose, duration of travel, budget, intention, method, etc. We may be backpackingoing posers given that we only stay in hostels a third of the time. If we're  only on a trip, it's quite a long one, and if we're traveling, are we missing some mystic philosophical guidance? Honestly, I'm not quite sure of the word to describe what we're  doing. Like our first post and title of this blog  indicate, we've been calling it sabbatical  knowing full well we don't  meet that definition. 100 days and we still haven't  found the right word. Guess we'll  have to keep looking.