10th October: Journey Summary & Reflections (Update)

10th October 

** Today is Monday the 10th October. That means I have been travelling for the past 84 days or 12 weeks. This time has seen me cover 9 countries, 22 cities, 20 hotels, walked somewhere between 600 & 800 kilometres (possibly even more) and taken over 1.1 million steps (if my phone app is to be believed), and I've taken possibly more than 7000 photos.

** The previous five week reflection point has now morphed into my 12 weeks of discovering how amazing  the world is, and rediscovering just how much of myself I had forgotten about.  I  have rediscovered much of the person I used to be. I have realised that I still have an interest in so many things and that I want to learn & study more and  continue to expand my horizons. And together with my Australian Indigenous Aboriginal cousin's I have leaned the healing power of going "Walk About".

** I have fallen in love again, with life, with art, with history and culture, with the beauty in landscapes, and the philosophy hidden within architecture, and the power of smiling '' hello ' at strangers.

** I wrote in early August about the art and artefacts I have seen. It seems that with every room in every museum that I pass through, my mind wants to know more about what I am seeing, it's background, it's reason for being; in some instances who were the models, what were their stories? Why do the foods look so similar yet different, why are the animals represented the way they are? And in many instances, why a particular piece of work has survived through the years, the wars, the fires, the floods.

** I found myself staring at the Renoir painting of a girl, a very young beautiful innocent child, with no inkling of the horrors she was to meet as a woman of 50 in war time France, and her father who hated the painting so much that he initially refused to pay the artist his fee, hidding the painting away & then on-selling it, all so that I can stand there and appreciate pure beauty that an artist managed to convey.

** I stood with hundreds of others starring at self-portraits of a red headed man whoes journey into madness can be clearly seen on the walls of a museum dedicated to his life's work, work that he had no faith in, yet he continued along his road.

** At the Moko museum in Amsterdam I read a quote by Marcel Wanders, " I don't want to get old to realise that i haven't lived". In many ways this is reflective of me at age 70.  I do not look or feel old. Little child may see me and say in their various languages that I am a grandpa, but this is their reality, not mine.  The more I have travelled the more I have grown within myself. It is a wonderful point in one's life realising that finally you are doing something you that you want to do.

19th August 

** Nearly five weeks of my trip have now passed. My four months is now down to less than three now with the completion of the English and Spanish sections of my tour. 

No matter whether one is young or old, when travelling as a tourist it is amazing how many people one meets, just in passing, the ships in the night so to speak. It's as if one is a player in a Sim game with a little bubble above your head shouting out - tourist, might need help!

Almost every day I have had the pleasure of fleeting encounters with so many beautiful people who give of their time to help with translations, to give directions, to go out of their way just so a total stranger's life can be made that little easier at that point in time. 

I do not know what type of people they are seen as by their own circles of friends and family, but to me they uphold the true meaning of altruism - a concept that I equate in this context to 'paying it forward's. Just a few examples

* the 25 year old banker in London who not only physically directed me to the correct tube but stayed and chatted with me and ensured I made the right tube change

* The University student in Barcelona who I thought had been charged for my coffee. We sat and chatted for 15 minutes while having our breakfasts. 

* The American woman & grown son in Bilbao who could not understand how someone can be at peace and content without religion in their life, but still directed me to a cafe/ bar where I could eat what I call food.

* The person who overheard me trying to explain to a pharmacist, using the AI on my phone, about a medical issue I was having. While the AI was not making sense, the woman who overheard the conversation sorted it all out in one minute.

* Young woman at the desk of a very upmarket hotel in Barcelona that I passed by while walking from the port to the familia building site. I needed a toilet desperately and although I looked a total mess in shorts & bush hat, she was so very kind to allow me use of their facilities and even gave me a glass of very cold scented water before I went on my way.

5th August 2022

** My four month cultural tour has seen three weeks pass. It has been an amazing, eye opening, thrilling, educational, and learning process. I have travelled half way across this globe in a shorter time span than my great grandmother travelled the 50 kilometres required to give birth to my grandmother, I have held the hands of a 98 year old woman who can remember the day my late father was born; I have questioned my own levels of interlect when faced with the vast achievements I have stood before within the hallowed museums of London, Oxford, Cambridge & Bilbao, and finally 47 years later than planned, I arrived in Spain. 

To date I have stood witness to artefacts from some of the greatest creations of civilised people. I have reflected upon the earliest examples of Sumerian writing, come face to face with Alexander of Macedon, Augustus Octavius Caesar and the great gods of Olympus as well as the wife of the Abrahamic god, I heard a language that has no known ancestry, seen the hand written mathematics of Albert Einstein, walked the same streets once walked by a pensive Newton, watched the Neolithic change into the Chalcolithic and then evolve into the Bronze Age.  I have stood before the List of Kings and the stern gaze of Osimandius, identified the Scorpion king, viewed and debated the ethics of the looted Benin Bronzes, stood in awe of the minds that decyphered the trilingual writtings from Rosetta and Behistan, witnessed the artefactial remains of some of the greatest empires this world possibly has ever seen, thanked a seated stone Darwin at the Natural History Museum, and finally I have gazed upon the face of Agamemnon. 

Tomorrow morning I depart from Bilbao and enjoy the scenary as I bus towards Madrid and further adventures.

..... and my trip has barley started.