Author: Peter

a note on French service, cultural expectations, and jumping to conclusions

3730858892_407da1c1ec_zA great lesson here about the difference in cultures, as well as painting your own life around you.

The first few cafes Kim and I sat at here, the service was awful. Really crappy.

It took forever for someone to come around, they were gone for long stretches at a time, and when we were done, it took an age for them to come. Both times, we gave up waiting for them to come with the bill; we finally got up and asked for it. Frustrating.

And, of course, we were being silly.

We weren’t wrong to be frustrated maybe, but the source of our frustration was the two of us carrying our expectations of how service should go, learned in the US, with us into France. Not shitty service.

This is such a subtle thing, you don’t even notice it. What’s normal for you seems normal everywhere, right?

Here’s what I learned somewhere when I was young: when I sit down, I want prompt service. Someone attentive. I want them watching me eat; when my drink is low I want them to magically appear to fill it. When I’m done, I want them to magically re-appear with the check, so I can leave and get on with living my life.

Everyone would want this, yes?

No.

My own description of what “good service” is ( above ) might resonate with you, but it’s rooted in my American upbringing, to be sure.

I have serious expertise in cultural anthropology, and yet it didn’t occur to me that maybe what I was experiencing in France was not shitty service. When all this was going on, I didn’t throw a stink like some people might; I just sat and stewed a bit. Ugh, what lousy service.

I brought with me an underlying assumption we’re taught pretty early in America. At least in the Midwest: be economical with your time in a restaurant or cafe. Take as long as you need, but don’t loiter. Loitering is bad manners; it keeps the table occupied while the server could be earning tips from someone else, the place could be charging someone else for food and service.

This isn’t your mom’s place – eat and GTFO.

 

Meanwhile, in the French cafe-goer’s mind…

Of course, in France, the whole idea here is different. There’s a entirely different fundamental assumption, and there are different norms in play.

Knowing this makes life clearer, and better.

The French don’t want to be hurried. That feeling I loved at my favorite coffee shop back home in Lihue? The French want that -everywhere- in France. They demand it.

They want to sit, relax, loiter, veg, meet with friends, take three hours if they have three hours to spend. And they want this at all cafes, not just the “home” cafes where everybody knows their name.

This is normal, and expected here.

French service is based around these norms and expectations. The waiter/waitress will give you serious leeway by default. They won’t be on your every few minutes. There is zero expectations of rushing, or moving through so more people can sit in your current seat. Take your time.

Don’t rush. Enjoy life.

Loiter.

A French server wouldn’t dream of hassling you with the bill, or breaking your rest with constant visits. It would not be respectful.

And if you’re on a schedule… just mention this.

“Excusez-moi monsieur,” you say. “I am a rushed American and I have tickets to this one French Thingy. Can I get my bill when I’m served my meal?”

“But of course.”

That’s it. If you want to not wait, to not loiter, just ask. Of course they’re cool with that.

 

The lesson

The thing is, it was really easy to not even ask. It was very easy to instead just feel like the service sucked.

And from there it was easy to jump to all sorts of dumb, in-retrospect-embarrassing conclusions. “It’s probably because they know we’re Americans,” and so on.

This was wrong. And BS. And childish.

One thing I really, really want to work on this trip is being in tune with my assumptions and expectations, and how much these and my own frame of mind contribute to my stress. And the fundamental understanding that this point of view is a choice.

I choose to be affronted, offended. Just because I don’t know what’s going on is not an excuse or an explanation or rationale. If I begin and end at feeling stressed, insulted, and affronted…  this is because I have made a choice to be.

This starts and ends with me.

Here in France, all most people really want to do is smoke, and treat you well.

 

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stress, travel, and breakfast

This could be the title of my memoirs – “Stress, Travel, and Breakfast.”

Not the final title mind you, but the working title until I think of something cooler. This particular post is about how a breakfast of Kellogg’s Special K cereal helped ease The Crazy a bit while traveling.

The term “cognitive load” ( CL ) comes up in my field, when I’m designing screens/interfaces/flows through different online presences. CL is that amount of mental processing an experience sort of “puts” on you, the hoops it requires of you to figure it out and proceed forward.

Vegging on the couch watching “The Voice” is pretty low cognitive load, while defusing a nuclear bomb in a deep-dive suit while colorblind is a high cognitive load.

 

cables
Remember “The Abyss”? I loved that movie.

 

For me lately, traveling seems to be somewhere in the middle of these two examples.

Ambient stress

While there is something liberating about giving up most of your stuff and wandering the earth for a year…   there are sometimes day-to-day pressures adding to the cognitive load of living like this.

In addition to the press of people, not knowing the language, subtle differences in everything from road design to cafe customs, to being on somewhat of a schedule in the smaller hops from place to place, this all stacks; there’s a bit of cognitive load here. And lots of times it’s ambient, in the background and definitely affecting you, but not too obvious.

I’m a grown man with lots of varying experience in stress, but even with a full night’s sleep some of the days lately have been a little bit stressful, with all these above elements sort of piling on. A fairly high ambient cognitive load, leading to stress.

This has interesting effects. If the CL and accompanying stress is high enough, I forget how to act in basic situations, and use normal tools. Tollbooths and spoons come to mind. You get much dumber, in the moment.

 

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WTF is this?

 

In situations and experiences I design in my work, a user can always opt out of something if my design is imposing too much cognitive load. If I’m designing search interfaces, the short conversation after too much CL might be “Screw this; I’m using Google.” Wandering around Paris, it’s not easy to just opt out.

Well, I guess I could just stop what I’m doing, pull up a chair at any one of an endless number of cafes, and have a drink. At 10am.

Why not? I’m on walkabout.

(^_^

Or…  I could take steps to reduce my CL, and up the things that make me calm. This is where Special K comes in.

While shopping for the daily food ( as one does, in France ) I came across a ridiculously inexpensive box of cereal that hadn’t entered into my conscious thought since childhood: Kellogg’s Special K. yes, the boring flakes you got when you really wanted the Tony the Tiger stuff. My mom bought Special K until I was, like, in high school.

I remember not liking Special K. I remember pining for Frosted Flakes. They’re Grrrrrrrrrrreat! after all. All these years for breakfast, I’ve never looked back.

But there in that store, that little voice I sometimes have in the back of my head said “Grab this,” so grab it I did. My little voice often makes sense. Or this may have been Kim. She also makes sense, much of the time.

And of course I loved the cereal.

It brought back memories of my childhood and my mom, or simple carefree times, and it was a much more powerful stress-reducer than you’d think. The combo of all those pleasant tone-setting thoughts and feelings in the morning before the day started really helped.

In conclusion

Stress can really be expressed as a kind of equation, I guess. Stress on the right side of the equals sign, part of it coming from some amount of cognitive load. You can lower stress ( the number on the right ) by reducing CL ( on the left ), but you can also add de-stressors at key points, kind of like negative values on the left. This works just as well, as getting rid of the stressors, the things that add CL, or just getting better at handing the stressors.

Not good with word-equations?

Find something that reminds you of good times in your childhood, and bring that back into your life somehow.

 

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How does the phone thing work, out there in digital nomad-land?

Trådtelefon-illustration

So, you decide you’re going to travel the world for a year or so. How exactly does that work with your smartphone?

My phone company ( Verizon ) would happily charge me an outrageous sum for some sort of “world access” plan that gives me a whopping 250mb of data per month, before it really starts charging me. To put this in perspective, the black and white line drawing above might be more than 250mb.

Well, okay, that’s not true.

But still. I’d gobble that up in a heartbeat, and then the money wheel would start spinning. I’m on the hook with them until November, so what are my options?

Google Voice, Skype, and a VPN.

Let’s stat out with the bad news – my phone will only work like a phone when I have wifi. In Britain or Ireland, that’s just fine. The busses have wifi. The outhouses have wifi. In southern France…  I was lucky the Apple Store had wifi. So, there’s that constraint.

Also, people dialing my regular number and expecting me to answer won’t be able to get me. Even though I didn’t sign up for a plan, Verizon is also happy to just charge me world roaming rates, and let my phone work as it’s worked all along. This is also a non-great idea, and I’ve turned off my phone’s ability to do anything at all without wifi.

So. There’s that.

But with Wifi…  I can get iMessages the normal way, text messages and voicemail from my non-Apple friends on the Google Voice number ( because before I left I liked the GVoice number and my regular number/phone ), I can dial your cell with Skype. I can dial a toll-free number with GVoice and the VPN. The Skype call costs pennies purchased through the Apple app store. The GVoice is free. Also, FB messeages ( and probably phone service ) work just fine with wifi as well.

Jumping through some hoops, I have mostly free service around the world so I can stay in touch. As long as I’m on wifi.

Yea, that’s a big “but.” One I’m still working through.

On the plus side: it’s good to be a little less dependent on our digital smartphone overlords.

Also, one thing Verizon gets right is that my phone is be default “unlocked,” which means if I’d like I can buy a simm card anywhere in the world, stick it in my phone, and have it work. It may come to this; I confess I do miss easy texting.

a note on driving in the South of France

Have you ever been chased by Bond villain henchmen?

The ones on motorcycles I mean, that come out of nowhere? Have you driven on roads like that? Very thin with seemingly ambiguous signs and symbols, roads that tighten up to barely as wide as your tiny Renault where suddenly you’re face to face with Michael Buble’s touring bus?

This is driving, as it happens in the South of France.

Seriously, the roads are something interesting. Roundabouts everywhere, all sort of offshoots and directions, loops and meanderings. A high speed limit that most people don’t pay any attention to. Everyone tailgates, like, all the time. Was that your turn? A free parking space? A place that probably has really good bread?

Gone. Désolé.

Too bad. And good luck getting back to it, because the road follows some old horse track around the hill and through the wheat field, and doesn’t come back this way.

Motorcycles Everywhere. At least down here near Marseilles. The kind that are exempt from traffic laws, swarm like bees, and leave you standing still when you’re going 90kph.

motocycles
My rearview mirror, driving outside Aix-en-Provence

 

I am not complaining. I am mostly amazed. Tho I am also a bit stressed out.

It seems like every time I drive, every place we go, it’s a test of nerves, a feat. It’s like being amped up on RedBull from the moment you turn the car on, til you turn it off. At least this has been my short experience, so far.

Kim teases me, says I need to be a little more aggressive, give it right back to the local drivers.

There’s something to be said for the overlay of stress that comes from being in a foreign country, the kind that soaks into the basic stuff you do and adds to the cognitive load. I’m not sure slipping into Angry Driver mode will help that. I’m usually the calm guy behind the wheel.

When we were renting at the Marseilles airport, the nice lady asked if we would like GPS for some fee-per-day. We thought about it for half a second, and politely declined. As if we hadn’t said a word, the lady continued “Okay, I’ll just put that on free of charge then.”

I thought she was being nice. Friendly to the visiting Americans. This might in fact be true, but she was also saving her countrymen a serious amount of headaches. Kim and I don’t have roaming data on this trip ( not yet, anyway ) and without GPS with my driving, we would have been in a ditch, or out in some scenic rolling wheat field within 10 minutes.

Oh well. Soon we’ll turn in the rental and give back the GPS. We’ll take the TGV up north to Paris, then Eurostar to London. We’ll be up there for a while…  maybe the driving there is different?

 

BondvsBond

 

This guy makes me wrathful

wheeliesideways
It’s a small thing, in a world with huge problems. But we all have our little “things,” our pet peeves that go straight to the foundations of our being and shake us so that we have to breathe deliberately to relax.

The placer of this bag, he does this to me. Witnessing the situation does this to me. It grabs me so quick and so profoundly, I am always surprised, and embarrassed. I wanna throw the guy off the plane and set fire to his bag.

All in my mind, of course. I’m a pretty calm guy, there in Row 3.

Boarding a plane and loading your shit it almost always stressful. Not only for you yourself, but as you take in the pandemonium around you. It’s a mini-snapshot of some of the struggles of life, struggles that go better if we all just show one another a shred of consideration and respect.

The guy that puts his luggage in the bin sideways as above hates you, hates your children, and hates our Freedom in general, and should be banished to Group 5.

Okay. I’m venting a little.

But really. C’mon.

Never, ever be this guy. It’s such a small thing to turn your bag the right way and make a little room for others. Weirdly but true, it’s a much bigger thing for someone else to lay hands on your bag to make room in a bin that could easily accommodate, because of your choices.

I see this every single time I board a flight. Which is kind of often. Every single time, I ponder, as a way to let go of the wrath that builds inside. I think: I know this doesn’t matter at all, I know it’s just a trigger for ambient stuff I have floating around ( we all have that, right? ) And I know the universe just sorts this kinda thing out… on this very small scale, or bigger.

But fuck does it bug me   lol

 

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Mr. Pitt, embodying all our wrath in “Seven.”

Have a little courtesy when you travel.

Even if it’s just traveling through your life. Be mindful of where you’re standing, if you’re blocking or interfering with other people’s touch day out of your mindlessness.  You don’t need to walk on eggshells, taking care of everyone’s needs before your own. That’d be awful.

But don’t stand in a doorway talking with your friend Ida about her garden and blocking everyone trying to get in or out. And if you’re in a line, actually be in line, not ten feet away all agitated when someone steps into the actual line. And Sweet Jesus when wedging your steamer trunk in the overhead bin, jam it in long-ways like civilized people do. For the betterment of the planet.

 

Woooooooooosssssaaaaaaaaa    (^_^

 

What’s one of your pet peeves?

Anthony Bourdain, on backpacks

alohaluggage

I’m not really a foodie. Like, not in any sense of the word.

But of course I know about Anthony Bourdain and his shows. I’ve watched a few eps, and I definitely enjoy his sense of wit and self. An expert in his field just taking it all in as he wanders the planet. He’s got some great advice about traveling the world, of course. One of his thoughts is about the backpack, as your chosen piece of luggage:

I travel with a wheelie.

Unfortunately, a backpack sends a bad message in a lot of the world.
Others who’ve come before you have sent a bad message.

If you’re reading this blog, it may seem like I know a lot about backpacking culture…   but that’s not true. Not even close. It’s okay, but an incorrect conclusion or three are jumped to.

I do carry my stuff in backpack, and I occasionally stay in hostels. Yes, true.

But that’s really the start and finish of my contact with backpacker culture. I’m a little too old, a little too well off, and a little too used to nice things, maybe  (^_^   That sounds snarky, but there are definitely a few things that put me squarely outside the culture, and Bourdain’s thought brings that stuff into relief.

First, there’s the idea that backpackers carry a -ton- of stuff. Anything they might need, for any situation. In fucking enormous backpacks, and that the world must make room for both traveler and pack, accept both human and this steamer truck lashed to their body.

This sets the stage for an us-not-you kind of perception among Locals Everywhere that’s reinforced with a ( much ) more casual manner of dress, and general acceptance of what’s acceptable from a hygiene point of view. As far as manners, language, respectfulness of place…  I haven’t seen a lot of evidence one way or the other, but it’s easy based on how I know some people can think about “different” that backpackers get lumped into a sort of “mobile homeless” category.

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Which brings me back to Bourdain’s quote.

While I will not ( ever ) use a wheelie, I think I’ve figured out another way to make a favorable impression when I travel, or at least to put some distance between me and the negative ripples of the backpacker image.

I wear khakis, as well as jeans. I don’t look like I’ve walked the entire distance I’ve traveled. Most days.  (^_^   When I have my bag at all, it definitely does not peg me as a backpacker. My bag looks like something your kid would use to bring books to school.

If I’m crafting any image at all, I guess it’s of an American vagabond, a sort of thoughtful wanderer at ease with minimal stuff and minimal impact on my immediate environment. Not a stumbling partier. Nothing against stumbling partiers, but that’s not who I am. There’s a part of me that wants the world to take us all for who we are, not assign us to groups based on momentary evaluation of appearances.

But there’s another part of me that knows that it almost never happens that way. When you travel, how do you think people see you? I’m not trying to blend in so much, but Bourdain’s quote made me realize I’m also trying unconsciously to also not be lumped in with a very specific group of travelers.

How do you dress? How do you spend your money? How are you different than the people who live in the places you are?

And how do you think this affects how you see things?

random notes from the road

Thoughts at this moment:

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I walk more. This is a “no duh” thing, as we don’t usually have a car/truck now. But I can already feel the difference in my waistline, and this is a good thing.

Along with this, water is my main drink during the day now. It used to be iced tea, with a bit of pop, but now it’s just water. Most of my friends in Hawaii were already doing this, and I’m just catching up.

We eat way more food from the store, and much more simple stuff than we did back home. Ploughman’s Lunch style; pretty simple fare like in this pic. And it’s awesome.

Even though I could sleep as late as I want, I still wake up crazy-early, about 5am local. This is ridiculous, as I get pretty tired at about 3pm  (^_^

The clothing this is fine; I get by with just a couple shirts and a couple options for pants. But a weird thing – fresh laundry ( like, when I do my own ) makes me almost giddy. Weird. Like my entire wardrobe has been renewed.

I feel like I’m still in Vacation Mode – let’s go see this place! And I really want to work to get out of this kind of thinking.

I’m reluctant to store high value items like the laptop, iPad, or passoport in the safe at the front desk, when we’re in a place that has that option. Not because I think things aren’t secure there, but because I don’t want to acknowledge they could get taken from the place where I sleep. Again, weird.

Sleeping in bunk beds takes a little getting used to. I like not being crowded  :  )   but I miss the contact.

Ireland-specific

The weather is consistently beautiful, but I guess this is crazy timing on our part, and definitely not how it normally is. I guess it’s way more like Seattle here, and way less like Montreal in June. Heh.

Seems like more people smoke, here. But that probably just means “more people smoke than in Hawaii,” which is saying something very different than, say, more people do it here than in Chicago.

People are very friendly, here. I am wondering if this is true in most places, part of that “we craft our own reality around us” kind of thing. I’ll keep you in the loop, here.

Anywhere there’s music in public spaces and it’s not cultural ( like Irish pipes or whatnot ) It is a strange mix of new and vintage stuff; Metallica and

–

I think about this, and it mostly seems to be about simplicity. This is a good thing, as a big part of what I’d like to do during this year is see if I can turn the “noise” down as much as I can. It might not seem like much, but imagine the total of things you think about in life during your day – big stuff and little stuff. I guess I’m actively working to tune out as much of the little stuff as possible. Decisions about clothes and food, schedule stuff, obligations to others. Maybe by pushing as much of the minutiae away as I can, I’ll see some effect overall on the quality of life.

I’ll let you know how this goes. Really, it’s just been about a week so far  (^_^

“final” bag and gear list

tombihn_synapse26_47
my bag, but not me and not my image. #justsayin

Bag

Tom Bihn Synapse 26 ( shown, left )

Yes, it really is that small. If you pack well and choose the right gear, it all just kind of fits. I spent more than a little time figuring out what I needed, and parting with what I didn’t. The effort paid off. I think this is the final, traveling list.

The rest of my list follows, below.

Clothes

  • Buffalo Jeans. Couldn’t leave ‘em behind. Could not.
  • White t-shirt, 50% cotton ( evil, I know ) and 50% tenson
  • Black t-shirt, 100% merino wool
  • Wool & Prince button down, 100% merino
  • base layer –  black long sleeve and long legged, 100% merino
  • Lounge pants ( because yes ), 100% cotton
  • Coffee-colored wool jeans – 100% merino
  • Khaki shorts, 100% merino
  • Khaki shorts, 95% nylon, 5% spandex ( double as swim trunks )
  • Hoodie, 100% merino ( always worn, never in the bag )
  • MH Zerogrand shell, some NASA material that packs down to the size of a Ritz cracker
  • Buff, 100% merino
  • Shemagh, not sure what it’s made of
  • Smartwool phd mini socks X2 pair
  • Smart wool tall thin socks 1pair
  • Ra II Vivobarefoot shoes, coffee colored ( they look like normal shoes )
  • Baseball hat – NASA


Computer & associated gear

  • Macbook, BookBook case, cords
  • iPad pro, BookBook case, cord
  • unlocked iPhone, cord
  • Satechi hub ( to plug stuff into the Mac )
  • USBc to USB-a extender ( tiny )
  • Encrypted jump drive – 250Gb
  • Normal jump drive – 64Gb
  • TripMate Elite battery/wifi source ( battery and hotspot for sharing )
  • Jawbone Minijambox ( speaker for tunes )
  • US plug small block splitter
  • Bose sound cancelling headphones
  • Apple earbuds and case
  • Audio plug splitter, small cord
  • Micro USB


Toiletries

  • Tom Bihn clear toiletry bag
  • 3oz Doc Bronners, peppermint ( laundry, whatevs )
  • 3oz 30spf sunscreen
  • travel size Old Spice stick
  • AA battery powered trip toothbrush, with cover
  • hair goop
  • tiny nail clippers
  • tiny tweezers
  • Dollar shave razor n extra blades


Miscellaneous gear

  • 20L dry bag – for doing laundry
  • Tom Bihn gear bag ( small )
  • Master combo lock
  • “large” travel towel
  • Two pens
  • Mini flashlight
  • Akribos analog watch
  • Carabiner / jump drive
  • small whistle
  • fresnel lens
  • Sunglasses and case
  • Bandana
  • Water bottle, just one saved


ID n documents

  • Eagle Creek belt-loop passport holder
  • Passport
  • Passport card ( in case I lose the passport, this cad make it way easier to get another )
  • Swiss Gear clip wallet ( small, worn inside the waistline with the clip outside )
  • Bank cards
  • Insurance cards
  • birth certificate
  • SS card
  • Immunization card
  • Eyewear prescription card
  • Pac Safe money belt ( empty )


Detailed later/elsewhere…

  • medical kit ( small, bike-sized )
  • software ( VPN, cloud storage, movies )
  • insurance

adventure

 

This is a bit…   something. I know.

And I know that some jobs are awesome and provide heaps of spiritual solace. But I really like the idea of acknowledging that lots of times we split our lives up into piles – here’s the stuff I have to do, and over here is the stuff I love to do. For me, lots of times this can lead to stress and despair.

Try an sprinkle as much of the “love to do” with the “need to do.” Blend them. Aerate the one with the other. Cultivate sources of joy, and now and then invite adventure. Even if it’s just taking a different way home from work.

Traveler Insurance

wiley

You get into some shit, while traveling.

You have to imagine that the normal amount of ouchie-stuff is going to happen to you at any point, and when you’re traveling abroad you don’t have the benefit of your mom to kiss it better, or the junk drawer to raid in the kitchen for some Purell to start the cleaning process.

Also, there’s the bigger stuff that would warrant a trip to the ER, or maybe the Walgreens Care clinic. Does your Kaiser health plan cover a broken arm while base jumping the Cliffs of Moher?

It might. Mine does.

Too start out, there’s a semantic lesson to learn when it comes to insurance you get while traveling abroad. What’s commonly referred to as “travel insurance,” what AmEx gives you as a loyal card holder or what your airline will try to sell you when you purchase tickets –   that’s insurance covering possible bad stuff that can happen related to travel – flights canceled, hotel burning down, camera getting stolen right out of your fucking hands when you were taking that picture of where the Beatles crossed Abbey Road. This is great; the kind of thing that I probably wouldn’t buy by itself but rather I’d make choices ( of credit card providers, or group memberships for example ) that included such benefits.

“Traveler insurance” is mostly referring to health stuff – seeing a doc, getting meds, getting extracted if things go wrong, or having the pieces that are left of you transported home if something –really– goes wrong. This is pretty necessary, and if you haven’t traveled abroad much you might not have done the research.

My research process involved finding contending policy providers, reading the negative stuff about each, then reading the positive stuff. I used Reddit, Google, Lonely Planet forums, and a bunch of other resources. I made lists. I talked with people I knew who’d traveled RTW. After all this, World Nomad won out with me.

After much reading and some talking to peeps, I went with World Nomads traveler insurance. I went to their site, put in all the destination countries I thought I’d be visiting and the length of time I thought I’d be gone, and it spit out two options – “Standard” ( for normal people ) and “Explorer” ( for people who might go base jumping ).

The list of covered items is pretty extensive:

  • Emergency Accident and Sickness Medical Expense
  • Emergency Evacuation & Repatriation
  • Trip Cancelation
  • Trip Interruption
  • Trip Delay
  • Baggage & Personal Effects
  • Baggage Delay
  • Collision Damage Waiver
  • Accidental Death and Dismemberment
  • One Call 24-Hour Assistance Servicees
  • One Call Non-Emergency Evacuation Services

Some of the travel-related stuff is included with World Nomads, so I have redundant coverage on some points. There are numbers/dollar values attached to all of these points, and sub-headers that break down coverage. It’s can be tedious, but at times very interesting reading. You should check it out, just to see how they present it all.

If you belong to a special group ( retirees, teachers, former Microsoft employees, etc ) you might want to look in orgs that sell benefit packages directly to your group. There is no such group catering to the needs of UX architects, or fiction writers, or RPG nerds, so I went with WN. But Kim is a teacher, and had the option of choosing slightly better coverage for about a quarter of what I paid. Pretty sweet.

Our traveler insurance basically says that in many, many places we have immediate access to medical care. Beyond this, both our plans provide for the travel insurance that makes the bumps a little easier. Also, both our plans give us access to concierge services, legal advice, and many other assistance tidbits not really covered by the above list.

I’ll disclose that my insurance giving what after research seems to be good coverage ( USD $500,000 medevac coverage, for example, along with all the other stuff above ) cost about $480 for the duration of my trip.

I have the contact info for them and a copy of the policy in my phone, on my laptop, and in the cloud via email. WN doesn’t provide a card, but I could definitely make one.

Hmmmmmmm. This might have been an awesome idea of a prep to do before I left  (^_^