Life with Eloheim, Queues and Cars in Europe

Life with Eloheim, Queues and Cars ~ 2014-04

July 31, 2014 By admin Life with Eloheim Categories: No Comments

Thing is, when you travel, there is a lot of waiting around. It’s fascinating to observe how other people wait.

For instance, in Turkey they queue as a mob. Lines? What are they? Every opportunity to go one at a time is approached as a big blob of bodies.

We took a day trip to Greece (isn’t that amusing!) for a bit of sightseeing. Just popped over on the ferry. Well sort of…

See it’s all well and good and sounds all sorts of sophisticated to “pop over” to another country for the afternoon. However, in this case, the other country isn’t in the EU so you have to queue for passport and customs ON BOTH SIDES, BOTH WAYS.

That means mob queues and baggage scans and passport stamping four times in one day. That’s a bit much frankly. It was especially amusing to be yelled at for “not being in line” during the mob queue scene.

However, it does allow you to do this!

That’s the Mediterranean Sea or the Aegean Sea depending on who you ask and where you are standing. We are on Rhodes Island which is Greece now and has probably been a zillion other countries before.

This is the ferry we rode parked next to a huge cruise ship!

Then we hired Nikolas who drove us around in his Mercedes Taxi and gave us a tour of the island. Rhodes is a walled city. I liked the contrast of new and old in this view.

Seems I only have a picture of his arm…..

He told us all about all sorts of stuff. There used to be a huge bronze (I think) statue in this spot.

It fell down in an earthquake and was eventually cut up, hauled away, and turned into weapons

He also showed us this temple to Apollo the Sun God which is 2500 years old.

Inside the city

If the perspective on this photo seems odd, it’s because I was sitting down. I wasn’t feeling too perky on this trip so I rested a lot.

The next time I rested I documented my new view for your enjoyment. I was sitting quite close to a man who was painting/drawing portraits of visitors. I enjoyed listening to him cajole passers by trying to get them to sit for a portrait. This was his patter.

Portrait! Portrait of you!
Portrait of your baby!
(any slight interest from a person and it switched to)
I take your picture, you don’t have to sit and wait, I will bring the finished portrait to your hotel!
Portrait! Portrait of you!
Repeat.

I was sitting directly across from his samples.

I amused myself imagining the crowd that had gathered to watch him do the soccer chick portrait!
Oh I know he did that one from a photo or make believe imagination! Still, can you picture someone throwing a soccer ball at this busty woman over and over again as he worked on his picture????

Then, because the ground looks like this

You would need a flock of young kids to run after the quickly rolling ball and queue up to throw it again.

This vantage also gave me the opportunity to take a photo of the best example of “All t-shirts in Europe are in English.”

ALL may be a strong word to use; I’m sticking with it. Those folks love their English t-shirts. Sometimes they even made sense!

This one, however, did not. At least not to me.

It says: Superdry Cheyenne Indians
Which, in a wacky marketing stretch might be an ad for a deodorant. Otherwise, it’s just wacky. If I were wearing that shirt, I would be cracking up the entire time. He wore it with a serious expression. I edited out his head.

Fun and games over, post cards mailed to the kids, it was back on the boat for the ride back to Turkey.

Flash back to our first queue. Oh, I should say right here and now, that I nearly never say the word queue in America. Who does? But, when it’s this weird, it needs a special name! Plus, calling it queuing somehow makes it more fun than saying “lining up” or “getting in line” or “waiting in line.”

We got off the airplane in Switzerland and arrived at passport control. There was a super short line! I walked up to the passport lady and was informed that my super short line was the WRONG line!!!!

Turns out there are two types of lines at passport control. One for those that are of that country/union and one for those that aren’t. I was an “aren’t” and I was in the “of” line.

Thankfully, this important lesson (which we would use MANY more times) was learned at the shortest passport queue we encountered!

No I don’t have pictures! Do you want me to get arrested?????????? Pictures of passport control is crazy talk!!!!!!!!! Don’t talk crazy!

Onward. It’s amazing how much I learned about myself on this trip. It ties in with what I shared about IDKWGO. I learned what to DO when IDKWGO as well as how to BE.

1. Read signs, especially in airports and other transit situations. If they aren’t in English, make your best guess.
2. Watch what others are doing, but don’t automatically follow them.
3. Forget about being stressed out, won’t help one bit.
4. Drink some water, that’s always a good idea.
5. Never go into a bathroom without some alternate wiping material in your possession.
6. When riding a boat in the late afternoon, take into account the position of the setting sun before choosing your seat.
7. Yes, someone ELSE will want to see your passport and other papers, no sense letting it bug you.
8. Stock up on your favorite cold remedy; it’s easy to get sick.
9. Let your hosts pick your food. (Can you believe I said that!?!) They know what’s up.
10. EAR PLUGS.
11. Take an insane number of pictures.
12. Always have some sort of snack in your bag. You will be hungry in moments where the only food you can get is the food you have with you.

The Eloheim tools I used the most:

1. I am willing
2. Blue bubble
3. Neutral observation
4. A variation of What is true now? that was more like What is me now?
5. I also had many opportunities to commit and recommit to being present in the moment even when that moment was uncomfortable (hello economy class flight with broken TV screens!)

I will leave off today with one more picture.

When in Germany and being chauffeured by an experienced driver in a brand new BMW, you go 200 KPH (about 120 MPH) as often as you can.

It’s legal and it’s fun.

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