File Under: Complaining Kids...
Three Weeks In Europe And A Continent's Worth Of Whining
As I write this, I am cruising in a Condor Airlines flight at about 38,000 feet, and according to the the map on the screen in the back of the seat in front of me, approaching the Arctic coast of somewhere in Way Northern Canada. We have been in the air for five hours since taking off from Frankfurt, and there are six more hours to go until we land in San Francisco. I have just sat back down after my fourth or fifth trip to walk around and get something to drink. My wife is shifting around in the seat next to me, and she just had to reach through the seats in front of us to tell our daughters to stop fighting like a couple of third graders.
The girls’ behavior would be expected if they were a couple of third graders. However, they are 14-and-16-years old, respectively, and if I have learned anything about this family trip to Europe it is that kids can make such experiences bloody awful.
Don’t get me wrong…I love my daughters. They can be funny, caring, helpful and respectful. But, they are also teenagers. And, because of this, they can also be bratty, annoying, completely helpless and utterly disrespectful to us and unappreciative of anything we do for them.
And one of the worst places for the Bad Side of kids to come out is during a three-week-long family vacation to four European countries where summer is hotter than Kilauea’s lava and air conditioning can be little more than a fantasy for the average American traveler.
***
My wife and I have always made sure our kids get to travel and have the kinds of experiences that my brother and I never had when we were growing up. When we were kids, my parents took us pretty much nowhere for vacations. I say “pretty much” nowhere because every two years or so, my mom would take us to visit her family in North Carolina and Virginia. And I couldn’t wait for those month-long trips. Part of the reason was because we had relatives living just outside of Washington, D.C. and being the American history nerd that I am, I couldn’t get enough of going to places like the Lincoln Memorial, the National Air and Space Museum and Arlington National Cemetery.
But, aside from those trips, we really didn’t go anywhere. Disneyland? Nope. The classic road trip through the West? Never. Hawaii? Please. We lived 30 miles south of Seattle and we never once went on one of the hundreds of three-hour ferry rides from Seattle to Victoria, British Columbia. Call it a First World Problem, if you will, but something like getting on a flight from Seattle to Honolulu was never on the table for the Crum family of Puyallup, Washington.
In fact, the first time I went to Hawaii was when I was 42…When our older daughter was just 18 months old. We went to Hawaii, again, two years later when our girls were 2-and 3 years old. In total, we have been to Hawaii nine times with our girls. We have also taken them to Disneyland five times, as well as North Carolina, Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas and on 14 different road trips to visit my mom near Seattle.
So, we are not novices when it comes to traveling with kids. But, when it came to taking them to a foreign country on the other side of the Earth…Well, that was a bridge that we felt was too far us to cross.
That was, until this year.
***
My mom died a few months ago, and as a result, I’ve recently adopted what I call an Almost Zero Fucks To Give Attitude about life. I went into this in detail here, so I won’t belabor the point, except to say that my mom’s passing, and my response to it, was the push I needed to go through with us finally taking a long-talked-about trip to Europe. And this is how we ended up spending three weeks visiting Munich, Rome, Bern, Switzerland and, finally, Paris.
Now, I’m not naive. I knew that the four of us traveling in near-constant contact with each other, across four foreign countries wouldn’t be perfect. I knew that there would be times when would get on each others nerves, and there would be a meltdown or two.
But, enough about me…
Almost from the start, our daughters had issues about, well, you name it. At San Francisco Airport, our 14-year-old suddenly remembered she left her AirPods at home. So, guess who had to by her a new pair at the inflated airport prices? I paid for an “upgraded” meal on our flight to Frankfurt. When the chicken cordon bleu (fancy, I know) arrived, the girls acted as if they had just been served a plate of barbecue ashes. We landed in Frankfurt, and immediately it was a barrage of “What are we doing?”, “I need the phone charger.” and “I don’t like schnitzel”. At that point, we hadn’t even had any schnitzel, yet.
Many times I wondered just where our kids’ heads were. For weeks leading up to our trip, I had told them that we would be going on a tour of the Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, located about 15 miles outside of Munich. The day before our tour, I had the following conversation with our 14-year-old.
Me: OK…Remember we have the tour of Dachau at 10 tomorrow morning.
Daughter: WHAT?
Me: We’re going on a tour of the Dachau concntration camp.
Daughter: You never told me this!
Me: Yes, I did. And it is something you should see and learn about.
Daughter: DAAAAAAAD! I don’t wanna go! Do we have to?
Me: It’s already paid for. You’re going.
***
It went on from there.
In Rome, the girls complained about my wife and I getting the biggest room in our AirBnB. They also complained about why it was so hot in the Sistine Chapel (It was damn hot, so I’ll give them this one), and what the big deal about the place was. They whined some more until I took them to this massive, Sunday morning flea market where they, and about 4 milion other American high-school-age girls, attacked a table of “Brandy Melville” swag like my fraternity brothers draining a keg of Bud Light in 1989.
When we got to Bern, Switzerland, they whined about having to share a bed at our boutique hotel. And then they whined until my wife and I walked to the nearest McDonald’s and got food for them. They also wondered why my wife wanted to see the address of the place where her great-grandparents lived 100 years ago. Why, indeed, would she want to see a piece of her, and our kids, ancestry?
Paris was a little better, but they still complained about:
—Again, having to share a sofabed in our AirBnB.
—Riding the Metro.
—How long it took me to get an Uber to go anywhere.
—The fact that it took about seven hours for our day-long tour to Monet’s Gardens and the Palace of Versailles.
—Walking up every one of the 246 steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe in 85-degree heat.
There were times when it was all a little much, and my wife and I told each other we wouldn’t bring the kids on a trip like this again. Of course, everyone I have spoken to since we got home, and who also took their kids on similar trips to foreign lands, said they went through the exact same thing.
“But, give it time,” they all said “They might not show it now, but they will appreciate it later on.”
From what I have gathered, that “later on” probably won’t occur until the girls are 25. Better late than never, I guess?