Travel planning
Considering that I am the unemployed member of our household, one might assume that I do all of our trip planning. But that assumption would be wrong. Prior to moving here, I had assumed that it would be part of my job description as Hausfrau, but, as it turns out, Kirk is the primary travel planner in our family. During our time here in Basel, we have learned that the two of us have very different styles of travel planning. (When I refer to "travel planning", I'm generally talking about choosing hotels, which could also mean choosing towns/cities to visit if we're going to more than one place.)
My process goes something like this. Go online, search for hotels in the town/city we're planning to visit, then read a few reviews of these hotels (primarily on Trip Advisor), get tired of doing too much research, and eventually just pick one because I've had enough online reading and can't take the pressure anymore. I generally feel that whatever hotel I pick will be good enough.
Kirk's process goes something like this. Go online, search for hotels in the town/city we're planning to visit, then read all the reviews of these hotels (using Trip Advisor and every other possible online resource), make numerous spreadsheets outlining all the pros and cons of each hotel, agonize over it for a while, go back online and read more, agonize about it again, and eventually book a place, hoping it will be OK.
As you can see from my description, the process of choosing hotels is a perfect example of a key personality difference between Kirk and Gretchen. Kirk is a perfectionist, and I tend to do things a bit half-assed. For the good of our marriage, I have generally deferred all travel-related decisions to Kirk. I have to admit that his choices are (almost) always perfect! There was just one exception to this rule, which was last fall when we went to Burgundy for our anniversary and he vetoed my choice of a hotel in town and opted for a very isolated chateau in the country. You may recall that after 2 (miserable) nights in the chateau we left early and spent the last (very happy) night my chosen hotel in town. In general, however, I'm very happy to have him make our hotel arrangements and pay the bill. That way I just get to go along for the ride!
Next weekend, I will be facing a travel test of sorts. We've decided to spend the long Easter weekend (both Friday and Monday are holidays in Switzerland) on a brief driving tour of Bavaria. No more flying for me, so the rest of our pre-baby trips will be in a car or on a train. As you know, Bavaria is a big place and there's no way to can cover it in 4 days. We've decided to skip Munich on this trip (since it deserves it's own weekend excursion) and focus instead on some of the small towns in northern Bavaria. Somehow I ended up making the arrangements for this trip! Not only did I choose the 3 towns we'll be staying in (Schwäbisch Hall, Bamberg, and Regensburg), but I also chose the 3 hotels-- and without ANY consultation with Kirk! I had offered to talk through my top choices with him, but he deferred to me and asked me to book them without even looking up the hotels online. Wow. This is scary.
I'm proud to say that we have 3 hotels booked for next weekend, and my work is done. Stay tuned after Easter to see what Kirk thought of my choices...
By the way, for any of you Germany experts out there, I realize that Schwäbisch Hall is not in Bavaria, but we wanted to see it and it's on the way to the other towns, so I just lumped it into the category of Bavarian towns.
My process goes something like this. Go online, search for hotels in the town/city we're planning to visit, then read a few reviews of these hotels (primarily on Trip Advisor), get tired of doing too much research, and eventually just pick one because I've had enough online reading and can't take the pressure anymore. I generally feel that whatever hotel I pick will be good enough.
Kirk's process goes something like this. Go online, search for hotels in the town/city we're planning to visit, then read all the reviews of these hotels (using Trip Advisor and every other possible online resource), make numerous spreadsheets outlining all the pros and cons of each hotel, agonize over it for a while, go back online and read more, agonize about it again, and eventually book a place, hoping it will be OK.
As you can see from my description, the process of choosing hotels is a perfect example of a key personality difference between Kirk and Gretchen. Kirk is a perfectionist, and I tend to do things a bit half-assed. For the good of our marriage, I have generally deferred all travel-related decisions to Kirk. I have to admit that his choices are (almost) always perfect! There was just one exception to this rule, which was last fall when we went to Burgundy for our anniversary and he vetoed my choice of a hotel in town and opted for a very isolated chateau in the country. You may recall that after 2 (miserable) nights in the chateau we left early and spent the last (very happy) night my chosen hotel in town. In general, however, I'm very happy to have him make our hotel arrangements and pay the bill. That way I just get to go along for the ride!
Next weekend, I will be facing a travel test of sorts. We've decided to spend the long Easter weekend (both Friday and Monday are holidays in Switzerland) on a brief driving tour of Bavaria. No more flying for me, so the rest of our pre-baby trips will be in a car or on a train. As you know, Bavaria is a big place and there's no way to can cover it in 4 days. We've decided to skip Munich on this trip (since it deserves it's own weekend excursion) and focus instead on some of the small towns in northern Bavaria. Somehow I ended up making the arrangements for this trip! Not only did I choose the 3 towns we'll be staying in (Schwäbisch Hall, Bamberg, and Regensburg), but I also chose the 3 hotels-- and without ANY consultation with Kirk! I had offered to talk through my top choices with him, but he deferred to me and asked me to book them without even looking up the hotels online. Wow. This is scary.
I'm proud to say that we have 3 hotels booked for next weekend, and my work is done. Stay tuned after Easter to see what Kirk thought of my choices...
By the way, for any of you Germany experts out there, I realize that Schwäbisch Hall is not in Bavaria, but we wanted to see it and it's on the way to the other towns, so I just lumped it into the category of Bavarian towns.
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