Join Me As I Tweet My Way Through Europe!

So I’m flying to London, England today.

I know.

I didn’t give you much advanced notice, sorry.  Actually, as you read this I’m probably in flight right now between Denver and Newark or I’m boarding my red-eye flight to Heathrow.

However,

If you click this link you can follow me in real time.  This is the special Twitter account I set up for my trip.  It’s called JoleneTravels.  If  you would like to check out my personal travel updates, thoughts, or view a picture(s) that I just took in London, Paris, Lisbon or Barcelona click this link whenever you think about it, I would be happy to have you to tag along.

I’m traveling alone on this trip.  And I couldn’t be more excited about that.  Frankly, this is how I roll.  I come from a family of travelers.

My great-grandmother, Rose Park, left our family farm in Northern Colorado in 1903 to travel for a year. She took a train to New York City when she was only 18-years old.  Once in New York she made her way to a large passenger boat and then she sailed to Germany.  She arrived three weeks later.  She visited her German relatives for 9-months before returning home to Colorado where she married and had children (my grandfather).  I have always admired Rose, though I never met her.  I have her hand-written diary from that 1903 trip and I think she was a brave, adventurous, strong woman.

In 1993 I boarded a plane and I flew to London, England.  I was 23 years old.  I stayed for 8-months, I lived and worked there.  I fell in love with London.  I found it to be a sophisticated, international metropolis.  I ate Indian food for the first time.  I experienced real Chinese Medicine for the first time, my doctor was from Peking, China and he didn’t speak a lick of English.  Instead he looked at my tongue, took my pulses and prescribed real herbs, roots and bark that I took home to my London flat and boiled into tea for 40 minutes.

I never drank anything more disgusting in my life.

But 12 hours after being diagnosed with bronchitis and then drinking those herbs I was cured.  It was the quickest turn-around I ever experienced.  I went to my first energy (Reiki) healer in London and I tried float tanks for the first time as well.  I wondered in and out of the homeopathic pharmacies on my lunch break from Harrods department store where I worked in the toiletries (perfume and fancy soaps) department. London was grand – Hyde Park, The National Gallery, The theater, Westminster Abbey, day trips on the train to Cambridge and Wimbledon. I was sad when my student Visa ran out 8-months later.  I didn’t want to leave.  [Picture of me, 1994 in my Harrods work uniform standing in front of my London flat].

When I turned 40 years old on December 29, 2010 I decided it’s time for me to return to Europe. I booked a flight and I’m leaving today!

[Picture of me January 29, 2011 at my wine and chocolate birthday party with my good friend, Carmen]

I’m going to London first because it feels like home, then Paris (I’ve never been there) but now that I’m a big girl I’m ready to tackle a non-English speaking country on my own.  From Paris I will fly to Lisbon, my aunt and uncle live there so I’ll stay with them for a week and then finish my solo adventure in Barcelona.  I hear it’s a great city.

For the past 7-years, since I have run my own business, I saved 20% from everything I earned. I’m going to take a small dip out of that savings and go to Europe for my birthday.

Now that I’m 40 I’m wondering, “what’s next ?”,  “what do I want to do with this next stage of my life ?”, “is my ‘dream’ the same as it was 10 years ago ?”  I’ll just let the trip unfold in the direction it is destined to go and see what insights come to me.

That is how my great-grandmother traveled and I think she would approve!

I don’t plan to write an official blog post while I’m traveling, but then you never know, I might surprise you.  Instead my plan is to Tweet, micro-blog in a 140 characters or less (via my iPad and iPhone) my way through Europe, and I’m just as excited about communicating this way as I am about the trip itself.

As a communications major I’m interested in today’s world of social media. I’ve blogged and been on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn for almost 3.5 years. I own a MacBook, iPhone 4, and iPad.  I listen to the criticism and cynicism of it all but I choose to continue to participate.

Here’s the thing.

When I lived in London I did not have an email account, in fact no one I knew had email accounts. Instead I wrote hand-written letters and they were received by my friends and family in the U.S. seven days later.  When my great-grandmother wrote letters in 1903 to her family in Colorado it took 4-6 weeks to receive them.  Today, in 2011, I can Tweet for no charge telling you what I just experienced in real time and you can read it half a second later.  I think that is a cool way to record a travel diary and communicate at the same time.

In 1993 I remember watching people walk through the tube (subway) stations with huge mobile (pronounced MO -bile) phones.  The British were ahead of the Americans when it came to cell phones. I thought it was silly.  I saw no reason to ever carry a mobile phone. I had to memorize complicated international calling codes and pay international rates to talk on the phone while I lived abroad.  Today, I can instant message and talk to my friends and family via Skype for free and with no complicated dialing procedures.  I can also immediately pull up a map of Lisbon, translate a menu in Spain, or listen to the history of Buckingham Palace as I walk past Buckingham Palace.  I can do all of this with my iPhone – now that’s a fun way to use technology.

Of course I admit there can be a downside to technology, I sat in a lecture last week regarding the privacy issues and robotic side of the tech world, but I also think there is a positive, exciting side to technology too.

I encourage you to follow my real time travel adventure on Twitter, especially if you “don’t get” Twitter, this is a great opportunity to try it out.  After all, Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel “didn’t get” the Internet and email in the early days either and look at them now, Tweeting away and talking back and forth with their audience all over the world.

I think it’s necessary to “dip your toe into the pool” and experience different modes of communication (says this Communication major), even if you don’t use it on a daily basis.

This two minute video, about The Important Things In Life, loosely sums up my intentions for my solo trip to Europe. Ironically I found it because one of my social media friends posted it on Facebook as I was writing this blog post.  Take a minute and watch it and then travel along with me to see how my journey unfolds.

I think if my great-grandmother were alive today she would be a bit overwhelmed with our quick access to information and our fast paced communications. But I suspect she’d give it a try and Tweet her way through Europe anyway!

I’ll be back with more Healthy Discoveries next month.