My father's map

My father once sat me down on the couch and placed a map of Central Europe in my lap. He pointed to two major cities and said, ”We have five months to get from London to Copenhagen. You plan our route.”

I was ten years old.

My parents had decided to take us to Europe on an educational adventure for my entire sixth grade school year. This was their way of involving me. So I traced a pencil line that ran from London across the English Channel to Paris, down through the Basque region of Spain to the Costa del Sol, northeast into Switzerland, south to Italy, and back north through Austria and Germany before ending up in Scandinavia. My parents respected my general itinerary and filled in the blanks with extended stays in suburban London, Marbella, Davos and Florence.