Let this story stand as a survival guide to any family vacations – part 2.

Apart from the discomfort caused by the 10 suitcases of (only) the most necessary stuff packed for this extreme long 4-day trip we were able to cover more than 50% of the distance without major headache and noise. We were silent and they were relatively silent.

‘What an idyllic family holiday’, I was thinking, visualizing some vintage family vacation poster where the father is driving, the mother is browsing some woman magazine and the kids are sitting at the back of the car. I was about to say something nice, when something happened. Something happened which was undoubtedly foreseen.

My mother broke the silence as we approached the one and only available accommodation I could get for our super last minute trip. She asked: ‘Darling, you did the daily schedule for the next coming days, didn’t you? We don’t have much time here and I want to spend quality time rather than hanging around doing nothing but shop-hunting.’ Then she added: ‘I know I can always rely on any itinerary you make’.  In a minute tiny drops of sweat appeared on my forehead to flood all over my body and leave me in complete devastation.

MAN…

I did not do the daily planning. Not only I did not do that but I did not download any maps, I did not have even a tiny piece of information about the place where we were heading to and I knew nothing about anything. I pretended that I didn’t hear well. Then she said: ‘I hope you didn’t forget’. I couldn’t act anymore locked up in this situation and knowing that I didn’t even have a clue which part of the world we are I said: ‘Well, no exact plans yet. As it comes.’ Then I added: ‘You mentioned about some 8-page guide you got, we can use that’.

Oh. Dear. Why did these words even left my tongue. She turned around slowly, looking at me with a face expression how only a furious person can look when you did something really bad. Needless to say, the dream of an idyllic family vacation was gone with the wind and it turned into a never-ending chase of joke dropping, problem fixing and ‘top 10 must-see’ searching despair. From this moment the long awaited family holiday fell into 1000 little pieces giving me nearly no chance to get things right. Not much left in this world for me, so trying for my the last chance to survive I headed into a sleepless night with a good amount of palinka (local short drink) and a low-signal wifi, getting the landlord of the accommodation and some of the well-informed looking guests around me to put together a quality kind of itinerary covering our days ahead in paradise.

Well, the result? An instant planned vacation in a 100-year old village house with a number of retro restaurants on the way, some failed forgettable and successfully executed programs in 3 countries covering 4 days. Lesson learned? Even though family holiday is a hard call, just go for it. Despite all the innie-minnie tidbits of nerve-racking details the overall feeling – believe it or not – is something you can only experience with your loved ones and no one else.

Here is how it all started.