About The Geezer Abroad

About the Geezer Abroad

I’m just a travel blogger without a lot of words. This site will not contain long-winded posts as I hate writing. However, I will provide information about our travels where we have been, and where we are going. We don’t always get the best deals, but we do usually get great value out of our travel choices. My goal is to show interesting places to visit with all the successes and failures along the way.  If there are any useful tips, we will pass them along. The first travel tip, travel light with a backpack and not bulky luggage. Geezer Abroad came from my age and where we typically travel.

I have been an IT Engineer for almost 30 years. I enjoyed traveling in the late ’80s and early ’90s while stationed in Frankfurt, Germany with the US Army. During my time there, I traveled to The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Belgium. I also had the honor of visiting East Berlin 4 or 5 times before the Berlin Wall came down and a few times after.  When the Berlin Wall came down, a trip to Berlin to get a piece of the wall was in order. I was able to stand on top of the wall in front of Brandenburg Gate the month after the wall started to come down.

I was married in South Africa in 1993 and then life happened, it was time to grow up and be responsible. We did not travel much for about 20 years, other than to South Africa. I lived in the Cape Town area part-time from 2002-2005.  In 2005 while living in South Africa, my son and I traveled to Namibia. In 2015 our daughter became an Au-pair in Paris and we visited her over Christmas and New Year. The travel bug had been awakened again.

The Geezer Abroad journey will begin with these family trips. There will be some throwbacks to the earlier trips for fun and general information. I am building a lot of the pages from memory for the earlier trips and will add them to the site as time permits. Each new post may take up to 8-10 hours to put together on the newer trips due to picture selection, wording, emotions felt at the time, etc. The older trips will take longer and may have to be edited multiple times to fill in the gaps. Did I mention I hate to write?

How the Geezer Abroad Travels

When visiting Europe, we prefer to use trains and local transportation options. We buy 1st Class Eurail Global Passes as they allow us the flexibility to hop on a train and end up in an unexpected/unplanned place. Europe has an efficient train network and is very reliable. We have stood in a train station looking at the departure board to see where we can go while researching hotel options at the same time. If there is a good match, we will grab the next train. If the weather is not cooperating, go to the station and find a new destination for the day. You can travel by the seat of your pants and enjoy something different and unplanned. You will always remember when you changed your plans and found something new.  To remain flexible, we typically only book hotels for the first and last nights of the trip.

We don’t buy local SIM cards for our phones. After a trip to South Africa in 2015 and using a local SIM card, we switched to T-Mobile as you get unlimited texts, data (at 2G speeds), and calls for 25 cents a minute in over 210 countries/territories.  Don’t let the 2G speeds scare you, I have reached speeds up to 15mbps in Marseille, France. Normally, app performance is better than a web browser.

Pack Light

We pack light and use a backpack vs suitcase as this allows us to be very mobile and flexible. See how we pack for travel on the “What’s In The Bag” page on this site.

Occasionally, we find certain products or services valuable. We will support them by providing a link to their site or service. Some of these links may be part of an affiliate program and we will receive a small commission or referral fee at no cost to you if you choose to use their services. If we have not used a company or service, you will not see it on this site. You can see our Affiliates and Partners here.

Vertigo

Since about 2015 I have suffered from episodes of vertigo at home and while traveling. Check out my post about my Vertigo and other Geezer-related issues.