Travels With Jim and Rita
Discussing the challenges, rewards, and drawbacks of living overseas. Follow our decision to sell our home and live abroad until the housing market adjusts. Information for the would-be expat, digital nomad, roving retiree, or just plain traveler. Host Jim Santos is a published travel writer with over 200 articles and seven books (jimsantos.net). He and his wife Rita lived in Ecuador for 6 years, and are currently test-driving the roving retirement lifestyle. Jim is also the host of the popular "International Living Podcast".
Travels With Jim and Rita
Episode 37 - A Comment on Moving for Political Reasons and Our Tour of Poland
Join us, Jim and Rita, as we explore the decision to establish a home base in the U.S., balancing family ties and future surgeries while considering the allure of new experiences abroad. Listen in as we discuss whether leaving the country due to political reasons is truly the driving force for successful expats or if it's the promise of adventure that beckons. With fresh health updates, including a successful gallbladder surgery and some welcome insurance news, we set our sights on the warm climes of Portugal and Spain, all while advocating for the convenience and charm of Flixbus over traditional rail and air travel in Europe.
Our journey doesn't end there. We immerse ourselves in the rich history and vibrant culture of Krakow and Warsaw, sharing stories of Wawel Castle, bustling markets, and the unique ways Poland shows solidarity with Ukraine. Discover the beauty of Krakow's walkable streets and historic churches, and relive the unexpected health scare that struck during a Flixbus ride to Warsaw. Find out why our cozy Airbnb near the Madame Curie statue made our exploration of Warsaw even more memorable. We invite you to connect further with us through our blog and social media platforms, where you can find more insights, photographs, and travel stories. Whether you're planning your next adventure or simply love a good travel tale, there's something here for every wanderlust-filled heart.
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Welcome to Travels with Jim and Rita. I'm your host, jim Santos, along with my wife Rita, and welcome to the second season of our podcast. In the first season, we set in motion our crazy plan to outfox the real estate market in the US and actually increased our retirement nest date by selling our home and car and spending the next three years or so living abroad and exploring the world. Now that plan is in disarray as I develop pancreatitis in Latvia, necessitating a return to the US for further treatment and surgery. Join us now as we adjust our goals and try to salvage our travel plans. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Travels with Jim and Rita. I'm Jim Santos, along with my lovely wife Rita, and you know this is not a political podcast by any means, but in light of the recent election results, there are a few comments I feel I must make here. So please bear with me for a moment and, rita, of course, please chime in anytime you like.
Jim Santos:Here We've had people ask us if we're planning on leaving the country for political reasons, or where they can go to flee the incoming regime. To flee the incoming regime, and I'll admit we're a bit sickened by the election results and fearful about the impact on our country over the next few years, and I'll even admit that we did discuss whether we should give up on our current plans to set up a home base before traveling again and just get ourselves and as much of our assets as we can out of the country. And it was particularly poignant to us this year, since we just returned from visiting Germany and some Baltic countries, where they have had to deal with authoritarian governments, and it was pretty clear that they did not enjoy the experience. However, in my book Living Abroad Challenging the Myths of Expat Life, one of the things I addressed was this issue, and I still stand by the position that if your sole reason for moving abroad is to escape the results of election, then my advice is don't Moving to a foreign country, especially if you don't speak. The language is a major life change and it is not for everyone. Our experiences traveling and living abroad and talking to others has shown us that successful expats and slow travelers are running towards a new life, not running away from something.
Jim Santos:Now, sure, if you were planning to leave anyway, this election may have been the final push, and I know that Google experienced a surge in searches for the phrase how to move to Canada late on election night and the internet right now is full of listicles giving you the best place to move to if you don't like the outcome. Internet right now is just full of listicles giving you the best place to move to if you don't like the outcome. Now we do fully expect a rough ride ahead for America and we will be spending probably six to eight months abroad each year. We may even open a bank account in another country in currency once we have a permanent address again. But we're traveling for our own enjoyment and because of our love of finding new places, just like we would have planned had the election gone the other way. Rita, do you have anything you'd like to add to that?
Rita Santos:No, I think for me I could have had a home base in another country, but I couldn't find one that totally suited our needs.
Jim Santos:Yeah, everyone's going to have different needs and different things that they need to look for, and a lot of that is going to have to do not just with your experience with other countries, but your age and your health.
Rita Santos:Yeah, and we have nine grandchildren here that live in the US, four kids. When you totally give up a US address, it's kind of like you don't have the access to your family.
Jim Santos:Yeah, that's something we found out during this experiment with being homeless and traveling. Having that physical address is really pretty important for things like renewing your driver's license, just being able to get important mail and important official correspondence.
Rita Santos:Yeah, you can't even open a bank account in a foreign country without a legal residence somewhere.
Jim Santos:Yeah. So for a lot of reasons I think having a permanent base here we've downsized a little bit will be a better way for us to travel.
Rita Santos:Right, I agree.
Jim Santos:Okay, well enough about politics. There's a quick update for those who've asked how the pancreatitis recovery has been going. First of all, I had my gallbladder surgery about three weeks ago and everything went well Surprisingly well actually. I had very little discomfort. Post-op Staples have been removed and I'm eating a normal, healthy diet once more, and I was also able to wean myself off of the insulin and back to oral medication. So that'll make future travel much easier. And yes, we are still planning to travel, probably starting at the end of February, just not quite sure where yet. We do want to visit the UK and Ireland, but we may start in Portugal and Spain, where it'll be a bit warmer. I still have some follow-up visits with doctors here before we can leave, so there's time to work things out and we need to set up our home. Meanwhile we're still living out of a hotel suite, but we should be in our new home by early December. Knock on wood. Oh, and one last update for those asking about our hospital costs in Latvia my health insurance did indeed reimburse us for the full amount just under $3,000 for that hospital stay. So good news there. All right, well enough housekeeping.
Jim Santos:On with the show Now. In our last episode we talked about the first few stops on our recent trip to Europe Berlin, prague and Budapest and today we'll catch you up on the next phase, as we traveled by bus, this time through Poland, staying in Krakow and Warsaw. First of all, about the bus part. As we talked about last show, we traveled from Berlin to Prague and Prague to Budapest via rail, and while that worked out well and we much prefer it to schlepping around the airports getting the luggage and overhead racks was still a bit of a hassle to schlepping around the airports, getting the luggage and overhead racks was still a bit of a hassle. Enter the Flixbus, which we first learned about from one of our podcast interviewees, clarice Pereira, back in episode 24. Arita, I think we can say that everything Clarice told us about Flixbus was absolutely true.
Rita Santos:Oh really, she's a petite little person, really she's a petite little person, and she struggled with the trains kind of like we would on an airplane. But it's not carry-on luggage, it's your full- 50-pound-plus bag. Yeah, exactly.
Jim Santos:Another thing I really liked about the Flixbus well, and again, the loading on the Flixbus. Your heavy luggage is just barely off the ground. You really can just tip your suitcase into the little compartment and push it on.
Rita Santos:Yeah, that's wonderful.
Jim Santos:And there is overhead storage for your carry-on stuff. But what I really liked is you get a Flixbus app on your phone and from that app you can look for the bus that you want, the route that you want. You put in your current location and your destination, and when you want to travel, how many people. It'll show you your options. You can pick out the bus trip that you want, you can pay for it and then you have a ticket on your phone that you just need to show the bus driver as you're getting on. So it's all very self-contained and very easy to operate, especially when you're on the road and you can't necessarily go out to print out things very easily.
Rita Santos:No, and you can just go to the bus depot five or ten minutes early and just hop on the bus.
Jim Santos:Getting to those pickup and drop-off points are very easy because they not only give you the location but they give you a little geolink. So you click on that and you see exactly where it is on a Google map. And that was very helpful on this first trip because our pickup point was basically just it was near a bus station but it was just kind of on the side of the road and there was just a tiny little green sign that said Flixbus, where we were standing.
Jim Santos:Right said Flixbus where we were standing, right, yeah, but with that app we were able to find it easily and get our get our first ride there to Krakow. Now I mentioned you pick your seats. You don't have to pick your seats, you can just pick whatever seats are available. But picking them in advance means that you know that you actually have a place to sit and you can sit together, that you know that you actually have a place to sit and you can sit together. It's something like $4.99 each to pick the seats that you want.
Jim Santos:But we went ahead and paid $9.99 each on this first trip because it was a fairly long trip it's going to be, I think, about six and a half hours and we thought well, they have these big windows in front. We'll sit in the very front seat so we can take advantage of the panoramic view that they advertise there. Now, the problem was the bus driver had big sunshades that he liked to lower to make it easier to drive, so our panoramic view was a view of this big, you know, four foot by six foot sunshade.
Rita Santos:Totally blocked.
Jim Santos:It's even worse as we in the front seat. There you didn't have as much leg room, and in that particular model bus there wasn't a lot of overhead space for the front seats because the the overhead compartments kind of curved in in a little futuristic way. So we learned our lesson on that one right, we did but still the flix bus was very comfortable. You're basically picked up and let off in the middle of the towns so you don't have far to go once you get there.
Rita Santos:You have Wi-Fi.
Jim Santos:You have Wi-Fi on the bus. It does have a bathroom on board, but you need to be very athletic to be able to use it while the bus is moving. But they do stop once or twice on the way for people to be able to get out and use the bathroom or get something to to eat or drink real quick and get back on even better. The rides generally are going to cost you somewhere between for a couple, somewhere between 25 and 60 dollars right yeah, so it's a very economic, convenient and easy way to get around in Europe.
Rita Santos:I was really surprised how easy it was. I mean, in Ecuador it was easy as well, but you just never noticed it in Europe before until Clarice told us about it.
Jim Santos:All right, so on to Krakow. First of all, on that bus trip to Krakow, when we went from Hungary to Poland, there was a very noticeable difference in the countryside and the quality of the homes. And did you feel it also? Rita just seemed like.
Rita Santos:Oh yes, yes, absolutely. It was beautiful scenery, beautiful farmland, it was gorgeous.
Jim Santos:Yeah, Poland just seemed noticeably more attractive.
Rita Santos:Absolutely, once we were into.
Jim Santos:Poland. Yeah, Okay, in Krakow, when we got to our Airbnb, this was probably the least comfortable one we had on the trip.
Rita Santos:Right? Well, it was 90 degrees and no air.
Jim Santos:Yeah, they're having a heat wave, as every place seems to have been this year. For us, it was a great location.
Rita Santos:Oh, absolutely, we could walk anywhere.
Jim Santos:But the problem was that there was no air conditioning. It only had a few windows, and the windows were all on the same side and it was the side that caught the sun most of the day.
Rita Santos:It did, and it wasn't even good for drying our clothes because it was very humid. So it was a challenge.
Jim Santos:Yeah, it was a decent price and a great location but, as I say again, not the best. Also, there was the fun little part of they gave us the address and when we got to the address there was no entrance to the building. No there was not. We walked back and forth trying to find an entrance. Rita finally asked somebody passing by if they knew, and they suggested we look on the other side, right if?
Rita Santos:they knew and they suggested we look on the other side, Right.
Jim Santos:So that little detail would have been nice to know. But we had to go walk around to the other side of this block and there were two entrances. One of them, the first one we tried there was a door locked so we couldn't get all the way over to our apartment, so we had to go back down and back out. So a little more definition from the people who were renting the Airbnb would have been helpful.
Rita Santos:The other downfall of that Airbnb was the bed was like a closet and you really had very little space on both sides of the beds to get in and out. It was new, it was clean. It was clean. It was a challenge.
Jim Santos:Yeah, just wasn't the best.
Rita Santos:Yeah.
Jim Santos:But, like I say, the location was great. We had a Zabica, which are very prolific convenience stores in that part of Europe. There was one just on our block there and a couple others within a few blocks also.
Rita Santos:And we could walk to the fresh fruit and veggie markets. That was perfect.
Jim Santos:Yeah, and the first night we found a great restaurant that we enjoyed so much we went back to a couple of times.
Rita Santos:Right.
Jim Santos:It was right in there and it was really only a few blocks walking from there down to Old Town, maybe about a half mile.
Rita Santos:Yeah, it was perfect.
Jim Santos:So about Old Town, rita, how did you like the Old Town area there of Krakow?
Rita Santos:Oh, that was one of the most beautiful cities I think we've been in. It was very well taken care of, wonderful restaurants. Yeah, what did you think?
Jim Santos:Yeah, it was really nice. I like the main square. There. We have saw a lot of horse-drawn carriages. There were some parks. It's just very easy to walk around the town and we also took their public transit once or twice. Right, yeah, and that was also very easy to use. Yes, and that was also very easy to use.
Jim Santos:Yes, Now, one of the differences between Prague and Krakow and then later Warsaw. A lot of the things that we saw were really beautiful, but they were reconstructions because most of it had been leveled during World War II.
Rita Santos:Well, more so in Warsaw than Krakow.
Jim Santos:Yeah, were too well more so in warsaw than krakow. Yeah, so you, you saw some beautiful things and there's this real sense of history, definitely, but sometimes you have to step back and remember oh yeah, this was rebuilt about, you know, 10, 20, 30 years ago you know the interesting thing about Krakow?
Rita Santos:that was the first time that we noticed where our tips were going, and in any restaurant we went into and tip the waiter, they would tell you that was going to Ukraine.
Jim Santos:Yeah, in fact there was a special app that you could scan so that your tip went directly to Ukraine in some places, right, and that was very obvious all through that region was that the people in the area really supported Ukraine.
Rita Santos:Yes, yes, absolutely.
Jim Santos:You know, probably the main attraction downtown was what they pronounced the Varhol Castle. It's spelled W-A-W-E-L. They pronounce the Varvel Castle. It's spelled W-A-W-E-L. This is a large, beautiful castle complex up on a hill. We went ahead and paid for access to several parts of it. I think we spent two days.
Rita Santos:We did, we did.
Jim Santos:There are some beautiful things in that castle. You can see some of the medieval weapons, and I should mention that pictures for Krakow and Warsaw are up on our website as well, at jimsantosbookscom, so you can see some of these places that we visited.
Rita Santos:I really like Krakow better than Budapest. Really, it was more convenient to walk around in more condensed. Yeah, it did seem like it was a little easier to get around.
Jim Santos:Yes, and of course also there were a lot of beautiful churches.
Rita Santos:Absolutely. Oh my gosh, yes.
Jim Santos:It's easy to lose track of them. We've been in so many.
Rita Santos:Yeah, you almost have to go back and review the area to really appreciate it.
Jim Santos:There's something else that struck me as we went through this castle complex and really everywhere we went in Europe. I was so surprised that you did not have like metal detectors to go through, right, you know, nobody's patting you down or anything like that.
Rita Santos:Or looking in your backpack nothing.
Jim Santos:Yeah, the only comments about backpacks was if you had a big one, they asked you to check it so you didn't accidentally knock something over when you were turning around. If you had a small one, they might ask you to wear it in front.
Rita Santos:Right.
Jim Santos:But that relaxed atmosphere was very refreshing after visiting sites in the US.
Rita Santos:Right, and they were extremely busy, so they could have been a little bit nervous, but we didn't see anything.
Jim Santos:We mentioned, there was a small market near our Bend Breakfast. We also found a larger main market that was just really wonderful. They had a lot of fresh vegetables and fruits and they had meats and just about everything. But unfortunately, you know, our stay wasn't that long and that again, that setup at the Airbnb was not real conducive to being able to bring stuff back and cook our own meals.
Rita Santos:Right, it was such a shame because they did have great markets.
Jim Santos:Yeah, we did grab a few things there. I think we bought a couple of things that we could take back and warm up and eat.
Rita Santos:Yeah, we tried to do our breakfast and lunch, but dinner was kind of off the table.
Jim Santos:Well, from Crackall it was then back on the Flixbus, this time heading to Warsaw. We had wised up. We picked better seats and cheaper seats and we had no problem storing our carry-on bags overhead. However, this was when I had my first sign that something might be wrong physically. Up till now, I'd actually been thinking about how good I felt. You know, we're having a great time, we're walking around all these places, enjoying great food and really just feeling fine.
Jim Santos:But that morning, as we're waiting for the bus, I suddenly had this tight feeling just under my solar plexus and broke out into a sweat, and I've kind of just made it to being able to tip our suitcases into the storage area and climb on the bus, sit back and try to relax a little bit.
Jim Santos:The pain got so bad that I groaned once or twice and I was just soaked with sweat for about an hour before it started to ease up. I actually thought about seeing a doctor, or do we have to go to a hospital? But you know, we're on a bus between Krakow and Warsaw, two big cities with just small towns in between, so it really wasn't a good place to just stop and let's get out here, you know. So it made sense to wait until we got to Warsaw. But by the time we stopped for a bathroom break about halfway I was really feeling okay, was able to get out, walk around a bit, even ate my lunch sandwich, and then, once we got in Warsaw, I felt like I was completely over. It figured it was just something I ate for breakfast or you know something. So anyway, warsaw, much nicer Airbnb this time, right, rita?
Rita Santos:Oh, it was perfect. It was in the historical district and it was typical of living in I don't know the 18th century or something. It was really sweet. It had its own courtyard.
Jim Santos:It was nice really sweet had its own courtyard. That was nice. Yeah, we had these big double wooden doors set into a stone wall where you know your carriage would come in and out, and that was where we entered the courtyard. There were trees and flowers in there. There was a small grocery store like two or three blocks away from us. You know we're only one block from the Madame Curie statue.
Rita Santos:And the beautiful park.
Jim Santos:Yeah, we had a beautiful view of the park with a fountain We'll get to more of that in a bit here and we had our own little town square. That was something I noticed about Warsaw. It seemed like every couple of blocks we'd found another square, right right With a market and restaurants and big, huge square. It was nice. Back and forth in the court there is really, really wonderful, and it was just a short walk from there down to the city gates and into Old Town proper there.
Rita Santos:Right.
Jim Santos:And once again, beautiful churches everywhere.
Rita Santos:Right.
Jim Santos:Yeah, and it was also very walkable.
Rita Santos:And they had the palace where the people actually collected money for years and rebuilt. Warsaw had mostly been rebuilt Right. It was really humbling to see that. I would hope that in the US, if something happened, that the people would rally around and do the same.
Jim Santos:Yeah, the one big palace right downtown there. I think the reconstruction on that didn't start until like 1983 or something.
Rita Santos:Right.
Jim Santos:And it was basically the people who decided they wanted to rebuild it.
Rita Santos:And provided all the money.
Jim Santos:Yeah, so that was all very impressive. We also found, I should mention, not just here, but in Krakow and a lot of the countries that we visited people were using an application called Bolt B-O-T-E much more than they were using Uber. Even where Uber was available, bolt tended to be cheaper. So having that Bolt app on your phone is very helpful if you're visiting these places.
Rita Santos:Right, because you don't have to negotiate a price. You can give them a tip on the app, so it's very simple.
Jim Santos:And there were a lot of them around. I don't think we ever had to wait very long ago.
Rita Santos:No, not at all. Yeah, a couple minutes.
Jim Santos:Yeah, even going to the bus station in the morning, we really had no trouble waiting for our boat ride.
Rita Santos:Right bus station in the morning we really had no trouble waiting for our boat ride right and we went to um the when and now.
Jim Santos:Well now, I think it's via, now via now okay vienna palace this is another. This is a palace kind of outside of the old town area beautiful grounds, a large palace gardens all around it. There was a lake there also where you could do canoeing and kayaking as well. And again, this was a place that was, you know, basically destroyed, or at least in great disrepair. But a couple of wealthy families decided to try to restore that, and again, contributions from the people that helped them to do that it was huge too, my goodness.
Jim Santos:I don't know how many acres that was, but they had an absolutely fabulous job with it yeah, we spent more than an hour, I'm sure, inside it right walking around and you could see where there were some sections where they were still working on renovating it, yeah, but it was really beautiful and we spent at least as much time walking around the Walking around and you could see where there were some sections where they were still working on renovating it Right. Yeah, but it was really beautiful. And then we spent at least as much time walking around the gardens and checking out the lake down there as well.
Rita Santos:Yes, yeah.
Jim Santos:And then another great restaurant before we took a boat back to our Airbnb there. It was kind of unusual because they were playing 50s music.
Rita Santos:Right American 50s music. Yeah, american 50s music.
Jim Santos:American 50s music. Yeah, seemed slightly out of place.
Rita Santos:It did and it was. It was kind of a formal restaurant. I mean I was like what is happening? It was good.
Jim Santos:Yeah, it's a nice enough restaurant. I felt a little underdressed going into it where you know, shorts and a shirt, but yeah, so you never know what you're going to find and when you're traveling, and that's that's really part of the fun of it.
Rita Santos:Right right.
Jim Santos:Now we mentioned that back at our Airbnb. We were over on a hill overlooking this big park that had huge fountains in it and this fountain is kind of well-known. It's a multimedia fountain park they always have. As soon as it gets dark there's like colored lights and things in the fountains, but in the main central fountain that has several different types of sprayers in it. They create a mist with the water and then they project a multimedia show onto that water. So I'm not explaining this well, but there's pictures again on the website and on our YouTube channel. There's some video of this and I'll put a link for that in the show notes. But we went down there I guess about an hour before sunset just walking around and looking, stopping for a beer in the park and watching kids playing in the water, just really relaxing, peaceful place and obviously a place where a lot of locals go to.
Rita Santos:Oh, yeah, yeah. And then we saw the ABBA Dancing Queen show with every ethnic group you can imagine and thousands of people. It was wonderful.
Jim Santos:It was amazingly crowded and it's a good thing that we live so close, Because at the time we got there we never would have found a spot if we had been trying to drive in and park or something.
Rita Santos:No, oh my gosh. I mean people were shoulder to shoulder.
Jim Santos:Yeah, we were up on a hill where we could see it well, but from us to the park everyone, the hillside was just covered with people.
Rita Santos:Oh, it was like a sea of people. It was amazing. Everybody dancing and having a good time.
Jim Santos:Yeah, it was a great show and you could also see I think they do these saturdays and sundays or friday and saturday night, something like that they only do it two nights a week yeah, but you could see that they set up several booths and things selling. You know balloons and light up dolls and you know snacks and things like that. So it's a big event that happens a couple times a week right and it's every age group participates.
Jim Santos:That's wonderful yeah, it was just a lot of fun to see. But you could, you could tell that families, uh, come there and put up a little picnic blanket hours before it's going to start to claim their little spot. Yeah, it was sweet and then just make an afternoon of it. So yeah, it was really nice and it was a nice little farewell to Warsaw to see that.
Rita Santos:Exactly.
Jim Santos:Well, from there then we were off by bus again to Vilnius, and we'll talk about this more in our next episode. But Vilnius was a place we hadn't really planned to see. It was just the bus from Warsaw to Riga in Latvia was going to take too long. So we thought, well, what's a place we can stop in the middle? Oh, here's Vilnius. It's the capital of Lithuania, which is about all we knew about it at the time. Which is about all we knew about it at the time. So we had an interesting time and just wonderful discoveries in Vilnius and, like I say, we'll talk about that. That'll have to wait for our next episode Before we go on.
Rita Santos:Rita, was there anything you wanted to add about Poland? No, I was pleasantly surprised how much we enjoyed it the countryside, the two wonderful cities it was great you actually wouldn't mind going back sometime and checking out Gdansk. Right, that would be great.
Jim Santos:And actually on the way to Vilnius we passed through kind of a lake community.
Rita Santos:Right.
Jim Santos:It's clearly an area where people go to enjoy the great outdoors. There's a bunch of lakes and canals, a lot of little, just little fishing, uh, shacks and things on on the water. Just really lovely country really, uh appreciated poland after that visit yeah, I agree all right, we'll be more in our next episode.
Jim Santos:Uh, we may take a week or two off again, as we're closing on our new home base and need to spend some time getting it ready to move in. And of course, then there's Thanksgiving weekend that might interrupt things. I also have the fun of scheduling a colonoscopy somewhere in there, so I get my Christmas goose early this year. But fear not, we'll be back to talk about the last two stops on our Eastern Europe travels Vilnius, lithuania, and Riga, latvia and we'll also have some interviews coming up, including one focusing on the more rural areas of Panama.
Jim Santos:You've been listening to Travels with Jim and Rita. If you'd like to read more about where we've been, see some photos of places you've been hearing about, check out our blog at jimsantosbookscom and our YouTube channel and Instagram for videos. Meanwhile, you can access my books, audiobooks and short stories at jimsantosnet, and there are links to those sites Instagram, youtube and all the rest in the show notes. We'd love to hear from our listeners as well, so if you have a question or a topic you'd like us to cover or you want to tell your own travel story, email us at jim at jimsantosbookscom. So until next time, remember we travel not to escape life, but so that life does not escape us.
