PLANNING FOR THE YEAR:
The premise of our year is that we will be living in twelve countries for one month each. The goal is not to be a tourist in each place but to discover how the local people live. What are their lives like? What do they eat? Where do you shop? What do they do with their free time?

I proposed this idea to my family with the carrot that each of us would pick a country that no one else could veto. I took a globe, set in front of our son and said “Choose any country from any continent that you would like to spend a month in and we’ll go there as part of our trip.” He was nine at the time and thought long and hard about it. He finally came up with Madagascar. Of course, the animated feature probably had a lot do with that decision but also I’m sure the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet contributed too.

My husband’s “can’t veto” choice was Scotland and mine was South Africa. Since we already went there often, hubby was not thrilled about spending more time there when there is more of the world to see. So my choosing, it guaranteed South Africa a spot on our itinerary.

Next we started looking at round-the-world tickets on Star Alliance and Oneworld. Almost immediately I discovered that *A has a mileage cap at 38,000. All of our different routings were coming out much more than that. So we decided to do the Oneworld six-continent RTW ticket. Unfortunately, this ticket has a maximum of 16 segments so we’d have to purchase all the little hop tickets separately.

Thank goodness both OW and *A have these great RTW booking applications now that help you figure out your routes. It was lots of fun to see what our options were from each city. I spent a good couple of weeks playing around with the routing until finally we had an itinerary.

Here’s the list of twelve countries that we came up with: Scotland, Turkey, South Africa, Madagascar, Thailand, Vietnam, India, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and Colombia. The list seemed massive.

In addition to the twelve countries, we also wanted to complete our tour of all the Disney parks in the world. Not only am I a travel geek, I’m a Disney geek. We had already been to all the parks in the USA and the two in Paris so sought out to visit the rest of the parks as we made our way around the world.

Also my son and I really wanted to fly on the A380 so we found a Qantas flight SIN-SYD which then required us to add on a stop in Singapore. But that would work out because Universal Studios just opened a new park there. BONUS!

The final question was do we go first or business. Since the wonderful mileage promotions of my past seem to be gone forever, we would be paying for these tickets with cold, hard cash. There is no way my husband would have EVER agreed to this year of travel if I told him we were in coach. So it would be at least business.

The problem is that on about half our flights, first class wasn’t offered. So we’d be paying for first and flying business anyway. So I decided that it wasn’t worth the extra $5000/person. This was met with frowns by my family. I’ve created monsters. When your 4’ 3” kid complains about American’s tilted business class seats, you know you’ve made a mistake somewhere.

Right about this time, my friends at the Oneworld Alliance were celebrating their 10th anniversary and were offering 10% off all RTW tickets! BINGO! Time to ticket.
We were living in Munich at the time and it took THREE trips to the airport to get it ticketed. The BA staff at MUC worked hard to make it happen. On the third trip, the agent finally got the tickets to pop out but they said a baggage allowance of only 1 piece! I was leaving on a LH flight and couldn’t wait around to get it changed. I had allowed two extra hours to get it ticketed. But I really wanted a ticket that said the correct THREE PIECES. She promised to get it fixed. So I went to the other terminal for my flight. About twenty minutes before my flight left, she called me on my mobile and said she’d meet me at my gate with the correct ticket. I was very impressed with this level of service.

Of course, I had to book a bunch of extra “short-hop” flights to get us exactly where we wanted to live in each country. Not surprisingly there isn’t a direct flight from Mahajanga, Madagascar to Krabi, Thailand. The problem was on these short flights, the baggage allowance was often 20kg. Ouch! That was going to be hard if not impossible.

Meanwhile we began booking vacation rentals for each of our months. This trip would have been a different experience in a pre-Internet age. Luckily we found some great places that at least looked good on the websites.

The hardest part of the planning was packing. We had a full house in Munich and somehow had to synthesize our belongings down to SIX bags (up to 23kg each) plus three small backpacks. These numbers seemed manageable with our countless transfers. That would mean that we each get one bag for clothes. Most of our countries would be warm so we’d only need shorts and t-shirts. Then we’d need a bag for our son’s schoolbooks and toys. Another bag would be dedicated to toiletries and electronics. The final bag was totally a luxury: bedding. At 45 years of age, I like my 1000 thread count sheets. And my pillow. And my body pillow. Don’t judge me. If I’m going on a three-week vacation, I can “make do”. But for a year, I need my bedding. Originally, my plan was to also bring some kitchen stuff like spices, knives, a nice fry plan… But when I packed and our bags were well over 120kg, the kitchen stuff all came out.

We would be home schooling our son Corbin during the year of travel. More than one German questioned if what we were doing was legal! It is illegal to home school in Germany. Since both my husband and I are teachers, we looked forward to the challenge of creating a meaningful educational experience for Corbin. Using the California curriculum as a guide, we have blended those concepts with local activities to create a rich framework for him. Our expectation is that we would encounter things along the way that would drive the learning. Thus “Fifth Grade Around The World” was born. We had decided that it would be fun to work with other fifth grade classes. Corbin could interact with them, be their “on the scene “ reporter. Think iReports for fifth graders.

So on June 30, 2010, we said goodbye to our beautiful home on Lake Starnberg and spent our last night in Munich at the Mandarin Oriental. You can read my full trip report here on Flyertalk. Needless to say, it was a wonderful hotel and a perfect ending to our two years in Munich.

Let the adventure begin.

Note: Photos of the entire trip can be found at our website: http://fifthgradearoundtheworld.com
Then click on Carl’s blog to see all my photos.