BERGEN, NORWAY—Two years of planning a year-long trip collapsed in a single sentence at a Volvo dealership in Gothenburg, Sweden.
It was August of 2011. We had just landed. My wife. My 10-year-old son. My 14-year-old daughter. The four of us had flown to Sweden to pick up a car and drive it across Europe for 12 months. Volvo’s European delivery program was the plan—buy the car stateside, fly to Gothenburg, visit the plant, drive it around the continent for 12 months, turn it in when you’re done. Simple. Except on day one, the Volvo people in Sweden informed us we could only have the car for six months. A slight detail the dealer back in Mississippi forgot to tell me.
Six months. That’s what we had. Two years of research, and now the whole thing had to be cut in half. I didn’t tell the kids.
I don’t know the exact psychology behind what triggers a memory—what trips the wire in whatever part of the brain stores all of that—but lately mine has had a hair trigger. I am in the middle of hosting 25 Americans on one of my Yonderlust Travel tours through the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. We crossed the Oresund Bridge—four miles across open water from Sweden before it dives into a tunnel and deposits you on the outskirts of Copenhagen—and it all came back.
August 2011. That Volvo. That family.
The original idea was born before my kids were. My thought was that one day, when I had children, we’d spend one month every July in a European country. Pick a spot, venture out from there, and in the 11 months before each trip, the kids would buy into the destination. Learn the language. Have themed dinners at home. Eat the food. We’d visit France one summer. Italy the next. Spain after that.
A Beatles Monopoly game changed everything.
The whole scene is still in my head. In my mind’s eye I can see where everyone was sitting when it happened. It was between Christmas and New Year’s. My son was eight. My daughter was 12. They had given me—a rabid Beatles fanatic—a Beatles-themed Monopoly game for Christmas. The four of us were sitting around the breakfast room table, laughing and having fun. I looked across the table at my daughter. She was in mid-laugh. And a thought hit me.
What if we didn’t do one country for a month for 12 years? What if we just did all 12 countries in 12 months?
My first instinct was I can’t do that. My second was, why not? From that point on, almost every night from 10 to midnight, I sat up in bed researching. For two full years. Places to visit. Places to stay. Restaurants to eat in. Transportation routes. I sold a piece of property to bankroll the journey. And every Wednesday for a year, I ate lunch with Dr. Milton Wheeler, a history professor who had hosted over 100 tours. His recall was remarkable. I took lengthy notes.
When I walked into the local Volvo dealership to set up the European delivery, they had no idea such a program existed. I explained it to them. It took about 45 minutes. They looked at me like I was making it up.
So, there we were in Gothenburg with a Volvo, a family of four, facing half the time I’d planned for. Two years of planning trashed in an instant. I edited the trip on the fly as we traveled. But never told the kids.
I had three rules for the trip. No television. No video games. No American fast food. I held firm on the first two, but what would have been Thanksgiving Day back in America—we were in Venice—I let them eat nachos and chicken strips at the Hard Rock Cafe. To be honest, I enjoyed a burger. And some nachos. And I might have ordered a second round before anyone noticed.
Months passed. We were headed north, getting close to our six-month deadline, about to make our way to Normandy, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Norway when I made a change in the daily route. The kids were baffled about why we weren’t going to Normandy—they knew it was one of the highlights I’d been looking forward to—and instead we drove back to Copenhagen. We found the same Asian fusion restaurant near Tivoli Gardens where we’d eaten during those first nights of the trip. I sat them down and gave them the news.
We’re going home tomorrow.
They were ecstatic. Six months in Europe and what they wanted was their own beds and better Wi-Fi.
My wife caught the moment in a photograph. Both kids kissing me. Overjoyed. I was grateful, too. For being able to do such a thing. For my family. For every one of those experiences.
Now I spend four months a year working over here. I’m constantly reminded of that trip—whether I’m hosting groups in Tuscany, southern Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, or Sicily. All countries I first visited with my family in 2011. On most trips, we follow the same path. Many times, we eat in the same restaurants I originally researched.
Norway, though, is different. It was on the original itinerary, but we never made it. This is one of the only times I’ve hosted a tour in a country I didn’t visit on that family trip.
There are people on this current Yonderlust trip who have traveled with me nine times. Several have five and seven trips under their belt. That kind of trust doesn’t go unnoticed.
I wouldn’t be doing any of this had we not taken that initial journey. This business—Yonderlust Travel—has grown to over 1,500 guests across more than 72 trips to Europe. I never set out to be a tour host. I’m a restaurateur. Still am. But for four months out of the year, I host Americans overseas, and all of it traces back to a family of four in a Volvo crossing the Oresund Bridge in the summer of 2011.
As I write this, I’m in Bergen, Norway. Day eight of this Scandinavian journey. Tomorrow, I’ll take my group 200 miles above the Arctic Circle to Tromsø to chase something I’ve had on my bucket list for decades—the aurora borealis. All indications say our timing is good. Fingers crossed.
My wife is back home tending to a family member’s medical situation. My son is working in a restaurant in Chicago. My daughter celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary yesterday.
So here I sit in a hotel room in Bergen, getting ready to head north, thinking about that bridge. About a nervous dad with a plan he wasn’t sure would work. About a family of four who had no idea what lay ahead.
Turns out, what lay ahead was the greatest thing I would ever do as a father. Maybe as a human being.
Some bridges get you to the other side. That one changed the direction of everything.
Onward.
