The original intent of Bruma Blog was twofold, first to keep family and friends informed as to our whereabouts and secondly to function as our travel diary. This second objective may explain the somewhat excessive use of photos and some particularly unique descriptions.  I’ve been asked however to include some other travel related experiences, tips and trivia to the blog. Therefore, l’d like to introduce “Road Ramble”. I’ll try to include Road Ramble at the end of some blogs and thrill you with completely unrelated, unorganized and random thoughts of our day to day motor-homing experiences. Margot tells me she has lots of them… and I know she’s anxious to share them. As for any “nuts and bolts” content regarding in-depth information on specific topics like “electronics”, I’ll prepare a specific blog sometime in the future to address such details.

Road Ramble #1 – No better way to start a ramble than with safety. Personal safety and security is always a concern for us as we travel about and we tend to be very cautious in handling ourselves as well as our cards, cash, and documents. So you can imagine how disappointingly surprised we were when I became the victim of a “Pick-Pocketer” at Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria. Waiting innocently in the rain for our tour to begin, we took shelter under an awning with a small group of tourist looking types. Taking a second closer look, I did notice a few guys in the pack that didn’t really fit the “Rick Steves” image of a tourist and instinctively put my hand inside my left pocket to cover my iPhone. Our tour completed and just as we were leaving I reached into my right pocket to pull out my change purse but it was gone! Having used it for a coffee purchase just prior to the start of our tour, I immediately new what had happened. Those socially defective, but talented thieves, were so fast and smooth I had no indication of being robbed…  and then they vanished like ghosts. Luckily for us it was only my small sized change purse containing cash-only that they got as we keep all  our high value items under much tighter “Money Belt” control. Never the less, they earned about a hundred dollars for their devilish deed that day and we got a relatively mild reminder of how important it is to be constantly diligent of potential opportunities for these professional crooks to exercise their skills.
After that experience maybe I’m the wrong guy to be giving advice on travel security but, what we have found works well is a good quality money belt for additional cash, credit card, drivers licence, passport and any important documents. For daily expenses we carry in our pockets a small change purse loaded with adequate cash to cover the basics for the day’s outing and that was usually between 50 and 100 Euros. Essentially, this “cash only” purse becomes a sacrificial target – in a pinch… so to speak. For all the other “stuff” we carry around, like iPhones and camera, the best security solution is a good travel vest or cargo pants with secure pockets that require some sort of physical manipulation to open. Like this fashion or not, you’ll probably see us wearing both of these stylish accessories in the future. 

As an interesting side note, we’ve discovered that cash is definitely the preferred method of local commerce and often the only method of payment, as credit cards are not accepted in many smaller establishments. We find ourselves therefore having to carry more cash then we normally would and not feeling very comfortable about that. Of the two cards we use, Visa is accepted most often and American Express is rarely accepted (Master Card also seems popular). Gas stations often accept credit cards but some of them only with a higher than cash fuel charge. Our bank cards at the ATM cash machines worked well with only minimal service charge at our own bank affiliated Euro banks. Other independent banks charged various amounts more for their service charges.