She took her first trip abroad at the age of seven months, to Vienna.
In the last 11 months, Katia has traveled to 18 countries, from the Faroe Islands and Iceland to Albania, reaching many thousands of kilometers away from its starting point, Thessaloniki. It has risen to the remote village of Piondao in Portugal, where it even raised a fever in an area without even a pharmacy. She has stood in front of the Svartifos waterfall in Iceland, laughing at the water suddenly splashing in her face, and she has made it all the way to Sørvágsvatn lake in the Faroe Islands, which appears to float above the Atlantic Ocean as it stretches over the edge of a cliff. She has tried local specialties and hugged people who didn’t speak her language in different corners of Europe and used every possible means of transport: plane, train and ship, cable car, tram in Lisbon and boat in Porto. Most likely, however, her favorite means of transport is the …marsip.
And that’s because Katia he is only 18 months old! She made her first trip abroad at the age of seven months, in Vienna, and this autumn it is possible that she will also make her maiden transatlantic trip, to the USA (New York) and Canada. Her parents, Georgia and Panos, both economists in the private sector and members of the millennial generation, are avid travelers, with a preference for trips that you can’t easily buy from a travel agency.
However, as her mother Georgia Venizelou observes, speaking to APE-MPE, “glaciers and volcanoes in Iceland, colorful palaces in India, ancient cities in Jordan, forgotten temples in Cambodia, sunsets in oases in Peru, hikes in Tierra del Fuego and so much more, seem insignificant in front of the experience of the arrival of a child… Katia came into our lives as the greatest gift, in January 2021… This did not mean for us that our love for her would be a brake on continuing to we know the world. On the contrary, our love for her made us want to be a group of three.”
Adaptive …from cradle
Thus, after the lifting of restrictive measures due to the pandemic, Katia became the third member of the group and traveled to Austria, Portugal, Italy, France, Monaco, Holland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Hungary, Bulgaria, Skopje, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia and Germany. The last “road trip” of the three of them was a route of 4500 kilometers on the Dalmatian coast and the western Balkans. As Georgia observes, the little girl has already begun to acquire the first characteristics of a traveler. In relation to her first trip abroad, 11 months ago, she has become much more adaptable, tolerant of discomfort and receptive to trying new tastes.
“Katia looks happy when she travels and, as she grows, we see how much she enjoys being in new destinations and meeting children from other parts of the world. They may speak other languages and not understand each other – anyway at these ages the words they know are few – so they communicate by hugging and touching each other or exchanging toys. At these ages, the child may not yet express himself in many words, but he is very expressive in his feelings and when you see him playing happily, for example, on the sand in Sicily or jumping in a cable car with a panoramic view of a city, you get the sense that he might not quite understand what he’s seeing, but he’s having a good time. At the Svartifos waterfall she was so happy to see the water rushing down! In Feroa, she was impressed by these strange birds, the puffins (Atlantic puffins), which she had seen up close only as stuffed animals” says Georgia Venizelou and urges more parents to travel with their babies.
Exciting, but not always easy
Practically, how easy is it to travel with an infant? According to Georgia Venizelou, such a trip has several difficulties, but with very good organization and preparation, with good cooperation between parents and positive psychology, even the unexpected can be dealt with, without spoiling the mood of the travelers. A child has basic needs, for example, sleep and food, which you cannot neglect and therefore you must be ready to face them. He can get restless and resentful on a long flight or road trip, so you need to have the means to keep him occupied. Also, a child may need a diaper change …in the middle of nowhere. In flight responses, parents may need to carry the necessary equipment to create a makeshift rest or sleeping area within the airport. In addition, many restaurants do not have high chairs and many accommodations do not have cots, deficiencies that may seem simple, but are found in about 30% of trips and an equal percentage of infrastructure, which creates problems or even budget overruns.
“Of course, the most complex problems are those related to health. That is why before every trip parents need to do very careful research on the health system, hospitals and health centers in the areas they are visiting, consider an international health card and, in addition, keep calm and prepare a medicine “kit”, in collaboration with the pediatrician. Also, it is good to prefer traveling to developed countries, where the health systems are organized. Katia happened to fall and hit, luckily not seriously. In the remote village of Piondao in Portugal, she developed a fever and there was no pharmacy anywhere nearby, so luckily we had the “kit” prepared by the pediatrician with us. I believe that if you are very organized, very well prepared and careful and don’t go with fear, whatever comes up, you will solve it” he estimates.
He closes our discussion with a wish: “that the arrival of a child should not be an obstacle to someone living his life as he has dreamed of it. I read somewhere that we parents are not “servants” of children… They are not our “slaves” either… We are fellow travelers on the journey of life” he concludes.
RES-EMP
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