modern complications

What is it with our modern, urban, monetary world and the seemingly unavoidable generation of red tape?

I’m trying to organise going travelling in the EU. I have an EU passport, so this shouldn’t be complicated. After all, I have no visa applications to contend with.

But as I’m planning to take a road trip, the red tape has not only mutliplied, it’s formed itself into myriad hoops. The vehicle must be documented, serviced, taxed, insured for every country I may pass through, and I need vignettes for about half the countries on the trip as well. The vehicle just about needs its own passport, given the documentation I have to take – originals and copies.

And it needs its own little kit of spares and tools and items “just in case.”

You’d think it would be simple. It sounds simple – ride from here to there and back again. No hire companies or third parties involved, so how complicated can it be?

There’s the logistics, of course. It would be so easy just to let the road take me where it will, and just ad lib the food and shelter. No go. At various points, accommodation must be pre-booked, pre-authorised, pre-paid and re-confirmed with a mile-long email chain I must (naturally) print and take with me.

The more we correspond instantly, globally and effectively, it seems, the more of a papertrail we generate. The forests must be petrified, watching our merry paper-fuelled antics.

I’ll be surprised if I have any space for clothes once I’ve packed all the documentation and legally required information and extras. I bought pocket-sized phrase books to help me out (and prevent the kind of unwitting offence I’m otherwise likely to cause), but at this rate they’ll stay home because it’ll be them or underwear.