Notes on Learning a Few Words
I packed too much, as usual, and wore the same jacket every day. I changed my mind about mountain villages twice while writing this.
Before and after
The best advice I got was simply to slow down. Looking back, the windswept approach was the right call. I would rather do one thing with care than five things quickly.
What changed
Between travelling by train and packing light, the second one taught me more. Half of the work is deciding what to leave out. There is a version of this that is much more complicated. This is not that version. The slow part is rarely the hard part; consistency is. Nobody spoke much English, and somehow that made it easier.
I changed my mind about guesthouses twice while writing this. The details matter less than the practice of paying attention. The ferry crossing took four hours and felt like ten minutes.
This is less a guide and more a record of what worked for me. Every spring I revisit the same questions about old maps. The trick, if there is one, is to leave plenty of room for errors. Most problems with little islands turn out to be problems with time.