How planning a trip is like a lion tracking a gazelle

You know, there are times during all of this posting and planning where I must sound pretty neurotic. Fact is, sure I have my anxious moments, but for the most part I feel all right about all this Euro-planning stuff. A little nervous at times, sure, but ultimately confident that all will be worked out well.

And the Eurail Blog? A chance to pretty much put an open conduit from my head to you. Hopefully you’re finding something useful, something to think about, do (or not do!) or put to use when planning your own trip.
For me, all this mental ranting and rendering is actually how I come at a problem or challenge. I don’t usually write it all down though; that part’s new. Figuring out a solution to something—a website, this trip, just about anything really—for me usually entails kicking around lots of things, looking at different angles, pondering. I think of it as a predator circling his prey, worrying it. (It’s a goofy image, granted, fueled by a little too much Discovery Channel in my youth. But hey, a fella’s entitled to some macho identification with lions prowling on the serengeti, right?)
The solution will come. I’ll figure out a route. The best part of all this fun just isn’t usually the destination, but the journey, not always the solution, but the process. E.g., I’m a literary geek; I love Shakespeare. Not for the endings—you generally know what’s going to happen—but for the wild ride getting there.
And for me, all this out-loud wondering about routes and where to go’s and this city over that one and this country here or in or out altogether, is just a big, damn, fun ride.
I’m grinning way too much for my own good over all this.
Time for more hot water… though I could also just be full of hot air.
The gazelle is soon to trip; the route is coming together; soon it will be time for that Belgian beer in Belgium.
Oh yes it will.