Zugunruhe

Have you ever heard this word before? I recently came across it and thought it perfectly summed up how I feel before a trip.

I am an Outlander fan. If any have you read some of the books you may have come across it. Diana Gabaldon is a fabulous writer and obviously does a lot of research. I recently read book 5 in the series- The Fiery Cross. I read this word and was curious.  Not surprisingly it wasn’t in the dictionary for my Kobo E-reader. So off to Google I went and It is now one of my favourite words. Although it can be difficult to find the perfect place to talk about it.

According to Wikipedia, It is a German word consisting of Zug (move, migration) and Unruhe (anxiety, restlessness). It is usually related to birds or animals before migration it affects their sleep patterns and activity after dark. To me, I take that as describing the anxious, restless behaviour in anticipation of travel or if it is has been far too long between our trips.

Being a night person with 1 week left until our trip that we have been planning for 9 months I am certainly starting to feel that way.

We are double checking our bookings, finalising packing and preparing the house to be away. There is a great podcast about preparing your home for holidays from an American I listen to, Kendra Hennesey of Mother like a Boss.

We are very excited about the trip but also worrying if we have organised everything. Have we forgotten to book anything, will we fit what we need into our bags? Have we paid the bills for while we are away, and did we forget to organise transport to the airport?

We have devised checklists and have a special email folder for all our bookings and jobs that need to happen before and while we are away. This helps to keep track of everything, especially for such a long trip with so many destinations. Our bags are almost packed, and we have a checklist for what is left.

One week from now we will be on our way and finally can relax and start to enjoy the holiday. Then the Zugunruhe will disappear for a while. Well at least until it is time to start planning the next trip.

Have you come across any other great words that we don’t have in English, but you feel perfectly describes how you feel about travelling or certain aspects of travelling.

My next post will be coming to you from somewhere on the other side of the world. Please let me know if there is anything you would like to hear about. Or any particular location you are looking forward to a post about.

Until next time

Happy travels