Exploring the rubbish bins and garbage trucks of Vienna - a new perspective on travel

I knew that this trip to Europe would be quite different to any other trip I've made there - I've never had a three-year-old in tow before and if you happen to know any three-year-olds you will know that they are quite a unique species. Curious (about particular things they want to be curious about), independent (especially about things they are not quite able to do themselves) and anxious not to be left out of things (in other words, don't want to sleep when their parents think they should).

Fortunately, I have managed to raise a particularly nice one who looks like he has the same love of travel as me. I'm very pleased about that! However, he also has a love of something else: all things related to waste disposal. Rubbish bins (or garbage cans, depending on what kind of English you speak) and the trucks that empty them are highest on his agenda of things he loves (after Mum).

Before we left for Europe, I must admit I had promised him we would see all different kinds of rubbish bins on our trip. We have lots of German books about rubbish and they feature all the different and innovative recycling that Germany does (some of which we haven't quite caught on to yet). Maria, one of the friends we went to stay with in Ireland, even indulged his love of rubbish by writing a blog post especially for him about the rubbish bins on the tiny island of Inis Meain.

Aida Cafe in Vienna with the gorgeous Stephansdom in the background

Yet somehow I still wasn't quite prepared for the intensity of our rubbish bin and garbage truck experiences in Europe. It started on the first proper day of our trip, which involved just my son and I heading in to the centre of Vienna. I had in mind showing him the enormous cathedral of Stephansdom (no, I wasn't expecting a three-year-old to be interested in a cathedral, but I thought the size and the pretty pattern on the roof might entice him) and then keeping his interest with some cake from the famous pink Aida store on the nearby corner.

Alas, something else was in store for me. We emerged from the U-Bahn into Stephansplatz, arguably one of my favourite spots in Vienna, and can you guess what my son spotted immediately? A garbage truck doing the rounds, emptying the CBD of rubbish. It was reasonably early in the morning and Vienna wasn't too crowded yet, so he persuaded me to follow the truck. I'm sure it looked quite odd - a woman and a child in a stroller who kept stopping every time the truck stopped - but my son was thrilled to see a genuine Austrian "back loader" rubbish truck in action. The ones we see here are "side loaders" - operated all from inside the truck - so being able to see the rubbish man pull the bins over to the truck and hook them on thrilled him. I later made a mistake of summarising the day by talking about the man pushing the button to empty the bin - my son corrected me immediately by telling me that he didn't push a button, but pull a lever instead. You can see who was watching more closely. Every now and then, another rubbish truck crossed our path, but this one was collected glass bottles only and my son deemed the noise of all that glass falling into the truck too noisy for his liking (thankfully).

A garbage truck in central Vienna

Anyway, this garbage theme continued throughout our trip. In fact, I'd estimate that 10% of my photographs feature bins and rubbish trucks. Bus, train and car rides tended to go remarkably smoothly because my son could stare out the window and search for new bins, although for this reason he was most upset about using Autobahns and other highways because they were lacking in places to dispose of your garbage.

But of course you probably don't want to hear all about the garbage trucks of Europe. So let me get to my travel-related point. What this taught me - or reminded me, perhaps - was that every single person has a uniquely different perspective on travel. You can take one thousand people to the centre of Vienna and each one will remember it in an entirely different way.

In turn, this reminds me not to be too judgemental about other people's travel experiences. Heading to Bali (from here, just three hours and a few hundred dollars) to enjoy cheap cocktails by the pool is not my idea of what travelling should be about, but for other people, that's just what they want. Joining a whirlwind bus tour of Europe isn't my idea of fun, but other people have a different perspective on that and will enjoy it. Everybody's expectations of travel are different and the ways people like to travel are different.

Viennese rubbish man; Viennese pastry

And thank goodness for that, because otherwise the centre of Vienna would have been overrun with travellers hell bent on following the local rubbish truck around with us. It may have continued all day but eventually the friendly rubbish man turned to us, waved, the truck drove off into the far distance, and my son allowed me to take him for a piece of cake after all.

Why I'm not cut out to be a typical modern-day travel blogger

I've just come back from a month overseas. A great month overseas, in fact, spanning six countries and seeing numerous family members and dear friends. And a month in which I took hundreds of photos.

But if you look at this blog, or at my Facebook page or Twitter profile or even on Instagram, one of my favourite social media toys of late, you wouldn't know it. In fact you'd be more likely to think I'd been hit by a bus.

And this is why I am definitely not cut out to be the typical modern-day travel blogger. You know, the ones who regularly post about their current location and keep everyone up-to-date with their movements around the globe. Not that there's anything wrong with that in the slightest, and I love following people who do this, but it's not for me.

It started out as part of my general social media caution and the simple thing of not wanting to advertise that my home back in Perth was currently empty. I'm not sure why this bothers me so much (but it's the same reason that I rarely post about my location on Facebook when I am home in Perth but out and about somewhere), but it's just how I am. In fact, if a burglar did want to target my house I'd probably prefer they did it while I was travelling because most of our precious things are with us then!

But beyond that caution, I have to admit I really just like to be able to focus on the here and now of travel. My long backpacking years all took place before mobile internet was a reality and so I'm used to being somewhat disconnected while I'm on the road. I do appreciate now the ease of using WiFi and my smartphone to be able to check up on emails and Facebook while I'm travelling and I did look at both regularly, but I didn't feel the need to get too engaged with it and I loved having this break. My mother got regular emails (and I did like the fact that using a smartphone and WiFi meant I could easily send her photos of what we were up to) and I occasionally commented on Facebook statuses, but I didn't post anything myself (and therefore didn't need to "talk back" to anyone who interacted with me on my own posts)

I'm absolutely certain this is not recommended travel blogging practice. But it's the way I like to do things. I've got lots of stories and thoughts to share resulting from this trip and I'll be getting these together over the next couple of months. I know already that I'll really savour that process, which will be a bit like reliving my trip again, and the posts that come out of it will be far superior to what I would have put together in the limited free moments I had during my trip. And I think for my particular kind of travel blog, where it's not so much about the destination as the experience, then letting my experiences mature a bit in my mind will actually make what you read better. So, apologies for the break in transmission, and stay tuned for some tales of new lessons learnt in life abroad. As always, there were plenty. Watch this space!

On making my first proper snowman, in Bratislava

Did you know that you can't make a snowman with just any old snow?

Some of you will laugh out loud at this question, but there will be some, like me a few years ago, who will say: Really?

I grew up in Western Australia; we don't do snow, ever, and I didn't see it fall until the age of 25. I then spent a few years in Japan and Europe trying to make good snowmen, but then my lovely Slovak friend Zitka, who lived just across the road from me in Bratislava, explained to me that you need a certain type of fresh snow to be able to roll up one of those cartoon-style, two-big-snowball type of snowmen.

And then we waited for the right snow. That Bratislavan winter would bring quite a bit of snow, but every time we had fresh snow I would either text Zitka to ask or she'd get in first and tell me that this snow wasn't the right snow. She tried to explain that we needed fresh snow that rolled up and stuck together properly. It was completely new to me that this would only happen on occasion, because given that my main experience of snow was through television, I'd seen plenty of examples of kids playing outside with their mittens and hats and rolling snowballs quickly into giant body parts for snowmen.

My snowman in Komarno, Slovakia

I had a fleeting glimpse of the "right snow" in Komarno, down on the Slovak border with Hungary, and I managed to put together a decent rendition of a snowman. Isn't he cute? But you can see there wasn't that much snow on the ground and it wasn't the classic roll-him-up snowman I was craving.

Snow in Bratislava

So we kept waiting. It seemed to go on through most of winter and then suddenly one day Zitka told me that this was the day - this was the right snow. Coat and gloves went on in a dreadful hurry and I raced down the steps of my apartment building to meet Zitka outside. We rolled small snowballs into huge snowballs to create a snowman; we rolled small snowballs into medium-sized ones to throw at each other. And she was right about the "right" snow. It was totally different to any snow I'd had the chance to play with before. (Go on, all you snow-dwellers - I know you want to laugh at me again!)


We had so much fun that we even forgot to take photos - all that exists is this terribly blurry photo that someone took of the two of us, snowballs in hand. The rest of that week was a flurry of snowy activity for me, enjoying the best snow I'd seen so far in my life. And ever since, whenever I'm in snow, I'm quick to do the rolling test to see if Zitka would tell that this was the right snow for making a snowman, and I doubt I will ever see snow again without thinking of this day. Ah, the things you learn!

Where is Yuko? Can we find my long-lost Japanese friend?

I made some very dear friends when I lived in Japan, and I'm still in touch with quite a few of them, even though it'll be ten years ago this July that I left Osaka. It's been wonderful (though scary) to see the kids I taught turn into teenagers, the young women I taught marry and become mothers, and to see where the older students have been on their annual trips (often to English-speaking countries, of course!).

But the most delightful person I met in Japan was a girl named Yuko. She was one of the first students I met and to this day I remember what she said in her first lesson with me. We were practising using the future tense and I'd asked them all to write down predictions about what they'd be doing in some future years.

Yuko was the first to read from her list, and her final prediction, almost 50 years into the future, has always stayed with me. “In 2050, I will walk down the street with my grandchildren.” It was simple, but beautiful, and such a lovely goal to have. The other students were talking about crazy stuff like living on the moon or being Prime Minister, but Yuko pictured a stroll in the neighbourhood with her grandkids.

Yuko and I quickly became friends, and she was the first person to introduce me to okonomiyaki, one of my favourite Japanese foods; she fuelled my new love for karaoke and we celebrated her birthday one year by meeting for karaoke at ten in the morning; she took me fishing, she showed me Kobe, and above all, we talked and laughed non-stop.

Karaoke fun: Yuko's on the left

But here's the problem: I have lost Yuko. She moved house twice quite quickly after I left Japan; she changed her email address a couple of times as she moved and then within a few years, I couldn't get a reply from any of the emails I had from her or the physical addresses either. I have thought of her so much over the years and would so dearly love to get back in contact with her. So I wondered if the internet could help me find her.

Here's what I know:
Name: Yuko Yoshino (she married Hiro just before I left Japan - her maiden name was Murakami) (and yes, Yuko Yoshino is such a common name that I actually had another student in my school with the same name!)
Age: If I remember rightly, she was just one or two years older than me; so in her mid/late 30s now!
Family: she had a daughter named Anzu, who was born in March 2005. And a husband named Hiro, who last I heard was working in roofing.
Place: she was living close to Hyotanyama in Higashi-Osaka
Profession: I know she hoped to return to work as a dental assistant when her daughter started kindergarten.

Yuko and her now-husband Hiro on a hot day in the sunflowers

Can you help me find Yuko? Please?

Art galleries and kids: Starting them young

Art galleries and me haven't always been the best of friends. Last year I blogged about how I'd learnt to love art galleries - a process of time, maturity, and most especially, having an art expert as a travel companion (but thankfully, not the kind of art expert who drones on and on - rather, one who tells you just a couple of important things which help you see the art in an entirely new way).

Now that I really appreciate the art that I can see when I visit different countries, I'm determined to make sure my little boy can enjoy it right from the start, rather than following my path. He loves to draw and paint, which is a great start, and one of his favourite books for a long time now has been the story of Miffy going to the art gallery. All good so far.

Perhaps a year ago - I guess he would have been not quite two - I took him for his first visit to the Art Gallery of Western Australia. It's got quite a few interesting permanent collections (and in recent times some really fantastic visiting exhibitions in conjunction with New York's MoMA) and I took my little boy for a stroll through some of the galleries.

He liked to talk about the colours, and some of the shapes, but then something stopped him in his tracks: the painting you can see in the postcard above. It's a painting by Guy Grey-Smith called Skull Springs Country, painted in the 1960s, and I probably wouldn't have paid it much attention - but my son decided it looked like a rubbish truck. (Or garbage truck, for my American readers.) He has a particular obsession with rubbish trucks, so once he decided this painting looked like one, he wanted to stay all day. After quite some time he let me lead him away to other parts of the gallery, but we had to return twice more to see "his" painting. I was quite relieved when I found a postcard of it in the shop to take home (and you can see from the photo that it's been a much-loved postcard).

So this gallery experience was a good start. When we spend a couple of days in Vienna later this year, I'm very much hoping to take him to Hundertwasser's main gallery, Kunst Haus Wien, both because it's easily one of my favourite galleries and because the colourful and fun nature of Hundertwasser's work, not to mention the bizarre rolling floor of the gallery, should entertain him very well. And in the coming years I hope that he'll really enjoy visiting all kinds of art galleries on our travels. That's the plan, anyway.

Exploring my "privileged places" and how Vienna's stations confused me

I'm a big fan of Gretchen Rubin who writes and researches about happiness (what a lovely job!) and in her newest book Happier at Home a passage she quoted from historian Mircea Eliade really struck me. It's about what he names "privileged places":

a man's birthplace, or the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the 'holy places' of his private universe.

A lovely idea, right (assuming you can get past the sexist language of his time!). It got me thinking about my "privileged places". My birthplace, Perth, will always be an important place for me - especially as I now live here again - but I think some of the other kinds of "privileged places" that Eliade describes are even more significant.

Perth by night, from Kings Park, with full credit to my clever husband

My romance with Berlin

One of my earliest special spots has to be Berlin. Being in Berlin as an impressionable 14-year-old at the exact moment of reunification of East and West Germany, standing at the Brandenburg Gate with a local family - that set the scene for many travel yearnings and a lot of thinking over the years. I have been back to Berlin probably half a dozen times since, and it is still a place I want to return to again and again. It's one of those cities where you could always find something new to do, and it's continued to be the scene of special moments - for example, my last visit to Berlin was with my husband just after we were married, and we had to visit the Australian Embassy to apply for his visa to move with me to Australia. It was nerve-wracking (we'd banked everything on him getting it in as short a time as possible) but Berlin came through for us.

My ties to Osaka

I guess because Osaka was the overseas city I lived in, and because I truly adored the two years I spent there, it is very high up on my list of "privileged places". I have only returned once so far, and that was just a short time after I'd moved away, so I'm starting to get a little nervous about the return I have to have. Will it live up to my expectations? And the description I've given of it to my husband and son? I fear that it's the kind of city that grows on you, that you love because you live there and know where the funny little man is with the delicious takoyaki snacks or you know exactly how to use the ticket machines at the station; that if you visit just for a week or two that it might seem just like a grey, smoggy city, punctuated with occasional patches of temple or park beauty. I'll have to wait and see.

Umeda Sky Building in Osaka

Sentimental for Bratislava and Vienna

I only lived in Bratislava for a year, but because I then stayed on in Europe for a few years more, I managed to return quite a few times, and I'm scheduled to go back again in a couple of months. I have to lump it together with Vienna because any return visit to Bratislava inevitably involves a stay in Vienna too, since they're so close, and I love them both.

But last week I was trying to figure out some travel arrangements and I started to fear that the "privileged place" feeling I reserve for Vienna is coming undone. I've long felt it's a city I knew well, despite never living there, but when I hopped online to check train times for a transit from Vienna to Bratislava, I got myself in quite a tangle. I was sure I'd always left Vienna from Südbahnhof (South Train Station) to head to Bratislava's Hlavne Stanice (Main Station). But search as I might, I couldn't find a connection and something called Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna Main Station) kept popping up. What is Wien Hauptbahnhof, I wondered. It took a question to a friend over there before I understood - Vienna is changing, and the Südbahnhof was actually demolished recently to make way for a new Hauptbahnhof, and that's where I'll need to catch my train to Bratislava from.

Stephansdom in Vienna

That kind of change (and the confusion that comes with it) is what scares me about returning to "privileged places". I hope I'll always love those cities; I hope I can deal with the changes they have undergone over the years.

Where are your "privileged places"?

The ever-changing landscape on the Trans-Siberian train

The forest begins on the Trans-Siberian route

I recently re-read some of Paul Theroux's travel narratives in preparation for the travel writing course I ran, and picked out what I considered a "beautiful" passage about his journey on the Trans-Siberian:

The experience of the Trans-Siberian Express is both monotony and monkish beauty: all day outside the loud, hurrying train it is birch trees and undulant hills, and after the utter blackness of night on that line, you see more birch trees and undulant hills; and all that day too, until it seems more like wallpaper than a landscape - the kind of wallpaper that is so simple and repetitious that you look at the seams rather than the design.

The writing is fantastic, I think, and that's why we talked about it in class, but the other thing that struck me about this passage is that I totally disagree. I was amazed at just how much the landscape changed as I stared out the window crossing Russia.

Trackside village on the Trans-Siberian route

Every photo in this post was taken within just a few hours, on the stretch out of Vladivostok heading west. There is no sameness here, and I didn't experience sameness at any stage during my seven days on the train.

River alongside the Trans-Siberian route

One of the students at my course had a very interesting suggestion to make: perhaps for other travellers who've spent a lot of time riding trains through Europe or somewhere more populated and varying, the Trans-Siberian route may look all a bit the same. For others, like us Australians for example, who are used to travelling across places like the Nullarbor Plain which holds various records for the longest pieces of straight roads and straight train tracks, then the more varying countryside across Russia seems more interesting.

Rolling hills near the Trans-Siberian route

What do you think?

Kansai versus Kanto, or why there's more to Japan than Tokyo

This week I heard from two entirely separate people that they're heading off soon for a Japanese holiday, but both of them were destined for Tokyo and not sure if they'd go far beyond it. Of course you will, I cried! You're missing the best parts otherwise!

And so I was prompted to write this blog post to try to persuade them further. Tokyo and Osaka, the second main city of Japan, have a fierce rivalry, similar to Sydney and Melbourne here in Australia, I guess. A quick spot of geography: Tokyo falls in the Kanto region, and Osaka in the Kansai region - both similar-sized areas taking in a few surrounding prefectures.

When I was moving to Japan, the company I was going to work for offered me just two choices for my new home: Tokyo or Osaka. Without a moment's hesitation I picked Osaka. I think I've always wanted to pick the road less travelled, although with some 22 million people in the Kansai area (the whole of Australia!) it's hardly a barely travelled road. But you get my drift. Anyway, I was really glad I picked Kansai. I visited Tokyo and the Kanto region a couple of times, and it was great too, but I think for volume of amazing places packed into a relatively small area, Kansai wins. So here are a few of my favourite Kansai attractions:

1. Amazing food (and giant crabs)

My father with Namba's famous crab - in central Osaka

I think every Japanese person in every part of Japan will tell you that their local speciality is the best food (and in a sense, they're all correct - every Japanese food is amazing!) but the sheer weight of my personal favourites means Osaka wins. Okonomiyaki - need I say more? I can - takoyaki are from Osaka as well - describing them as deep-fried octopus balls doesn't quite do their deliciousness justice.

2. Kyoto's temples and shrines. Nara's temples and shrines. SO MANY temples and shrines.

Kinkakuji - the Golden Temple - Kyoto

It's true that there are temples all over Japan. But I truly believe that the selection dished up in Kansai beat the rest. There is Kyoto's Kinkakuji (pictured above) - the Golden Temple. (Named so for rather obvious reasons). There is Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto, on top of the hill, and scenic both by day and night. There's the Fushimi Inari Shrine - so orange and so incredible that it deserves its own photo (see below). There's Nara's massive Todaiji in Nara Park, home to the world's largest bronze Buddha statue. And that's just scratching the surface.

Fushimi Inari shrine

3. Kobe - rebuilt after the 1995 earthquake

Kobe is just a short train trip from Osaka (less than an hour) and I used to visit regularly. It was quite different from Osaka, Nara or Kyoto, largely because much of it had been rebuilt after the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995. This made it more modern and an interesting contrast; I also was moved every time I visited the earthquake memorial, a part of the harbour which they'd left unrepaired.

Great Hanshin Earthquake Memorial in Kobe

At Christmas time Kobe is home to Luminarie - an amazing festival of lights, particularly amazing for a country that doesn't really celebrate Christmas!

4. Monkeys in Kyoto and deer in Nara

Cute animals definitely give bonus points, right? In Kyoto I often climbed up Arashiyama to interact with the monkeys at the top; I lived close enough to Nara Park to cycle there and see the deer. I once met a man who was involved in taking care of the Nara Park deer - they're considered sacred - and he made me appreciate them even more.

A monkey on Arashiyama in Kyoto

5. USJ ... Universal Studios Japan

Meeting Jaws at USJ - Universal Studios Japan

Forget Tokyo Disneyland. (Okay, don't forget it entirely, it's pretty cool too. But you don't need it.) Osaka has Universal Studies. It had just opened when I first moved to Osaka and it was the talk of the town. And it really is a wonderful day of fantasy.

6. Osaka Castle and more importantly, Osaka Castle Park

Osaka Castle mid-cherry blossom season. Be still my beating heart!

I rather like Osaka Castle itself. But I really love Osaka Castle Park - Osaka-jo-koen - where it's located. It's a huge green space in the middle of the city and home to all kinds of fun cultural activities, from sumo wrestling tournaments (get tickets if your trip coincides!) to being a very popular destination for cherry blossom picnics.

7. And there is more. MUCH more.

In nearby Mie prefecture, head to Akame- a spot with 48 waterfalls and the most delightful walk you'll ever find. The ginormous Himeji Castle is not that far west of Kobe. You can explore Lake Biwa and surrounds, the largest lake in Japan. From Osaka, it's a short shinkansen ride to Hiroshima, one of the most fascinating cities of Japan, and from there just a quick ferry trip to Miyajima, my favourite Japanese island. I could go on. But I hope I've made my point already.

PS There is even more great stuff in Japan - see my 25 things to do in Japan post for more proof.

Digital scrapbooking and recalling Japan a decade on

I'm a bit of a hoarder. (My mother will read this. She'll say I'm not just a bit of a hoarder ...)

In any case, I'm entirely too sentimental and I hate to throw anything away that reminds me of some fun or interesting thing that happened to me in the past. Of course, when it's travel-related it somehow becomes even more important and unable to be thrown away.

So, for ages (ever since I learnt such a thing could be done, so at least several years) I've been wanting to organise some of my collection of odds and ends from my travels into a digital format. Slowly in those barely existing "spare moments" over the last few months I've been starting to scan, photoshop, get creative and finally am producing some digital scrapbook pages for my travels.

Which is just as well because I arrived in Japan well over ten years ago. (Okay, in a few months it will be 12 years ago - and almost a decade ago that I left!!) Strangely enough my wonderful experiences there still feel as vivid as if they happened just last week, but the process of turning some of my bits and pieces into digital scrapbook pages has certainly brought it all even more back to life.

I'll probably divulge a few more of these pages over on my Not A Ballerina Facebook page in the coming months but I thought I'd show you the beginning:

You can see just what a hoarder I am. I still have the job ad for the teaching job that took me to Japan, and the autumn leaf you can see is a genuine, ten-year-old Japanese autumn leaf, collected in Kyoto. Even the pretty strip of flowers across the bottom is a scan of a scarf given to me as a gift by one of my students.

Can you match or beat my hoarding habits?

Let's go grab a camel (said a Tunisian man to me)

I have mentioned my experience with Tunisian camels before - the short version being, don't bet on a camel in a camel race because it's unlikely your camel will even run in the direction of the finishing line. Yes, that's a lesson I learnt at the Sahara Festival in Douz in the south of the country. A lesson I will never forget!

What I had forgotten, however, was a funny incident which I rediscovered while flicking through an old travel journal (in front of 26 course participants in my travel writing course, no less. I made a frantic mental note to blog about it and fortunately have remembered to do so).

Still in Douz, and with the focus very much on camels for the time of the festival, I was chatting with a man who worked at the hostel I stayed in. As you may expect, he didn't come across many Australians and was very keen to find out more about my home country. And in particular, about our camels.

We chatted about how it is indeed true that we have herds of wild camels just running wild in the northern half of the country. (What I've only just discovered, thanks to Wikipedia's Australian feral camel entry, is that we are apparently the only country in the world who have wild camels wandering the desert. No wonder this guy was so fascinated.) 

He checked with me about the "wild" bit: "So nobody owns them?"

I said, I guess not. I'd never given it much thought, of course. I'd seen camels up north and around Uluru but they weren't really something I came across in my daily Australian life.

"So anybody could just go out into the desert and take one?"

I'm pretty sure I would have stifled a giggle at this point, although my journal didn't mention it. "I guess so," I said. "We've got too many. Nobody would care if you took one."

And the Tunisian man was in awe of my country for a reason I had never even contemplated. And that's one of those things I love about travel: you meet people with such different perspectives that you start contemplating all kinds of strange stuff. However, I've decided I'm not about to dash out into the outback and grab a camel for our backyard, so don't worry. I suspect a camel wouldn't get along with my two cats.

Bus travel is NOT my favourite way to get around

I think it's well-documented that I love train travel. But what has featured a whole lot less on this blog is bus travel. There is a good reason for this. It's probably my least favourite way to get around, unless it's just a twenty-minute trip to a museum or somewhere.

Let me start with the exception, though, because it's always too general to say that I hate all bus travel (or anything, for that matter). Once, when I lived in Japan, I took an overnight bus trip from Osaka to Hiroshima. I was on a really tight budget (otherwise I would have taken the very speedy and comfortable shinkansen train instead) but a colleague had assured me that this bus was actually very comfortable.

They were right. It was amazing. It was a double decker bus and it was designed for and dedicated to overnight travel - there was a large gap between each seat and most importantly, the (comfortable) seats reclined nearly fully, a bit like a lie-flat seat in an aeroplane (or so I hear), and I was actually able to sleep well for most of the trip.

Of course, 99.9% of bus trips are not like that. I can name a couple of particularly horrid bus journeys I've had over the years. One was in Tunisia, returning from Hount Souz on Djerba to the capital, Tunis. I was actually planning to take the overnight train. I'd heard that tickets didn't go on sale until a particular time and I was ready and waiting at the ticket office at exactly that moment - only to be told that all the seats had already been sold. I never managed to figure out what went wrong but I did figure out that the only way back to Tunis was on a long night bus trip. The roads weren't great, I was exhausted, the bus was crowded, and after arriving at the bus station at Tunis at around 3.30am I had to sit and wait there until 6am for any transport into the city. I remember that day as being slightly torturous.

A ruin at Houmt Souq ... I felt like a ruin after my bus trip away from Houmt Souq

But worse was a bumpy bus ride I had in Vietnam, on the way from Hanoi out to Halong Bay. It was a fairly small bus and again the roads were far from ideal, but what really made it a shocking bus trip wasn't the fault of the bus as such - I'd picked up some kind of food poisoning and spent most of the trip trying not to vomit (but failed ... I won't go into the gory details). I was immensely relieved to get out on a boat that afternoon - fortunately I don't get any kind of seasickness and the fresh air out on the water of the bay was just what I needed.

These days, wherever possible and even if it costs more, I try to stick to trains over buses. I feel like I've "been there, done that" with bad bus trips and I don't need to repeat those experiences to remember how beautiful it is to travel in a train.

When people equate talking about travels to bragging or showing off

I've mentioned before that if I start a story with a sentence like "When I lived in Bratislava ..." that people sometimes have a giggle at me. Same goes for "When I was in Tunisia ..." or "When I was on the Trans-Siberian ..."

Me on the Trans-Siberian. Not bragging!

As far as I can figure (and some of this figuring out comes from asking the people who have done the giggling) a lot of people are uncomfortable hearing these kind of phrases. I think part of the fear is that the story to follow might involve a lot of bragging. I am definitely not trying to show off when I start a story like that. I just have a story to share and the setting is an important part of the context. It's just like someone else starting a story with "When I worked at KFC ..." or "When I was in high school ..."

But it's funny, isn't it, that people sometimes tease others for telling stories about their travels. There are occasionally people who really do "place-name drop", who mention a few cool cities or exotic countries with the intention of bragging a bit, but for most people they are just stories from our lives which we think have some relevance to the topic at hand.

I've been trying to figure out why people are reluctant to hear these stories about travel and sometimes react with discomfort when others start to tell them. Is part of it that the listener feels envious or inadequate? But if so, why, really? Shouldn't we be grateful for new and different perspectives? And shouldn't we do something about this reaction and go travelling ourselves - after all, for most people in the first world there are lots of excuses to not go travelling but very few legitimate reasons. This reluctance to listen to travel tales is surely a part of what makes returning travellers suffer with reverse culture shock (I know I did).

On the other hand, perhaps people have just been burnt too many times by travellers going into long, detailed, boring stories about what happened to them when they tried to flag down a taxi in New York or a bite-by-bite description of their meal in Paris. Like sitting through an unedited slideshow of someone's holiday snapshots, perhaps it's just a defence mechanism to avoid death by boredom.

Either way, I promise I'm not trying to show off when I mention some place I've been; and even though I talk a lot, and write copious long posts about my trips, I still try very hard not to say boring stuff when you meet me face to face.

Preparing a 3-year-old for travel with a playdough Brezel

Even though our trip to Germany (and other exciting parts of Europe) is still months away, knowing the nature of my little almost-three-year-old, I decided to get started on talking about the trip early.

He's the kind of kid who loves routine over change but did pretty well on our trip to Melbourne last year - as long as Mum's nearby, he's usually okay, but I thought that getting him prepared and excited for various aspects of our trip might help. When I ask him if he wants to go on a plane to Germany, the current answer is "no", so I've got some work to do.

And that's why I was thrilled to come home one day and find this:

Brezel bakery treats from eerie orange playdough

In case you can't guess what this odd photo is all about, my husband had been helping our son make Brezel out of playdough. A Brezel is a well-known German bakery treat but of course most of the world will know the American version - pretzel - better.

Now my son wants to eat real Brezel and luckily I can tell him "In a few months, we'll be in Germany where we can buy a Brezel every day!" He loves his food so he's definitely looking forward to this. (Of course, at his age he has no idea how long a few months will take so he might think his promised non-pretend Brezel is never coming!)

German map with some of our destinations

We've also been looking at maps regularly and I've answered the question "Where is Germany?" numerous times now, and talked about all the people we know who live there. I've had my old photo albums out showing him pictures of the places we'll visit, too. And I'm definitely planning to be "talking travel" with him plenty in the next few months. 

I'm determined to turn this little fellow into a travel lover - and I sure hope that before the day comes when we do step on the plane, he turns his answer into "yes" and comes along happily!

Anne Frank House and super-memorable travel moments

I distinctly remember reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" as a child. It was one of those books that really stuck with me, probably because Anne, the narrator, wasn't so different to me - yet her life was extraordinarily different, through no fault of her own.


When I visited Amsterdam I made a beeline for the Anne Frank House because I was thrilled to be able to see the very building in which Anne's story (and life) took place. It's now a few years later but whenever someone asks me about museums it's the first one that pops into my head.

Anne Frank House by Tiger Girl

Yet the Anne Frank House turned out to be much, much more than just the place where Anne and her family hid during the war. It's now an incredibly well-presented museum which I consider as one of my all-time favourites anywhere in the world (and, it should be added, is probably still fascinating to those who haven't read her diary).

This museum held one of those "remember forever" moments that make travelling extra worthwhile. I was already super-impressed with much of what I'd seen in the various exhibits, but then I entered the room where one of Anne Frank's diaries could actually be seen. An original! Her real diary! My mouth hung open from the moment I spotted it from across the room.

Of course, you couldn't touch Anne Frank's diary, set carefully under glass to protect it from people just like me, but just to see that simple diary lying there, not so different in appearance from many of the angst-ridden diaries I kept at the same age, yet knowing that I'd read its shocking contents - well, it's just one of those moments that I can relive in my head as though I was there.

I suspect that having visited places like the eerie concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau in the preceding years had heightened my emotional connection to these kind of war stories, but of course the writer and reader part of me also had a thrill at seeing an "original manuscript" of a book I'd loved.

These particularly special moments are not that common on my travels - I guess that's exactly what makes them particularly special. I also can't predict when they're going to occur. But I'm mighty glad they do.

Do you have any of these "super-memorable" travel moments to share?