Not A Ballerina: A Travel Blogger's Life

Travelling to track down your ancestors

2012-01-27T08:53:00.000+08:00

A dear friend of mine recently started a podcast for family history lovers called Genies Down Under, and since I started listening to it I've been getting inspiration to do some travelling to delve into bits of my own family history. In fact, the whole idea is so much fun that I decided to interview Maria, the genie behind Genies Down Under, in the hope that I might inspire some of my fellow travellers to include a spot of genealogical travel in their itinerary.

Maria from Genies Down Under on tour ... in Orange, NSW

If I'm planning a trip to a place where I know my ancestors lived, what kind of research should I do ahead of time?

Talk to your relatives first. No one will know your family better than your family members. Ask them what they know about the places you're planning to visit (e.g., Aunty Jude visited Uncle Bob's grave every day until the day she died). You never know, your relatives may even have some old photographs or postcards from the places you intend to visit.

Your local libraries. You'll be looking at the places you're visiting from an historical viewpoint. So, before you go, don't forget to check out old and new books in your local libraries that include historical information about the places you plan to visit. Books often include valuable information, maps and photographs that cannot be found anywhere else (not even on the internet). If possible, take these books with you on your trip. It may be worth phoning a few weeks ahead to the librarian of the place you're intending to visit.

Old photographs. Get hold of as many old photographs as possible of the places you plan to visit - even if these photographs don't feature your ancestors. Have a look in your own family collection of photographs and the collections of your relatives. Check old library books and search on the net (especially centralised collections such as the National Archives of Australia). Check Ebay for old postcards. Take printed copies of these photos with you as they can help you find particular buildings or locations.

Addresses. Record addresses of key sites in written and electronic formats - as printed notes, as text on your mobile device, scribbled marks on printed maps and, if possible, GPS data which can take you directly to the sites. Record the street addresses of where your ancestors lived, places they visited, their church, the local library, the local museum, the local gallery and the cemetery. You don't want to waste time driving around cities and towns that are unfamiliar to you.

When I visit one of these special (to me!) towns or cities, what are your three tips for the most interesting or useful places to visit?

Local library. Go here first. It is highly possible that the local librarian will hold information about how you can quickly and effectively get your hands on relevant material in the library and elsewhere. Not all libraries have their catalogue online and some libraries even have books for sale about the history the place that aren't available elsewhere. On my recent trip to Bourke the librarian showed me a huge folder of letters that she had been collecting for years from all sorts of people who had written to her requesting information about family history research. I also found a copy of a handwritten book written by an elderly resident of Bourke which documented her memories of Bourke in the 1890s when my great-grandparents lived there (picture below). Priceless! I would never have known of the existence of this book without making a personal visit to the library and fossicking through the shelves.

Old memories of Bourke, outback Australia

The church. If your ancestors were church-going folk, find out which church they visited. In many communities, the church was the central place for baptisms, marriages, regular weekly visits and burials. Most churches have cemeteries nearby or within the churchyard. Some ancestors are memorialised inside churches in plaques, windows or even statues. You could be pretty sure you were walking in your ancestors' footsteps if you walk down the aisles of their local church.

The pub. The local pub was often a hub of activity in small towns and city suburbs. Even today, a visit to the local pub for a drink or a meal will put you in a good place for talking to locals who might know information about the town that no one else knows. Just a word of warning ... if you drop your ancestors' surnames to the locals, just be prepared for varied reactions - ranging from blank stares, scowls or smiles of delight - depending on your ancestors' antics.

And finally, one of your podcasts gave me the best tip ever - you don't have to research your entire family tree, you can just pick a few "favourite ancestors" to investigate. If I want to do this (without spending hours and hours researching every distant relative), where do you suggest I start?

Choose one ancestor and talk to old relatives about this person. Your elderly relatives will be your ancestors one day so take the opportunity to talk to them now. When you talk to your relatives, supplement the questions that spring to your mind naturally with this list of questions from Ancestry.com. Try to have a conversation rather than an interview with your relatives and ALWAYS get permission to record the conversation (either in text, audio or video format). A good way to start the conversation is to ask the relative to give some commentary on a few old photographs or a photograph album, or just have a 5-10 minute phone conversation that starts with something like ... "Tell me about old Uncle Richard".

Start with what you know and work towards what you don't know. Let the search for filling in the gaps for "what you don't know" be driven by a few key questions (e.g., Why did my great-grandparents migrate to Australia? or How many children did one particular family have?). Record this information, even if it's just a few sentences in one of the following formats. Don't expect to find out absolutely everything about your ancestors - just focus on one or two important aspects of their lives. Ask yourself: "If my dead ancestor could speak to me now, what aspect of their life would they want me to record?"

Mobile phone as a research tool. If you don't have hours and hours for family history research, use your mobile phone as a research tool to create records in image, audio, video and text formats. I like to collect and create records in all of these formats. Text is listed last in the list because it's so obvious and we tend to record information in text most of the time but don't forget the rich and exciting formats of images (e.g., pics of ancestors, maps of where they lived), audio (record an interview, record your own memories, record what you know about a couple of your favourite ancestors), video (record 10 seconds of video of the ancestor's home and surrounding street) or text (type a paragraph which records a story about your ancestor).
Thanks so much for all this great information, Maria - hopefully it will help some aspiring family history researchers get the most out of some genealogical travels. Where would you like to travel to find your family roots? - Let me know in the comments!

Tasmania with a toddler: Hobart and Launceston

2012-01-24T17:59:00.000+08:00

On our trip to Tasmania our focus was definitely more on nature and landscape than cities, and we just had a couple of half-days in Launceston (where we flew in and out of) and just one day in Hobart, the capital city. And we were glad we'd planned it that way, because we both felt ready to get out of the cities fairly soon after we'd arrived. Not that there's anything wrong with Hobart or Launceston - they're lovely cities, and I'll tell you why below - but on our short trip, we didn't have time to be country people AND city people!

The big sky of Launceston

Let me start with Launceston, since that's where our tour of Tassie actually began (and ended). It's a charming city (and pretty small with just over 100,000 people) and a place I almost went and worked in many years ago when my boss at the time took a job there. This was my second trip there and it still charmed me. I love Cataract Gorge and the dramatically hilly suburban streets (since ours are all flat, basically), and I appreciate a city of this size - easy to get around but it still has most things you're after. Our highlight was a cruise we took on the Tamar River (on a beautiful day - see the photo above) - it was the last cruise of the day and with just one other couple on board, we got special treatment, my little boy got to sit in the captain's seat and steer the boat, and the captain told us all about his love of German beer (to the point where he brews it himself!). Perfect.

Penny Royal, Launceston

We also got to stay in a really charming hotel (they didn't pay me to say that, it's just my opinion!) in the Penny Royal Motel, which includes an old mill and refurbished old buildings. It was something different and really had character.

Playground in Hobart (a smile, not a frown!)

Our stint in Hobart was brief, weather-affected and we were really too keen to get on to the Tasman Peninsula and Port Arthur so we didn't spend much time here at all. We did have a stroll around Salamanca Place and had a great pub meal in the city centre, and I was certainly impressed to see all the modernisation (in a good way) that's taken place since I was last there. We stayed in cabins in a caravan park a fair way out of town (and most notably, near the maximum security prison!), which may sound less than ideal but was actually perfect for our needs at the time - the cabins were brand new, spacious and relaxing, and the caravan park and not one but two great playgrounds. Oh, how my travel expectations have changed!!

I got the feeling that a proper exploration of Hobart would be better done as a pure "city break" trip. Several people have told me of various festivals to visit there and I think my next Hobart trip might be to tie in with one of these. (All tips gratefully received in the comments below!) The one major disappointment with Hobart, of course, is that the Cadbury Factory tour has been severely curtailed. No longer can we lean over and peer into vast vats of melted chocolate. I can understand why, and I'm glad I found out before I arrived in Hobart and tried to take a tour, but it does leave me feeling rather nostalgic for the Hobart I visited many years ago.

Travel consequences: Raising bilingual kids

2012-01-23T09:14:00.000+08:00

Over a decade ago when I hopped on a plane to Osaka, I didn't look far enough ahead to imagine that one of the consequences of travelling the world would be marrying someone with a different mother tongue and then jumping onto the journey of raising a bilingual child. No, I was just looking far enough ahead to wonder how much sushi I could eat when I got there!

But now I've got a little half-German boy who's starting to talk more and more, and the issue of bilingualism seems more and more relevant. I've recently got involved with Bilingual Families Perth, as well as following the great Multilingual Living website, and have been learning lots about the challenges of keeping a child bilingual in an English-speaking world. One oddity I've noticed recently is that while many people will say how lucky my boy is to grow up bilingually, just as many people (and sometimes the same ones) will also (hopefully unknowingly) hinder our efforts to help him do so.

Our bilingual boy

So this post has three purposes: one, to get my fellow travellers thinking about what their travels might lead to (in a good way!); two, to hopefully hear about the experiences of others; and three, to explain to everyone who knows us a little bit about our bilingual family. These questions hopefully cover most of the things people have asked us in the past or have been wondering about.

Which language when? This has been tricky for us to figure out! We started with "one person, one language" but since our community language is English, our little boy would only hear German for a couple of hours at most each day if he only heard it from his father (who is at work during the day). Now we're working more with the "family language" idea: as a family, we speak German (and that means I mostly speak German to him when we're alone during the day) and when we meet up with other people we speak English.
Mixing up languages? Yes, kids growing up bilingually will mix up their languages, but pretty much by the time they're at school they'll sort them out. People make a big deal about it, but forget that kids growing up with just one language mix lots of words up too (or just don't say stuff. Apparently a big reason for mixing languages is because they know a word in one language but not the other. Aren't they lucky?!).
Kids get confused? Some people have warned us that (more nicely put) we'll make our little boy less intelligent by insisting he learns to speak two languages at once. I guess that since most English-speaking cultures have relatively less experience with bilingualism, this warning comes out of a fear of the unknown. But in fact the research shows bilingual kids have quite a few cognitive advantages, so there's no need to worry about our little boy. (Speaking of research, the oft-told "bilingual kids will have a speech delay" has also been proven false, both by research and our personal experience.)
Are you talking about us? This astounds and, to be honest, offends me. It happened when my husband and I first moved to Australia - back when his English wasn't so good and speaking it all day was exhausting for him - and if we "dared" to speak between ourselves in German, the people around us would tell us we had to speak English. I have noticed this starting to creep into our lives again, when we speak in German with our boy (some things he just understands better in German, or we do it without even realising). If it bothers you that we speak German in front of you, please ask us nicely to translate and we happily will, but please don't say anything negative about the fact that we're speaking another language. It's hard enough to keep a child happily speaking two languages when most of his school mates won't, so we need all the support we can get. Okay, rant over!
What's the goal? More a question for myself than everyone else, I learnt recently that it's important to decide what your bilingual goal is - just understanding, or just conversation, or reading and writing ability? My husband and I agree that ideally, it would be great if our little boy had enough reading and writing ability in German to give him the option of studying there one day, but whether or not we achieve that goal will probably depend a bit on his interests and motivation as he gets older. But we read lots of German books, talk lots of German, and will start writing German letters and emails when he gets old enough to do so.

So, hopefully that gives you all a bit of insight into our bilingual adventure. More than anything, I'm insanely jealous that our little boy can learn a second language so easily, without the endless hours of lessons and textbooks and study and frustration that we've both experienced with our second language!

I'd love to hear your thoughts or experiences, so tell me what you think in the comments below.

Passport pirouette: Scenic drive into Slovenia

2012-01-19T11:43:00.000+08:00

I love a good road trip, and road trips in Europe are an entirely different beast to an Australian road trip - it's all about the distance. Driving across Australia takes days and is all in one country (and while some might find the desert a bit boring, I find it quite refreshing). Driving across Europe means you can constantly encounter an entirely new country. And driving into Slovenia on a summer road trip while I lived in Germany was another one of those moments where I felt that thrill of being about to discover something new.

The first impressions were good. We approached Slovenia through a tunnel, had our passports stamped (and goodness, you can see from the passport stamp above how long ago it was - it feels like yesterday!) and then one of our first views of the country itself was this - the highway lined by enormous fir trees, the mountains towering around us. This was in the middle of summer so I can imagine in winter it would be a snowy scene instead. In essence, this first impression of Slovenia - green and clean - was the right one for my experiences there. Slovenia is quite a special little country, one that was tucked away behind the Iron Curtain yet didn't suffer quite as badly as most of the others, and has long had help from its close neighbour Italy to keep it modern; it's one of the richest countries from the former eastern bloc. And it's lovely. Don't leave it off your list when you're exploring Europe!

The A-Z travels of Amanda from Not A Ballerina

2012-01-17T10:41:00.000+08:00

There's a great meme doing the rounds of travel blogs at the moment - an A-Z of your travel experience - and I just can't pass up the chance to look back on some of my favourite moments of travel and share them with you - alphabetically! So here goes ...

A: Age at which you first travelled internationally: I was 8 years old when we left Australia for our family trip to Europe. To be quite accurate, I turned 9 two days later, in Hong Kong.

My vision of Hong Kong, aged 9

B: Best (foreign) beer. It's not just out of loyalty to my husband that I will say I like German beer the best of all. Back here in Australia I tend to drink wine rather than beer - Aussie beer just doesn't seem to match my tastes - but in Germany I drank plenty of beer. What I loved there was that mixing it with lemonade to make a Radler wasn't frowned upon at all (here in Australia a "shandy" is really an old people's drink!) and I found it such a refreshing summer combination.

C: Cuisine (favorite). This tough because there are so many foods I love across the world, but if I had to pick one, I would definitely go for Japanese. Before I went to Japan, I saw Japanese cuisine as being basically sushi and teriyaki chicken, but there is SO much more. Including, of course, my beloved okonomiyaki.

D: Destinations (favorite) and why? Least favorite and why? Hmm, these questions are getting harder. For my favourite places, I think I'll let my post on the Trans-Siberian, Tunisia and Finnish Lapland speak for itself; for least favourite, well, there really is nowhere I've travelled that I didn't enjoy. I'm also not the kind of person to ever find a place boring.

Reunification night in Berlin, 1990. Wow!

E: Event you experienced that made you say “wow”. My luck to be in Berlin in 1990 and to be standing at the Brandenburg Gate at midnight when East and West Germany were reunited. That experience as a teenager cemented my (already strong) love of travel and seeing the world and to this day I can remember that evening as though it just happened.

F: Favorite mode of transport. Another easy one: train! For me, there is nothing nicer than spending a night sleeping on a train, being comforted by the clickety-clack of the train's motion, and then spending a day (or a week) watching the world go by outside. Magic.

G: Greatest feeling while travelling? I'm going to be a bit general here and say that so often when I've been travelling (and living abroad) I've had the feeling that really, I can do anything! For me, that's one of the greatest benefits of travel - breaking you out of your routine and your comfort zone and making you feel, to use a terribly cliched word, very empowered!

Karnak Temple

H: Hottest place you’ve ever travelled to? Probably Egypt. I don't know what the temperature was but even our reasonably regular 40C plus days in Australia don't compare to how hot it felt as I stood at Karnak Temple (in summer). The sweat wasn't just dripping, it was pouring off me.

I: Incredible service you’ve experienced and where? I think the most impressive service I received may well have been in Vietnam, when I stayed in tiny family-run "hotels" (three or four rooms each), paying ridiculously low amounts like $5 or $10 a night, and being looked after so beautifully.

J: Journey that took you the longest? It's hard to decide when some journeys start and end, but I guess a good answer here would be my journey across Russia on the Trans-Siberian (with stops along the way), which took about three weeks. My longest period of non-stop travel (not stopping to work, that is) would probably have been between Japan and Slovakia, perhaps four months? Scratch that, my parents did better than that with our trip to Europe when I was a kid - that was six months long!

K: Keepsake from your travels? I'm a terrible hoarder and have recently been trying to cut down on the number of souvenirs/tickets/brochures/meaningless scraps of paper that I keep from my travels. Some of my favourites are probably a bag I have from Igoumenitsa in Greece, a photo frame with a golden cherry blossom image from Japan and some of my favourite souvenir T-shirts.

L: Let down sight? Where and why? I rarely feel particularly let down by a sightseeing spot but I did mention earlier this week that my most recent visit to Stonehenge was a bit underwhelming, mostly because I arrived there just after it had closed.

M: Moment where you fell in love with travel? Good question. I think I just grew up loving travel. I remember plenty of moments where I was reminded how much I love travel, but I think it's something that's always been part of me.

N: Nicest hotel you’ve stayed in? I'm not one for staying in flash hotels (I'd rather spend the money on more travels) but an exception was made for the Bad Blumau resort in Austria because the hotel itself is like a tourist destination. Love that Hundertwasser design!

O: Obsession. What are you obsessed with taking pictures of? Lots and lots of landscape pictures, and stray cats. I adored the cats I found wandered around Tunisia, for example!

The cats of Tunisia

P: Passport stamps. How many and from where? Oh my goodness, I couldn't count them. During my five and a half years travelling and working abroad, I filled one passport completely and made a good start on another (of course, working and residence visas took up quite a few pages). Let's just say - numerous.

Q: Quirkiest attraction you’ve visited? Quirky, hey? Well, I would've thought I'd been to all manner of quirky place but none really spring to mind as the quirkiest. A few parks full of old Soviet era statues and monuments were pretty quirky; anything designed by Hundertwasser probably counts as quirky.

R: Recommended sight, event or experience? I only get to recommend one? Well, I think for all non-snow-dwellers, or families with young children, a Christmas trip to Finnish Lapland is an amazing experience.

S: Splurge! Something you don’t mind forking over for while travelling? I'm pretty much the opposite of extravagant even when I'm travelling, but what I'll pay for more than anything is a unique experience. Stuff like ice fishing or reindeer sleigh driving in northern Finland, for example.

T: Touristy thing you’ve done. Plenty! Although I like to avoid large packs of tourists and you will very rarely see me on any kind of organised tour, I don't shy away from the big tourist attractions - there's a reason there's called "attractions"! If you're looking for the tourist cliche, I did get engaged at the top of the Eiffel Tower - happy?!

U: Unforgettable travel memory. I have so many. The train pulling out of Vladivostok as I began my Trans-Siberian ride; riding a camel in the Sahara Desert in Tunisia.

V: Visas. How many of them and for where? See passport stamps above! I have working visas for Japan, Czech Republic (long story - not for Slovakia where I actually worked!) and Germany; and tourist visas for many countries including Russia, Vietnam, Hungary and Poland. I was just a couple of years too early because these days Australians no longer require visas for countries like Hungary and Poland.

My old working visa for Germany

W: Wine. Best glass of wine had while travelling and where? I'm going to have to say Germany again - I never really liked Rosé wine until I reached Germany and then I discovered a lovely cold glass of it was perfect on a summer evening.

X: eXcellent views and from where? A tough one as I'm a big landscape fan so have made my way to some gorgeous views over the years - I think I'll have to go with views over the Plitvice Lakes in Croatia, one of my most favourite spots in the world.

Y: Years spent travelling? Hmm, interesting. If I add up all the major trips I can think of and include my five and a half years of travelling and working abroad, I guess it's about eight years of my life? Which is a bit less than a quarter, I'm pretty happy with that.

Z: Zealous sports fan and where? I don't have an absolutely favourite sport but I do get really excited when the Olympics come around. And so I have happily explored many Olympic venues around the world, including places like Nagano, Seoul, Barcelona and Sydney.

Interview with author Dianne Ebertt Beeaff

2012-01-16T08:46:00.000+08:00

Late last year I reviewed the book Spirit Stones and it got me re-interested in all things Stonehenge-like. My last trip to Stonehenge was a bit of a non-event - we got there just after it closed for the day and took pictures from the roadside, as close as we could get. It was a bit of a touristy non-event, really, but I must say I now have a much better appreciation of the place and would love to go back one day. The author of Spirit Stones, Dianne Ebertt Beeaff, agreed to an interview so I could delve a little deeper - thanks Dianne!

The "big bunch of stones" all my readers know about is, of course, Stonehenge. Can you give us a quick summary of why it's an important site?

Stonehenge is important as the centerpiece of a vast complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments on England's Salisbury Plain. Its construction spans 1500 years through three distinct phases and in its role as an awe-inspiring symbol of the mystery, power and continuance of prehistoric architecture, Stonehenge helps to keep interest and appreciation of those ancient constructs alive.

Stonehenge at dusk

Can you suggest a short itinerary for a trip around Great Britain and Ireland that would cover a few of the key sites mentioned in "Spirit Stones"?

Focusing on some of the more prominent monuments, I would start with a visit to the icons of Stonehenge and Avebury in the south of England, journey north to the Lake District where there are several of the grandest and most ancient stone circles, hop over to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland for some real 'back-country' specimens and then finish off with the Boyne Valley monuments of Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange, in Ireland, which does, of course, make a stop in lively and agreeable Dublin almost mandatory.

And because I love dreaming of travel plans: where in the world would you like to go that you haven't been yet, and why?

A tough one; there are so many. Iceland has appealed to me for its other-worldliness and lack of crowds; a trans-Canada rail trip for the ease of travel and the outstanding scenery of my native country; and Australia/New Zealand, as an Australian friend who visited this summer left behind a photo book that fired my imagination with the variety, beauty and inspiration of a corner of the world I've never before ventured to.

Thanks again Dianne for taking part in the interview. I have to agree wholeheartedly with all of your travel dreams - I'm very intrigued by Iceland, a big train trip across Canada sounds perfect and obviously, my number one suggestion would be to get down here to Australia as soon as you can because it's an incredible place!

Weekend Wanderings: Because it's 2012!

2012-01-13T08:38:00.000+08:00

Welcome to the first Weekend Wanderings for 2012! I thought that an appropriate theme for this weekend would be, in fact, 2012. I haven't posted much about my plans for 2012 yet and so to kill those two proverbial birds with one stone, I'm going to do that here and then give you the chance to imagine the same. Read on!

First up, 2012 will most likely not be a year of international travel for me. We managed the trip to Germany and Switzerland in 2010 but now that our little man is about to turn two years old, we have the strong feeling that a flight to Europe or in fact anywhere too far is just too much for us. He's a pretty energetic fellow and we figure there's no need to inflict the torture of trying to make him sit still for hours at a time when we could just wait a year or two and he'll deal with it a lot better.

Will Melbourne be my first big trip of 2012?

Having said that, I'm determined to take advantage of the fact that under-twos fly free on domestic airlines so there should be at least an interstate trip coming up in the near future. The most obvious destination for a quick trip for me is to Melbourne where I have so many friends that I miss a lot, but then I wonder if I'd be better off going somewhere entirely new - and then I remember there'll be a small boy with me! We'll see how that pans out! As for the rest of the year, there will definitely be a few more trips around Western Australia and perhaps some planning for something more adventurous in 2013.

Other than that, I've got lots of exciting things under way for Not A Ballerina. Keep watching this space and you should see a beautiful makeover, an eBook (or possibly two) and who knows what else - it's going to be a big blogging year.

And now it's over to you - have you got a post in your archive to link up that has some meaning to you for 2012? It might be a post about your 2012 resolutions, or your travel plans for 2012, but it might equally be a post you've written about a place you'd like to go to (a la my Kenyan giraffe dream) or something you'd love to repeat in 2012 - I don't mind! Check the Weekend Wandering guidelines if you're joining up for the first time and don't forget to visit the other linked up posts so you can discover some great new posts. I'm linking up to my post on New Zealand because I think this is the only overseas country I'm remotely likely to get to during 2012!

Tasmania with a toddler: Tasman Peninsula and Port Arthur

2012-01-11T05:59:00.001+08:00

You know how you visit a place and then years later still think it was a really gorgeous place and you just have to show it to your loved ones? And how sometimes this can be really disappointing? Well, thank goodness, this was not the case when we returned to the Tasman Peninsula on our recent trip to Tasmania. In particular, I had been telling my husband all year that I loved the Tessellated Pavement and thought he would too. And here 'tis:

The Tessellated Pavement, Tasman Peninsula

Near Marble Arch - no more photos, please!

It may not be the #1 tourist attraction in Tasmania but it's a quiet, seemingly untouched place with some incredible natural formations and it impressed my husband, as well as me (again). And our little boy loved splashing along here, of course. You may note that the weather was not looking too good and it unfortunately did get worse before it got better. We kept driving and saw the Marble Arch and Devil's Kitchen but for some reason our young man once again decided we were being too paparazzi-like and called a halt to photographs.

The following day we headed down to the convict site of Port Arthur, another place I'd really been looking forward to revisiting. The weather didn't exactly cooperate and so we spent much of the day dashing between buildings when the rain was at its lightest (of course these buildings are mostly ruins so even they didn't help much) but we had a few moments of sunshine.

Since I last visited many years ago, the Port Arthur historic site has been further improved and the experience as a tourist (and it receives many of them) is really impressive. My favourite touch was the playing card all visitors received - in the museum space of the visitors' centre, you could search for which convict your Jack of Spades (or whatever!) matched up to and see what kind of experiences they'd had - a great way to personalise a hard-to-imagine experience. For our little boy they gave us a card which matched up to a child "convict", another great touch.

We spent three days exploring the Tasman Peninsula, staying in a cottage along the main road (which is full of accommodation), and dropping into the tiny Federation Chocolate factory and outlet more than once for a supply of local delicacies. It was the kind of area that makes you dream of selling up everything and "retiring" down there ... until we realised how cold it would be in winter!

Those awkward times when you only half understand a language ...

2012-01-09T12:48:00.002+08:00

A great post at Cailin Travels about awkward travel moments reminded me of quite a few tricky moments I've had while travelling, and perhaps because I talk a lot they all seemed to revolve around language (and even accent) misunderstandings.

So, as I sit here blushing over some of them, let me demonstrate why knowing a bit of a language can be a dangerous thing (as can not listening carefully to someone with a tricky accent) ... I hope you'll indulge me by sharing your own experiences in the comments afterwards.

Imagine this: your lovely Japanese friends take you to an expensive restaurant in an Osaka hotel overlooking the Marine Day fireworks. In the middle of a multi-person discussion, the topic of mad cow disease arises and you talk about whether or not this would stop you from ordering meat. I say it doesn't really bother me (because, as I've mentioned before, I'm semi-vegetarian and was brought up not eating red meat). The "because" bit doesn't come across and unbeknownst to me, my host orders me a big juicy steak because somehow I've said it doesn't bother me. Yes, very awkward. I ate parts of it and tried to hide a fair bit in leftover salad on the plate. And I learnt to be more careful about seemingly random conversations.

Fireworks in Osaka, shortly before severe meat ordering mix up
Beware the Swabian dialect in Germany. It's hard enough (for me) that when Germans tell the time, the phrase that literally translates to "half ten" means half past nine, not half past ten. But in the south-west of Germany, they have another phrase which translates as "three quarters ten" and even now as I go to type this I have to go away and check that this actually means 9.45. I was once an entire hour late to meet a friend in Germany because I got mixed up over this one. And the friend was not exactly impressed. You know, those Germans don't like being late ...
Sometimes it is not the language that's the problem, but the accent. For a short time in Slovakia I had a colleague who was, yes, a native English speaker, but he had an incredibly strong accent. To be honest, I had trouble understanding him, and I'd heard that students had complained about this and he had been told to speak more clearly. We caught the bus together one day - in my defence, it was a very noisy bus - and we had a chat. Kind of. He talked, I asked him to repeat himself a few times, got too embarrassed to ask again and just kept nodding, smiling and saying "that's good" at what I hoped were the right moments. Eventually he stopped and looked at me very weirdly. Obviously my reaction had been wrong! It turned out he was explaining to me that he had just been fired. Oops.

Streets in Slovakia, close to scene of embarrassment ...

So, dear reader, your turn to spill - if you've had an awkward moment while travelling (or an awkward three hundred, like me), do share one of your best in the comments.

Starting 2012 with Kiva goodwill

2012-01-04T08:30:00.000+08:00

I ended 2011 with one of my favourite tasks on my to-do list: make a new Kiva loan. I chose this young man named Ruben in El Salvador to be the recipient of my next $25 loan - he was looking for a total of $500 to purchase more feed for the cattle and pigs he raises. His loan has now been fully funded and I imagine, as has been the case with all of my Kiva loans to date, he will pay it back on time, hopefully get some good benefits from being able to improve his small farming business, and I will have the money back to lend again to somebody else. Great system, right?

In the process of making this loan, I checked up on some statistics. It turns out that people I've referred to Kiva through this blog have now made a total of 52 loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Some of these are groups of people so we've helped probably close to a hundred people! I should give a big shout-out to my schoolfriend Simone who was the one who put me on to Kiva in the first place - good on you, Sim!!

When I travel, I'm very aware that I'm part of a pretty small percentage of the world's population who have the time, money and ability to travel, and that makes me extremely fortunate. When I travel to developing countries then I'm much more aware of that and feel both confused and somewhat helpless about how to help. Kiva seems a great solution to me as it helps people help themselves which seems a much more sustainable way to improve things.

If you're interested in trying out the Kiva loan scheme, take a look at all the great info at Kiva.org - and the blog posts written by Kiva Fellows are fascinating too - and considering joining our Not A Ballerina loan team - you still make your own loans in the same way but we can see together how much we are helping out.

Christmas wishes from Not A Ballerina

2011-12-24T15:44:00.002+08:00

Eeek!! It's Christmas again? How did that happen? This year has flown by spectacularly fast, no doubt the product of the small traveller being in my life. I wasn't able to fit in (or afford!) too much travel, but our recent trip to Tasmania was a fantastic one and I have a feeling 2012 will be more active on the travel front. (Fingers crossed!)

So, it's time for me to spend another Christmas in Australia, with no small amount of pining for a European-style "proper Christmas". This photo shows me at the Heidelberg Christmas markets a few years ago, beaming no doubt because I just love all the proper Christmassy stuff. And it was cold, too - I definitely won't be wearing a beanie, scarf and thick jacket for our Aussie Christmas. But I'll still be having heaps of fun, and enjoying the festive season with lots of silly songs and plenty of delicious food. And maybe a little chocolate, too.

I'm also going to take a short blogging break over the Christmas and New Year period - which probably coincides with many of my readers taking a bit of a computer break too, so you may not even notice I'm gone (if you miss me too much, I'll still be posting at the Not A Ballerina Facebook page so join us there). Not A Ballerina: A Travel Blogger's Life will be back in 2012 and I have lots of exciting new plans for the blog in the new year, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I'd like to wish all my lovely readers a very merry Christmas and festive season and all the very best for a fantastic 2012. Thanks for stopping by, everyone!

Japanese language success for my Christmas wish

2011-12-22T08:55:00.000+08:00

I mentioned last week that one of my more unusual Christmas Days was spent in Japan, the particularly unusual part being that for the first time in my life I had to go to work on Christmas Day. It was probably the first day in my new life abroad that I felt a little homesick, thinking of my family gathering back home with their prawns and swimming pools, without me.

Being Christmas, I decided to spoil myself - and challenge myself at the same time. In a long-planned event, after work on Christmas Day my boyfriend at the time and I decided to order a pizza delivery. This may seem a very simple thing, but first of all, you have to realise that the cost of a pizza delivery in Japan was (and perhaps still is?) utterly ridiculous. Instead of a $9.95 deal, if I remember correctly the cost of a single pizza with home delivery was closer to $50. But yes, it was Christmas.

The challenge part was that I was given the important job of phoning up and ordering the pizza. In Japanese, of course. I had been learning Japanese for just a few months at the time and hadn't thought to ask my teacher to help me with pizza-ordering phrases before we finished up for the end-of-year break. So I practised and practised and then made the call.

Voila! This was delivered to our door, with the lovely touch that the delivery man wore a Santa hat, giving us some reminder of the festive season. As you can see, I was clever enough to order half-and-half and though I don't quite remember all the toppings, I can see both included corn, and corn was a surprisingly common ingredient on Japanese pizzas.

The pizza tasted pretty good, and it was a nice way to celebrate an otherwise below-par Christmas, but the most exciting thing for me that day was the pizza company understood my Japanese and delivered what I'd asked for to the very place I'd described. Go me! Maybe Japanese wasn't so hard after all ...

Gaudi makes Barcelona beautiful

2011-12-20T06:00:00.001+08:00

My sister flew to Spain this week. Yes, I'm a little envious (though I'd rather be there in summer than winter). But to combat my jealousy I started browsing through my photos of a week in Barcelona not all that long ago.

Park Guell in Barcelona (thanks to Gaudi)

I - unfortunately - don't have too much experience of Spain (heaven knows why - there were so many cheap flights there when I lived in Germany - I think I was put off because every second German I knew was going there so it seemed too mainstream!) - but I truly loved Barcelona. What a colourful, bustling city with surprising bursts of history and fantastic food (caramel-filled churros, anyone?!).

My favourite part of Barcelona, hands down, is all the Gaudi architecture. Even the story of Antoni Gaudi tickles my fancy, as he seems such a fascinating man and even his sad death, hit by a tram and then not looked after too well because he looked like a pauper rather than an amazing architect, seems to fit his character well. If he seems larger than life, then his buildings are way, way, way more massive than life. Full of colour and fun and interesting symbolism and a total disregard for the "rules", every Gaudi building I came across in Barcelona impressed me no end. If I had any of the skills required to be an architect, I would want to be exactly like Gaudi.

La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

You can't help but bump into Gaudi when you're in Barcelona, but the two big must-sees are Park Guell (a big park which includes a museum devoted to Gaudi) and La Sagrada Familia, the still-not-quite-finished church which is Gaudi's masterpiece. If your architectural interests lie more with modern straight lines and shiny reflective windows then Gaudi may not be your cup of tea, but I dare you to embrace it all anyway.

"Spirit Stones" book review: Stonehenge and much more

2011-12-18T20:04:00.000+08:00

It's been a little while since I've reviewed a book on Not A Ballerina but Dianne Ebertt Beeaff (goodness me, doesn't she have a lot of double letters in her name?!) has just published Spirit Stones and it is more than a little intriguing. A case in point: my practically non-book-reading husband saw my review copy the day it arrived and announced he would be reading it (not before I do, I announced back!).

The book's subtitle sums it succinctly: "Unraveling the Megalithic Mysteries of Western Europe's Prehistoric Monuments". Basically it's about a bunch of places with old rocks, but it's much more interesting than that might sound.

Spirit Stones starts off with a quick primer about the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, which I must admit I'd never been quite clear on before, and goes on to discuss the kinds of structures that were built in these ages, mostly out of stone but also of wood. (Quick cultural reference for Australians of my age: remember the band Things of Stone and Wood?!). Design-related issues like shape and colour get a mention too, and each section ends with a "Spiritual Fitness" section which is where the "spirit" part of the title comes in.

Castlerigg Stone Circle

The second half of the book looks at the reasons why we believe many of these structures were built - or at least the best guesses archaeologists, historians, anthropologists and everyone else have been able to make. Chapters cover topics like life, death, heaven, earth and religion and throughout are anecdotes and recollections about various stone circle, burial chamber and monolith sites across Europe (but mostly in the British Isles). The most famous one, Stonehenge, gets plenty of mentions, but there are numerous others and their descriptions make me rather keen to get back to Britain.

Very far from a travel guide book, this is for me a "read before you travel" book, something to inspire the destinations you might visit on your next trip and also great for giving background knowledge that will help you enjoy sightseeing and museum visits a lot more. It's not really like any other book I've read, but suffice to say if you like history and Britain (and big rocks), it'll be a winner. You can get more info on the book from the Spirit Stones website and I'll have an interview with the author coming along soon.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a review copy for this post, but the opinions are all my own.

Weekend Wanderings: It's a Christmas link-up!

2011-12-17T12:50:00.001+08:00

Christmas at Universal Studios, Osaka, Japan

I guess you don't need me to point out that Christmas is rapidly approaching. What I do perhaps need to point out is that it's time for another edition of Weekend Wanderings and this time I'm gathering blog posts which are somehow related to Christmas. Whether it's a memorable Christmas trip or your local Christmas lights, please join up your post below and take a wander around the other Christmassy posts too.

Regular Not A Ballerina readers may have noticed I'm a bit of a fan of the Christmas season so I had quite a few posts to choose from. I did think that everybody may well be sick of reading about my visit with Santa (it's one of my most popular posts so I think everyone's seen it!) so I've picked my more recent post about an Australian-style Christmas (with lots of bonus seafood!) instead.

While we're on the topic of Christmas, let me just wish all my readers and bloggy friends a very happy Christmas and I hope Santa brings all of you what you're after (although just so you know, Santa has never yet fulfilled my constant wish for a free RTW air ticket. I keep on hoping, though). Merry Christmas!

(PS: If you haven't played along before, check the guidelines for Weekend Wanderings so you know what to do.)

Tasmania with a toddler: Strahan and the Gordon River

2011-12-15T05:56:00.000+08:00

In between our time at Cradle Mountain and then at Lake St Clair, our Tasmanian trip included a few days in the west coast town of Strahan. It's a bit of a tourist mecca, in Tasmanian terms, but then again it's in a distant part of a distant state in a distant country so it's not exactly overcrowded (and we encountered very few foreign tourists) - and it's a truly delightful spot.

Cruising the Gordon River, Tasmania

The highlight here was easily our cruise on the Gordon River. Unfortunately the weather was not too cooperative, but after we'd cruised for a couple of hours up the truly gorgeous Gordon River we disembarked to wander through a rainforest and it is, obviously, much more authentic to experience a rainforest during rain! The scenery was still stunning - it's a really special World Heritage area and I don't think anyone could argue with its beauty. The boat and staff were great too, with a special toy box for the little ones, and they provide a buffet lunch which has *heaps* of tasty Tassie salmon - I wish I could have a bit more right now! The cruise also stops at Sarah Island (an old convict settlement) for an interesting tour.

Rainforest along the Gordon River

Strahan is also home to the daily play The Ship That Never Was - we didn't make it this time but I saw it when I was there over a decade ago, and highly recommend it. It's been running all these years - every day at 5.30pm, I believe. Another highlight for families is the West Coast Wilderness Railway but we thought skipping naptime two days in a row might be too tricky for the small boy - other families we met said it was fabulous.

In contrast to the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park, Strahan is a bit luxurious for eating and shopping - it's only small, but there are about a dozen options for eating and we went out to the Regatta Point Tavern for dinner. It's not fine dining (there are several good fine dining options in Strahan though) but it's perfect for dinner with a toddler - lots of small town atmosphere, decent food (I had a surprisingly good tapas plate but they told me it was the first time they'd served it) and nice views over the harbour.

A rare family photo on the Gordon River Cruise

Christmas in Japan = an odd kind of Christmas!

2011-12-13T08:50:00.000+08:00

Christmas in Australia is not what I consider a traditional Christmas, mostly because the season's wrong, but the two Christmases I spent in Japan were even less of a traditional Christmas! The first problem, of course, was that as Japan is a Buddhist/Shinto nation, Christmas is not even a holiday and so I found myself working on Christmas Day (there's a first time for everything). But the second problem - well, not problem, but something of an oddity - is that despite the fact that there is no tradition of Christmas in Japanese culture, they actually do kind of get involved with the whole Christmas theme anyway!

Kobe Luminarie

I remember very well that the shops started playing Christmas carols and started featuring Christmas gift ideas, even though it is usual only for couples to exchange Christmas presents (phew - that would be cheaper!). The weather is right, too, so rugging up to go out around Christmas time seems to fit with my view of a traditional Christmas. And there's the Kobe Luminarie, a spectacular light display that has no real connection to Christmas but since it's in December, gives you the feeling of Christmas lights. But New Year is really the important celebration for the Japanese at that time of year - sending a New Year's card to all your family and friends is vital, but Christmas cards aren't really done - and so despite the Christmas themes milling around, the day itself kind of passes by virtually unnoticed and then everybody gets ready to ring in the New Year instead.

Fortunately, when I lived in Japan my local friends took pity on me (and other foreigners) and managed to rustle up something of a Christmas. Midori, who taught me Japanese when I first arrived, invited me along to the Christmas parties she organised for her children's English classes; other friends took me on outings to Kobe Luminarie and to Universal Studios Japan with their heavily-decorated Christmas streets, and I was even entertained with a Japanese-style Christmas cake.

Christmas cake in Japan

So if you do end up spending your Christmas in Japan one year, don't expect quite what you might have at home - but enjoy it, just the same.

Moscow beauty spots (because I love Moscow)

2011-12-11T12:43:00.000+08:00

With large-scale protests against the recent (probably fraudulent) elections in Russia, Moscow is all over the news at the moment, again. Moscow hits the headlines quite often - as you'd expect from a pretty important capital city - but so often in a negative way and people often tell me they're surprised I've been there (twice). Isn't it dangerous?

Sometimes, a little, but that's not what I want to talk about (I've done that before). I thought it was timely for me to do some PR for the positives of Moscow just to counterbalance things a little. Because in fact, Moscow is not just home to my all-time favourite building, St Basil's Cathedral, it's also home to numerous other things of beauty.

One of the most surprising ones (I think) is the underground metro stations - while some are the damp, dingy places you expect, others are decorated ornately and stopping there feels like walking through a fancy art gallery. There are stations covered with stained glass, others with intricate mosaics or bronze statues, and still others that might get you confused and thinking you are actually in a grand old ballroom (like Komsomolskaya below).

Komsomolskaya Metro Station, Moscow

Above the ground there are also plenty of photogenic sites. You might not expect the Kremlin to be so beautiful, given that we always hear "the Kremlin" in the news as being the source of not always sensible government decision-making, but the actual cathedrals within the Kremlin are stunning - I took numerous photos of all kinds of pretty bits, like these towers below.

Inside the Kremlin, Moscow

I could go on. Moscow is not all you see on the TV. It's also a city with some incredibly beautiful moments, some warm people and some fantastic experiences. Just a reminder, that's all!

Don't back a camel in Tunisia's Sahara Festival

2011-12-08T06:41:00.000+08:00

I woke up this morning and thought of Africa. Perhaps this week's trip to the zoo (heavily featuring elephants and giraffes) planted the idea of travels in Africa back in my head, although I hardly need any encouragement - I will definitely some day spend plenty of time exploring what I can only imagine is a magnificent continent.

Locals at Sahara Festival

To date, my experience is limited to northern Africa, quite different territory to the lands of elephants and giraffes, but magnificent nonetheless, and my favourite destination up there is easily Tunisia. One of the funniest experiences I had there was the Sahara Festival in Douz, on the northern edge of the Sahara Desert. As usual, I hadn't actually been clever enough to time my visit for the festival (I hadn't even known about it!), I ended up there just by happy coincidence, but it was well worth it.

For a start, the clear absence of foreigners there (I wasn't the only one who hadn't known about it) and the fact that my travelling companion had a slightly expensive DSL camera meant that it was assumed we were foreign press, and were ushered through the crowd into a stand with a great view of the afternoon's activities. I was quite pleased this didn't mean we had to sit way up in the bleachers, where locals had obviously been sitting and waiting for hours already.

One of the most hilarious moments was the two-man camel show. Despite the fact that there were real camels as far as the eye could see, apparently it was necessary to have a men-in-camel-costume show. Yes, the "camel" was led around by a trainer and encouraged to do various tricks, all of which it performed, well, not very well. I hope it was just there for humour value!

Camel costume show at the Sahara Festival

After that, the real business of the day got underway, and it was even funnier! Yes, the culmination of the day was a camel race, and can I just give you a big tip - never place a bet on a camel race. These animals were clearly not born to race. Getting them all lined up together for the start was tricky enough, but trying to get them to move forwards towards the finish line, well that was pretty much impossible. I'm afraid I can't even share any photos of the "race", I didn't take any because I was laughing too hard! The "winner" was a camel that just happened to stumble towards the finish line.

Anyway, the Sahara Festival takes place every year shortly after Christmas, so if you are heading to Tunisia be a bit smarter than me and actually time your visit - it's well worth it.

A typical Aussie Christmas, in pictures

2011-12-06T13:11:00.032+08:00

At this time of year, I start reading and hearing about the wintry Christmas experiences all my friends in the northern hemisphere are gearing up for. And we start to sing songs even down here in Australia that feature snowmen (something many Australians have never had the pleasure of creating!) and warming yourself by the fire ... yet Christmas falls right in the middle of summer for us and it's not unusual here in Perth to have temperatures around the century mark or even higher.

Cooling down during an Aussie Christmas

So I thought my northern hemisphere readers - of which there are many, hello up there! - might get a kick out of seeing a few pictures of my recent Christmases Down Under. Yes, it's hot and we either stay indoors in air-conditioned comfort, or head to the water outside - a paddle pool isn't usually enough but it's better than nothing!

As for food, I know some Australian families still do a more traditional-style meal (traditional being what the English brought here when they colonised us, but which means people spend hours in a hot kitchen when they really would rather be in the pool) - but in my family and many others I know, seafood is a big winner. When we head to my mother's place, she knows that most of us adore nothing better than a big plate of prawns!

And over at my father's side of the family, guess what? Prawns too! The focus wherever we are tends to be on finger food, buffet-style meals and lots of stuff that just needs to be pulled out of the fridge and laid out on the table - so that nobody has to get too hot and sweaty during the heat of Christmas Day.

I must admit that after spending several Christmases in Europe, including my favourite-ever Christmas in Finnish Lapland, Christmas in Australia just doesn't really seem quite right any more. A "real Christmas" should involve snow, or at the very least cold, grey weather made bearable by the excitement of the season. As soon as we consider our toddler old enough to make the long flight to Europe again (it was so easy the first time!) I think I'll be very tempted to arrange a German Christmas.

What are your family's Christmas traditions - and the important part of that, of course, is what do you eat?

Tasmania with a toddler: Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair

2011-12-05T05:21:00.000+08:00

After all the fun of planning our Tasmanian trip, we've finally been there and "done it", so to speak. Ten days in beautiful Tasmania equals a lot of blogging fodder, but I'm going to make you wait and trickle out a post once a week.

Dove Lake at Cradle Mountain

Our first proper destination was Cradle Mountain. Yes, it's a truly gorgeous place - especially when you're blessed with good weather. There were all kinds of exciting moments at Cradle Mountain, but the one I would have written home about (perhaps blogging is the modern writing home?) is this one:

Yes, a wombat! As regular readers will know, I'm a big wombat fan so seeing one ambling around in the wild was quite a thrill. I heard rumours of platypus too, but never got to see one of them ... maybe next time.

Anyway, we stayed in a two bedroom cabin in the main caravan park close to the national park entrance, and it was perfect for a family with a small child - mostly because there were wallabies that came visiting every morning and evening! Yes, my small boy quickly learnt to say "wallaby" and is still looking for them everywhere. It was also great to be in bush surroundings - I find that very calming.

Walking around Dove Lake was something only my husband got to do - it's a pretty easy walk but takes about two hours and neither of us are strong enough to carry our little boy for that long. With slightly older kids, or younger/lighter ones that fit in a backpack carrier, it'd be ideal. We settled for a stroll around the start of the walk then headed off to the Devils at Cradle centre to meet some Tasmanian devils until my husband finished the walk. There are a couple of walks that are possible even with small toddlers - in particular, we liked the suitably-named Enchanted Walk near Cradle Mountain Lodge (close to where we saw the wombat!) - it had just a couple of steps but was otherwise a good boardwalk and a spot we could use our stroller. Oh, and it was gorgeous!

A few days later, we ended up at the bottom of the Cradle Mountain/Lake St Clair National Park, a place I remembered well from my first visit to Tasmania. The weather was less kind here - a bitter November wind! - but we had a walk around the lake and a great lunch. And perhaps too many photos, if this "no more photos!" shot of my little boy is anything to go by.

No more photos, Mama!

Passport pirouette: In and out of Slovakia, again and again

2011-12-02T13:39:00.000+08:00

Slovak passport stamps ... lots of them

I have completely lost track of the number of times I have exited and re-entered Slovakia over the years, but of course particularly during the year that I lived there. I had to look up Bratislava on a map after accepting a job there (some might argue these steps should have been reversed, but I was young and easily pleased back then), but I soon discovered that it was in a really great location.

I've seen tourist advertising (and heard from locals themselves) which claim Slovakia is the centre of Europe. A quick glance at Wikipedia's entry on the geographical midpoint of Europe tells you there are long-running disputes about where this might be, but sadly Slovakia doesn't quite feature - but just the same, it is certainly in a very central location, and the capital of Bratislava is fantastic because it is less than an hour by train to Vienna (which makes them, disputes notwithstanding, the two closest capital cities in the world). From my balcony in Slovakia, I could see across the borders to both Austria and Hungary. How cool is that?

That's the view from my balcony - in the direction of Hungary - but obviously you need better weather to begin to imagine that Hungary's over there. In any case, the central location of Slovakia made it the ideal base for a year of travels and that's what helped fill up my passport pages with Slovak stamps like the ones above. Most commonly, I would hop on a train and take a day trip to Vienna, but I also drove up to the Czech Republic a few times and down to Hungary a couple of times too, all the while collecting Slovak stamps. Sadly now that all these countries have joined the EU, the days of filling up your passport with these stamps are over, so I'm quite pleased to have them all as a souvenir of my travels.

Santa sightseeing: Visiting that Christmas guy in Finland

2011-11-28T07:07:00.000+08:00

Me and my mate Santa Claus go back a long way. I certainly remember being very excited about his visits as a child, even though my parents never got that elaborate with reindeer footprints or other "evidence" of his visit, beyond the fact that the beer we left out for Santa had been drunk (although the carrots for the reindeer were not always eaten). I'd like to think everyone has enough of the childhood magic left in them to enjoy the idea of visiting Santa, and I certainly did when I spent a cold, snowy Christmas in Finnish Lapland.

Santa - the real one, according to the brochures, although I've already heard from my Canadian friend Charlotte that the real Santa lives, in fact, in Canada - lives right on the Arctic Circle, a short drive north of the town of Rovaniemi, Finland. He runs a small village there, with a restaurant and some shops and of course, Santa's offices.

The official office of Santa Claus, Finland

I lined up early one morning (it was still dark - but at that time of year, the sun doesn't put in a lazy appearance until almost midday!) to visit Santa Claus, and I was both nervous and a little bit thrilled. I should note, I had no children at the time, but I was far from the only childless person waiting to see the ol' bearded fellow. His helpers (elves, perhaps?) showed me in when it was my turn, and Santa chatted about Australia (he knew his geography very well) and I asked him to grant me a short winter in Germany (he obliged). As I left, he chatted on in another language, and I watched for a while and saw him converse fluently in Finnish, English, Swedish and Italian. Most impressive.

Letters to Santa in Santa's office

A large part of his office area was taken up by the Santa Claus post office. And look at all these letters! With various addresses (and often just "Santa Claus, North Pole), thousands of letters had made their way up to this tiny outpost of Finnish Lapland and had then been lovingly sorted by country. So if you've ever sent a letter up to Santa, it probably really truly got there! (I thought this was a masterpiece of cooperative postal work across the globe!). I walked around outside a bit - it was fun to straddle the Arctic Circle, but it soon got cold - then hopped on a bus back to Rovaniemi. But every Christmas, I think of visiting Santa, and I hope one day to take my small boy off to Finland to do the same.

Around Australia in a van: Sightseeing in Sydney

2011-11-24T13:55:00.025+08:00

Some people visit Sydney and say that climbing Sydney Harbour Bridge is their most memorable moment; others might pick a performance at the Opera House. But when I first visited Sydney, aged 12, the thing that stuck out most in my mind was, of all things, a skateboarding dog.

Dog skateboarding at Manly Beach, Sydney

We were all spending the day in Manly and my mother and sister must have gone off to do something, because just my father and I were alone near the beach (at least as I recall!). Suddenly, there was this dog, skateboarding along. Not only could he stand on the skateboard beautifully, he could also pick up the board in his mouth if he crashed, and put his front legs on and push off with his back legs, until he hopped up and continued skating. It was incredible! Fortunately my father had his camera at the ready and got this shot, but it wasn't until later (back in pre-digital days) when we had the film developed that my mother and sister truly believed what we'd seen.

Of course, we also did the obligatory Opera House visit and saw Circular Quay and the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but to be honest, I don't really remember much about those experiences. I have been back to Sydney quite a few times since then and, sadly, have never seen another skateboarding dog, but it is a fantastic city to visit even without seeing a clever canine. One of my favourite recent Sydney experiences was camping on Cockatoo Island in the middle of Sydney Harbour, and perhaps on my next visit I might get the courage up to do the Sydney Harbour Bridge climb. I'll be looking out for that dog (or his descendants!) though.

Russian-style trains, planes and automobiles

2011-11-21T14:34:00.000+08:00

I really wanted to write this post to show you a couple of photos of great Russian cars that I saw on my travels, but as I sat down to type, the title just forced its way in. I haven't managed quite as many modes of transport in Russia as my friends Helen and Andy (just check their post on an ill-fated trip to Nizhny Novgorod), but trains, planes and cars have all featured heavily.

The obvious train experience in Russia is a ride on the Trans-Siberian. It's no secret this was one of my favourite ever trips. I took a couple of weeks to do it, making stops along the way, but I would one day like to do the week-long trip straight - some might call me a glutton for punishment, but I consider more an enforced week of R and R.

Rosiya train from Vladivostok - first leg of my Trans-Siberian trip

I've flown into Vladivostok and to Moscow, but the flight with Vladivostok Air (Osaka, Japan to Vladivostok) was by far the most memorable. And not in an entirely good way. Well, the only good thing about it was that it has given me plenty of stories to tell. Quite frankly, I was terrified, and I'm not joking when the pilot announced after landing (phew!) that we should exit the plane row by row so as not to upset the balance of the aircraft. I'm glad he hadn't mentioned that before we took off. And I hope it was just something that was lost in translation.

My Vladivostok Air plane on the tarmac in Kansai

Being on the roads in Russia was another experience that shaved a few years off my life. Part of my homestay deals on each trip has involved a free pick-up from the stations or airports, but the various curious characters who have driven me each time could fill a (long) novel. But I've also seen some fantastic vehicles on the road: this Moskvitch (the Trabant of Russia) looks gorgeous but I'm sure didn't drive spectacularly well; the next photo shows some (I assume) police vehicles in St Petersburg, and I can't quite imagine they could perform in a chase (since the general car-owning public was, by this stage - 2005 - driving around in rather more modern vehicles!).

Blue Moskvitch in Listvyanka (Lake Baikal in the distance)

St Petersburg police cars on Nevsky Prospekt

Weekend Wanderings: Animals, animals, animals

2011-11-11T08:10:00.002+08:00

Ooh! 11/11/11 today - what an auspicious date! However, this edition of Weekend Wanderings will not, I'm afraid, be centred on auspicious dates. Instead, it's inspired by a topic my small boy just can't get enough of at the moment: animals. His current obsession (though he loves all animals) is gibbons, and the lovely Perth Zoo receives many visits from us for chats with the friendly gibbons.

So this week, I'm looking for your animal-related posts for our link-up fun. This might be a zoo or wildlife park you've visited, some animals you've come across in the wild, or even your very own pets at home. Of course, cute animal pictures are particularly welcome.

And while I'm also developing a very soft spot for gibbons, my heart really belongs to the underdog of Australian animals, the wombat. Earlier this year I blogged about my luck in being able to hug a wombat, so that's my contribution to this round of Weekend Wanderings.

You can link-up your post below (read the guidelines for Weekend Wanderings if you need) and share the joy by visiting some of the other animal posts you'll find (please leave a comment and tell them I sent you!). Get to it - I am ready to get my full fix of animal cuteness plus a few quiet moments while I show your animal photos to the small boy!

Just starting out on your world travels? So is Laura.

2011-11-09T14:23:00.005+08:00

I get lots of mail from readers, but the vast majority of it falls into two categories: travellers who've got home and are experiencing reverse culture shock, and people at the other end of the spectrum - would-be travellers who are a bit nervous about up and leaving their normal comfort zone and taking off into the world. Sometimes I forget that before I headed off to teach in Japan, I was pretty nervous about the whole idea too. Once you've travelled enough, it's easy to forget that some people might be (understandably) concerned about issues like safety, transport, language barriers and so on.

Anyway, this ramble is all a precursor to an interview I've just done with a British reader named Laura. She contacted me to get some advice about hitting the road to do lots of travel, and I must add that she doesn't sound nervous at all - mostly just excited! But I thought that hearing her thoughts before her travels - and hopefully, over the years, coming back to see how she's going on as she does travel - might prove helpful for some of my would-be traveller readers. So, without further rambling, here's Laura!

Laura the soon-to-be world traveller!

Why are you planning to travel slowly, spending several months in destinations when you can?
For me, I think to be able to fully appreciate a place, you need to spend more than two weeks in your chosen destination. I am a person who always wants to know just a little bit more, so I know I wouldn't feel fufilled leaving feeling like there are so many things undiscovered. To be able to know how you truly feel about somewhere, you need to live in it - see all the sights that an average tourist wouldn't get to see/do without being part of the community. The thought of having the opportunity to embrace all the cultures of the world, really excites me, and I only wish I had started earlier.

If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would it be, and why?
Oh my goodness, there are so many places that I can't wait to visit in the future, but the one that I am extremely eager to go to is Bali. Just the idea of locking yourself in your own serenity on an island as beautiful as Bali sounds absolutely wonderful to me. I am greatly interested in the Buddhist culture too, yet I know little about it, so I am definitely looking forward to finding out more about that. I have a feeling that a place like Bali is going to be a place that I will never want to come home from.

Is there anything about travelling which worries or scares you?
One of the main things I am scared about travelling, is the feeling of disappointment. I hope that after all of my dreaming, research and planning of where I want to go and what I want to do is as amazing as I expect. I am aware that there may be a few places that I go to that I may not enjoy, but I don't want to feel out of my comfort zone. However, I am a very adaptable and I do consider myself as adventurous, so I am excited to put that to the test.

Another factor that does worry me (as I'm sure it does everyone else) is the financial aspect of travelling. I will try to live on a minimum spend, and I intend to work whilst travelling, but I think it will always be a thought in the back of my mind.

Thanks so much Laura, it's really interesting to hear your thoughts before your first trip to Thailand in 2012, and I love your attitude towards travelling. I recently mentioned that I'm not particularly keen on going to Bali, but that's because I imagine it is completely full of Aussie tourists, but your description of it makes me consider changing my mind! And I wouldn't worry too much about being disappointed. There will definitely be (many) things on your travels that don't match your expectations in some way, but there will also be so many unexpected experiences that make up for that well and truly. I look forward to following you on your travels!

The leaning tower of ... Tartu, Estonia

2011-11-07T12:05:00.000+08:00

I visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa as a child, and I'm pretty sure if you'd asked me then about a country named Estonia I would have told you it was a made-up name, stuck inside the USSR as it was at the time. These days Estonia is one of my favourite destinations and among the many, many things to see, one of them is reminiscent of that tower in Pisa: the Tartu Art Museum.

The Tartu Art Museum by night and day

It's largely filled with Estonian art and is apparently quite safe - in fact the art gallery only moved in to this building relatively recently. Locals refer to it as the "Leaning House" and it's easy to find (I didn't come across any other crooked buildings in Tartu - just this one had some hiccups!).

Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after the gorgeous capital, Tallinn, and it's a great place to visit because it's a university town, full of life and vibe. Beyond the leaning art gallery, there is the famous (well, famous in Estonian terms) statue of two students kissing - it's become the symbol of the town, and a pretty joyous symbol it is!

But my favourite part of Tartu was exploring the old student prison in the University of Tartu. Going back many decades the lock-up was used to punish students who had committed various "university"-style crimes - including not returning library books on time! When I saw this small cell and the crimes that could land you there, I was rather grateful that my university days came too late, because I definitely would have landed in the lock-up.

Why budget accommodation in Warsaw beats a five-star hotel

2011-11-03T08:25:00.002+08:00

Let me first answer the question of the title of this post: budget accommodation beats a five-star hotel in Warsaw for many reasons, but not least of which is the fact that this place makes for a much more interesting blog post than a fancy spa and sheets with a high thread count. Well, at least in my opinion.

I came across these photos while writing up a piece on Warsaw and was instantly transported back to the week I spent in the Polish capital shortly after my Trans-Siberian journey. It was summer, although you would barely know it from the weather because this rainy photo is pretty typical of my Warsaw memories. Given that I was travelling for several months in between teaching jobs, the budget was, well, at a very budget level and accommodation was picked simply by choosing the cheapest available. At the time, it was the Majawa Hotel and Campsite - have a click over to Majawa's website because it is worth it to look at the moving clouds, sun rays and occasional birds flying over!

My travelling partner and I stayed in this bungalow. It was tiny inside (much tinier than this picture makes it appear) and for me, the most memorable feature was a light globe of such low wattage that I was literally unable to read a book at night. I guess the positive side of this was early nights, plenty of sleep and lots of energy for exploring Warsaw during the day. I also had plenty of cash left over to enjoy the city and its tasty food.

Despite spending so much time travelling, I can count on one hand the number of times I've stayed in even vaguely "posh" hotels. Unless somebody else is paying for it (and even then, I'd still rather pick somewhere more interesting) I am all for staying somewhere mid-range or budget, a place that probably has a bit more local character than a big chain luxury hotel, and where I'm more likely to meet some interesting locals and some interesting fellow travellers. And yes, I even enjoy camping - a tenting trip through Croatia is still one of my favourites - I can still remember lying in the tent in a beautiful green Croatian field feeling rather pleased to be close to nature.

Is it just me? Luxury or non-luxury - what's your preference? Let me know in the comments below.

Storing your luggage in Sapporo, Japan

2011-11-01T12:42:00.000+08:00

As I was looking through my photos from Japan to prepare my 25 things to do in Japan post, I came across this rather poor-quality snapshot and wondered what it was. The caption was "Sapporo Locker Rules" and I soon remembered that I had left my luggage in a locker in the main Sapporo station while I was off exploring Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan.

There were a number of rules involved with using these lockers. And fortunately, they had translated these rules into English. In case you (understandably) can't read the picture, the rules include a list of Forbidden Objects:

1. Hazardous substances which are volatile/explosive

Fair call, and I am pretty sure my bag was free of bombs or otherwise explosive items.

2. A dead body

!?! Because, of course, if I happen to be in possession of a dead body, storing it in a train station locker is exactly what would spring to mind. The list goes on to include logical items like guns, knives, offensive-smelling items, animals, and valuables, but I was pretty glad to know that my fellow locker-users would not be storing random corpses in these lockers.

Moving 14,000km from Germany to Australia

2011-10-30T12:43:00.001+08:00

Removalists off to load up our container in Heilbronn

I'm normally good on anniversaries but it was my husband who realised that today is exactly five years since we landed in Australia. I was returning after living overseas for about five and half years, and he was bravely arriving for the first time, ready to look for a job and settle in to an entirely new life.

Bye bye belongings!

That means that a bit over five years ago, we were nervously supervising the removalists who were loading up our container ready to ship to Australia. Whether or not to ship a container-load of our belongings was a big question for us but it definitely ended up being worthwhile; yes, it was pricey, but nothing like the cost of replacing a house full of furniture. I'd got used to living out of a backpack, but my husband was living in his home town with the belongings of a lifetime and it seemed crazy to get rid of them only to have to buy similar stuff in Australia.

So then our container was ready to be driven up to Hamburg and put on a boat bound for Perth, via Singapore (the same route we would take, but by plane!). Numerous "friends" had been entertaining us with stories of containers that had fallen off ships, or had got lost, or other exciting mishaps. On the strength of someone's story I made sure I took photos including the unique code of the container ... as if that might help? There was quite a delay with our container sitting in the harbour in Singapore, and then another delay as customs and quarantine had to check it over once it reached Australian soil ...

And then one day, our container arrived. Only it wasn't our container ... it was red instead of blue. Miraculously, it had our stuff inside. Yay!

Magical Miyajima, Japan (but watch out for the deer)

2011-10-27T10:17:00.000+08:00

Unless you're visiting Not A Ballerina for the very first time, you are probably fully aware that I love Japan. I certainly got rather excited the other week about the possibility of the Japan Tourist Agency giving away 10,000 free flights to Japan to get tourism going again. Then I realised - wow, that is a totally drastic thing to do, and no doubt that's because tourism is really, really suffering there after the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear incident.

So I decided in the spirit of Blog4NZ, the campaign which encouraged tourists to return to New Zealand after their earthquake, I should continue showing you the multitude of reasons why I think everyone should visit Japan. I started with my big list of 25 things to do in Japan and now I'm going to get more specific - Miyajima Island, just off Hiroshima in southern Japan.

Visiting Miyajima is easily done as a day trip from Hiroshima as it's just a short ferry ride away (you can see a part of the city across the water in the photo below). It's a strangely relaxed place for Japan, and quite a tourist attraction too, but it doesn't feel crowded. Well, except for the deer. While I was eating an ice cream on Miyajima, a deer stole (and ate) the map of the island I was holding in the other hand (you can see where my priorities were, even though getting around for the rest of the day was a bit tricky).

These photos show the gate (torii) of the famous Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima. It's a (deserving) UNESCO World Heritage site and is one of many Shinto shrines which I visited while in Japan - often distinguished by their bright orange paint.

There are a bunch of other things to do while on Miyajima including some great hiking and a couple of museums. The deer are everywhere though so hold on to your map if you want to get back to the ferry terminal!

(Note for pedants: I just discovered that technically, the island is called Itsukushima and the town I visited is Miyajima; but everyone I came across referred to the island as Miyajima. Just in case you were wondering).

T-shirt travel: Very far north, and opposites in travel

2011-10-25T12:28:00.000+08:00

This post is about opposites. Because it's occurred to me that there are lots of opposites in travel. But let me take you there step by step ...

Whenever it starts to warm up here, I ponder whether or not I'll survive another hot West Aussie summer. I used to love the hot weather (and I'm talking at least a few heat waves of over 40 degrees C - that's over 104 F for my non-Celsius readers) but my love seems to be fading year by year. That's about the time I remember that I actually don't mind the cold so much - especially since I finally learnt that enjoying cold weather is all about the clothing. And it doesn't get too much colder than being at the Arctic Circle right at the time of the winter solstice, right?

So yes, this snap of my favourite Finnish T-shirt (hmm ... when I think about it, my only Finnish T-shirt) reminds me that there are all kinds of extremes around the world and when the winter solstice next hits just north of Rovaniemi (where Santa lives!), I'll be down here in Perth getting ready for probably another very warm Christmas. Instead of donning six or seven layers, a woolly beanie, scarf and gloves, as I was in Finland, I'll be down to a swimsuit and enjoying the pool, or escaping inside to the air-conditioning. Pretty opposite, right?

And I think there are lots of other opposites in travel. I just saw a post about a $6,000 hotel room in Paris; I remember my $30 rented apartment room in Paris with fondness (although if someone else paid the $6,000, I would love to try it out). There are extroverted South American travelers and quietly-spoken Japanese tourists. There are foods as sweet as brigadeiro and as sour as ... well, what's something really sour?

What's your favourite set of travel opposites? Stretch your brain for my comment section :-)

10 secrets of this travel blogger

2011-10-24T14:10:00.001+08:00

It's meme time again. For all you non-bloggers, that means I've been tagged (by the lovely Rachel) to write a blog post on this particular topic: 10 things you probably didn't (and don't need to?!) know about me. Given that I've had a weekend with very little sleep (thanks to a small boy, not because I've been partying hard!), I welcomed the inspiration for a Monday post, but now that I'm trying to come up with ten secrets I'm not sure my brain can cope. Let's try!

I've never been to Bali. If you grew up in Perth you would know that for a Western Australian, this is tantamount to saying you have never been out of your own suburb. Bali holidays are cheaper and quicker from Perth than going anywhere else (yes, even to somewhere else within Australia). I guess one day I'll go. I've just never been that keen.
I know how to gut a fish using chopsticks. This is not a skill I practice very often (I learnt it in Japan) but I have managed to teach it to my Dad so I guess you could say I have mastered it.
"Fishing" in Japan
When I first visited a Japanese onsen (spa) I had absolutely no idea about the etiquette of undressing and washing oneself. I had to sneak embarrassed looks at my (unclothed) Japanese friend to copy what she was doing.
I have attended kendo tournaments in Japan, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany. My ex-boyfriend had a dream of learning kendo (a Japanese martial art which, I believe, features heavily in Star Wars sword fights) and I was the semi-willing co-traveller.
I once (almost literally) bumped into a then-famous sumo wrestler but he was so enormously huge in real life that I lost my nerve and didn't ask for a photo with him. I did, however, watch him demolish a massive lunch in about 2.65 seconds.
Kendo tournament in Prague (not many onlookers!)
When I was travelling on the Trans-Siberian I had an unpleasant experience on the toilet, when the provodnitsa (the woman in charge of the train carriage) threatened to unlock the door on me in the middle of me doing my business. She wanted to lock the door as we were approaching a station and she was pretty scary. I hurried up.
I actually enjoyed an orange juice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it when I visited Germany as a teenager. Now the idea repulses me! (The local teenagers told me it was the in thing. They all drank them!)
I have only ridden a tandem bike once in my lifetime, and it was on the Japanese island of Okinawa.
Tandem bike in Okinawa (the other rider dismounted to take the photo!)
I was struck with a strong urge to break through the protective cover and actually touch Anne Frank's diary when I visited the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. Fortunately I managed to control this urge.
If I could travel somewhere right this minute, it would be to Barcelona, as I have a craving for a particularly-good caramel-filled churro I enjoyed there.

If you want to catch up on ALL the online gossip about me, I've also got lists of seven new things and ten pieces of information which are all about me and the stories behind my travels. If you get through all that you'll probably know more about me than my husband does!

And finally, such a meme usually requires I tag some other bloggers to have a go at the same thing. So, for some of my blogging friends like The Wanderfull Traveler, The Ponder Room, Sami's Colourful World, jacsbac, Margaret River Correspondent, Amanda Alessi, Likes to Write and A Taste of Travel, please feel free to be inspired by this meme and write your own post on 10 things we don't know about you - I'll be very keen to read the gossip!

Weekend Wanderings: A few of our favourite things

2011-10-21T11:16:00.000+08:00

Ready for another fascinating round of Weekend Wanderings? I am, and this time the topic I've picked is "favourite things". One, because I'm a massive Sound of Music fan and have had "My Favorite Things" running round me head for a couple of days, and two, because I have had a postcard of my favourite building on my pin-up board for a while now and was looking for another excuse to talk about it.

So I'll tell you one of my favourite things first: St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. How can you not love it? Take a look:

St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow

I mean, this architect was making going to church so pleasurable that you would even want to sit outside and stare at the church for hours before going in (I can tell you that inside is gorgeous too - but not used as a church anymore). I had wanted to see this for so long before I first managed to visit Russia and was so excited to stand in front of it in real life.

Okay, enough of my favourite - on to yours! A favourite town, a favourite beach, a favourite day, a favourite food - I'm open to reading about anything you're passionate about! If you haven't played along with us before have a quick look through the Weekend Wanderings rules, then link up your post below, and have a look through some of the other favourite things you'll find there. Enjoy!

Nothing bad about Bad Wimpfen

2011-10-20T11:14:00.000+08:00

Summer views over Bad Wimpfen

I'm a big fan of non-famous places. (Okay, I don't mind New York or Paris either, but if I had to choose from one type or the other ... give me the unknowns.) The town I lived in while working in German, Heilbronn, is pretty low on the fame factor itself, so if you head a little bit north to the village of Bad Wimpfen, then you're really not anywhere famous.

And that is great! Bad Wimpfen is one of the prettiest German towns I've ever seen. It's full of fairytale Fachwerk houses, skinny winding alleyways and cobblestone streets and is basically as German as you'll get. It's home to the Blauer Turm (Blue Tower), a great spot for views looking over the town (and the place where both of these pictures were taken, in opposite seasons, obviously!).

Winter views over Bad Wimpfen

There are several excellent German-style restaurants in Bad Wimpfen - one with an entire menu consisting of Maultaschen, one of the local foods - and places for a good local beer or glass of local wine, and at Christmas time the place crowds up with German out-of-towners as they hang out at the Christmas markets there - my all-time favourite version, in fact.

The truth is, I was so besotted with Bad Wimpfen that we spent the night of our wedding in a hotel here. And stayed again last year when we returned to Germany (bigger hotel this time with less creaking, winding stairs - great for atmosphere but no good for prams!). I have no doubt I will return there again and again, just as I did when I was still living in Germany.

You know, I'm not sure I should actually be telling you all about Bad Wimpfen. I don't want a wave of foreign tourists to destroy my German paradise! Perhaps you could pretend you haven't read this post? Danke!!

25 things to do in Japan - my personal favourites!

2011-10-18T10:22:00.000+08:00

As part of my freelance work at Europe a la Carte, I've been writing up a bunch of articles on 25 things to do in particular European countries. It is such a lot of fun to think about countries in this way, and since I've been wondering about the itinerary I'd choose if I get to enter Japan's contest for free flights to the country, I decided to come up with a list of 25 things to do in Japan. Actually I came up with a longer list but I have whittled it down to 25. Now, I have to admit it's a biased list - I was thinking mostly of the places and activities I'd like my family to experience, and there's not much of Tokyo in it because I spent most of my time elsewhere (so yes, there's a lot centred around the Osaka/Kansai region). But it's my blog and my list so that's why my 25 things to do in Japan is just how it is. Enjoy (and add your ideas at the bottom, please!).

1. Mount Fuji
If you take the train between Osaka and Tokyo, you'll at least get a glimpse of Mount Fuji's familiar dome. But if you can arrange to be in Japan for the climbing season and have a reasonable level of fitness, climbing Mount Fuji is a fantastic experience.

View of Mount Fuji from the shinkansen

2. Miyajima, the island off Hiroshima
Containing the deservedly World Heritage-listed Itsukushima Shrine, Miyajima (which now is officially called Itsukushima, although I suspect most locals still say Miyajima - it only changed in 2005) is a surprisingly quiet and relaxing place and just a short boat trip from Hiroshima.

Famous torii at Miyajima

3. Okinawa
As you might guess, the island of Okinawa is kind of different to the rest of Japan. For a start, the locals had their own culture, somewhat different to that of the mainland, and on top of that, the American base there has given it a much greater Western influence. I still loved it.

Clear ocean in Okinawa

4. Tokyo Disneyland and Disney Sea
You might be surprised that I put this on my list but like all Aussie children of the 70s and 80s I grew up seeing the Disneyland castle on TV every Sunday evening and I always wanted to go to Disneyland. As a fully-grown child I got to visit Disneyland in Los Angeles and more recently Tokyo Disneyland and to be honest - I had a heap of fun! I also have this idea of taking me son to Tokyo Disneyland rather than Hong Kong, LA or Paris because the Tokyo version is not too far away and is full of lovely polite people - if you want to stand in a queue somewhere in the world, I recommend a queue of Japanese people.

5. Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum
It's an eerie sight when you come across the A-Bomb Dome building on the river's edge in Hiroshima, and the museum continues that feeling. More than likely there will also be long chains of paper cranes around the various memorials in the park area, too. It's all quite disconcerting but appropriately done and important to see. Hiroshima is a lovely city and you can easily distract yourself later in the day.

Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima

6. Kinkakuji - Golden Pavilion
This truly gorgeous temple is in Kyoto (a totally must-visit city!) and it really is golden! It's set on a lake and is just incredibly photogenic. When I visited, I had a typical foreigner-in-Japan experience when some locals gave me a bus ticket as a gift simply because I was a foreigner.

Kinkakuji, Kyoto

7. Nara Park and Todaiji
I used to live within cycling distance of this enormous park and visited regularly. It's full of (usually friendly) deer, lakes of koi and several temples, most impressively Todaiji which has a daibutsu (giant Buddha) inside.

Deer in Nara Park

8. Hanami - Cherry Blossom Viewing
My favourite season in Japan is easily cherry blossom season, or hanami. It's fickle - they only blossom beautifully for a relatively short time and it varies quite a lot each year - but it's so worth at least trying to time your trip right. It's such a fun time of year to be in Japan because all the locals are trying to make the most of the short window of blossoming too and going on trips and having picnics with friends.

Picnic spots being claimed at Osaka Castle Park

9. Himeji Castle
Himeji Castle is THE castle in Japan - the biggest, the most popular, the most typical Japanese-style castle, and so on. It's also pretty old - dating back to the 1300s - with a few renovations and refurbishments since then, of course. I consider it a must-visit.

10. Peace Park Nagasaki
Once I'd been to Hiroshima, I felt the need to get the full picture by also visiting Nagasaki. It turned out to be an interesting city for all kinds of reasons - it was one of the few places in Japan to have constant contact with foreigners over the years and the influence is obvious - but the Peace Park was once again very touching.

Peace Park, Nagasaki

11. Shikoku
This is the only thing in this whole list that I haven't actually done, but I want to, so it's here - Shikoku is one of the four main islands making up Japan, and I visited the other three, but didn't quite make it to Shikoku. Friends invited us (even though it wasn't far from Osaka, it wasn't too cheap or easy to get there) so we could drive there, but something happened - one of them was sick, perhaps? - and our trip was cancelled. So next time I'm in Japan, I want to visit Shikoku just to feel like I've "completed" Japan!

12. Okonomiyaki
Regular blog readers will already know that one of my favourite Japanese foods is okonomiyaki (a "cabbage pancake" - but much more delicious than it sounds). Osaka and Hiroshima have local specialities but you can buy it everywhere in all kinds of versions and it is SO delicious!

My friend Chie ready to eat okonomiyaki in Kyoto

13. Sumo Tournaments
Sumo wrestling is one of those sports that the average (especially young) Japanese person is not really interested in, and every time I went to a tournament most of my students would be rather surprised I was interested. But it's fascinating! There is so much culture and tradition bound up in it and it's such an interesting experience to spend a day at a sumo tournament.

Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka

14. Kiyomizudera
Kiyomizu in Kyoto was the very first temple I visited in Japan (well, in my life I suppose!) and I have been back several times since. It's an impressive structure on the side of a hill and it has some lovely traditions, like the two rocks you should walk between with your eyes closed - if you get to the other rock successfully then you will find true love in your lifetime!

Kiyomizudera during a special light festival

15. Izakaya Restaurants
All Japanese food is amazing, but the casual experience of an izakaya is something you may not expect. Some of my favourite izakayas had "holes in the floor" where you would sit on ground level at a table yet be able to dangle your feet underneath (a great compromise, I thought), served all different flavours of a sweet alcoholic drink called Chuhai and had the most amazing assortment of dishes to choose from. At an izakaya - kind of like a pub with good snack food - you generally order a bunch of different foods for your table and (in my experience anyway) then order a whole lot more again because they were so tasty!

16. Lake Toya
Hokkaido, the northern-most island of Japan and one that's pretty different to the rest - a lot emptier and colder! - is home to some incredible natural scenery and Lake Toya is easily one of my favourites. It's one of those picture-perfect lakes and the sculptures around the outside of it take full advantage of this!

A view over Lake Toya, Hokkaido

17. Arashiyama Monkeys
Near Kyoto, walk up the mountain at Arashiyama and you can see up close - up very close - a bunch of semi-tame monkeys which live there. Ironically there is a cage at the top of the mountain for humans - you can go inside the cage and then get a really close view of the monkeys as they climb around on your cage.

Monkey at Arashiyama, Kyoto

18. Koyasan
I visited Koyasan, not too far south of Osaka in Wakayama, at a quiet time in winter and particularly enjoyed wandering around the cemetery there - it's the largest in Japan and as I was there it was getting a light dusting of snow so it was particularly beautiful! When I return to Koyasan one day I would love to stay in one of the Buddhist monasteries there.

19. Fushimi-inari
I love the Shinto orange! This shrine is located in Kyoto and is famed for all its orange torii (like gates), built so close to each other that it becomes a bright orange tunnel. The torii are all donated so they have names of businesses on them - fortunately in Japanese kanji so it's not too disturbing to a Western eye!

Fushimi-inari near Kyoto

20. Mt Usu

On the edge of Hokkaido's Lake Toya is Mt Usu, a still-active volcano which last erupted in 2000, a couple of years before I visited. You can ride a cable-car type contraption to get to near the top and have some incredible views, and when I was there you could still see some damaged areas, too - I guess they have since fixed them up as the Lake Toya was used for the G8 Summit recently and was probably in proper working order for all the VIPs.

Destruction from Mount Usu's 2000 eruption

21. Kobe Earthquake Memorial

Kobe is such a great city and I visited it multiple times when I lived in Osaka. Unfortunately, part of the reason I like it is thanks to the terrible Kobe earthquake of 1995, because much of the city has been rebuilt since then so it's sleek, clean and modern. A part of the city I always took visitors too was the earthquake memorial at the harbour, where a part of the damage has been preserved, complete with crooked street lamps, as a reminder of the disaster. I think these things are important to remember because they become a part of the soul of the city and its people.

22. Sapporo
I found Sapporo - the main city of Hokkaido - to be a rather unique city by Japanese standards. It lacked the hustle and bustle of Osaka and Tokyo yet still seemed important, and it seemed more modern and more orderly than most places I'd been. I enjoyed going up Mt Moiwa for a meal and a view - I felt like I could nearly be in any small city in the world, it didn't quite feel like Japan anymore - strange but true!

Aka-renga Old Government Building in Sapporo

23. Shinkansen
You have not been in Japan until you have ridden the shinkansen, or bullet train. If you're travelling as a tourist you will very likely buy a JR Rail Pass and then you'll probably ride heaps of shinkansens, but because I was living there and not eligible for the pass, then I usually took the slower (and much cheaper) trains - but on my birthday trip to Tokyo I splurged and shot across the country like a speeding bullet!

24. Nagano Alpine Route
Some good friends took me on a weekend driving trip to Nagano (via incredibly expensive toll roads, I remember!) and I got to see some of the Japanese alpine area. Since then it's become popular for Australians to go skiing there so some of my friends probably know this area better than me.

Beautiful view in Nagano

25. Karaoke
I've saved the best for last! Many of us Westerners are shy about singing karaoke. First, you have to realise that in Japan it's never the kind where you sing in front of a large group of strangers - you go to a small "karaoke box", a usually cramped room with a handful of friends and sing away with your own song choices and lots of great snacks and drinks (sometimes ordered via the TV screen!). There is no need to sing well, there is only a need to have a good time. I would heartily encourage all of you to have a go because it's some of the best fun you can have in Japan!

Karaoke in Japan with Jules

Reader question: There's no place called home?

2011-10-17T10:36:00.000+08:00

My biggest move ever: from my German home to my Australian home

I get quite a few emails from readers who have found my blog while looking for resources on reverse culture shock, and last week another reader, Allan, left a message on the Facebook page about surviving reverse culture shock - and he has an interesting question for me and for Not A Ballerina readers:

What if you have been living, working and traveling in so many countries for so long that you no longer feel like anywhere is home?

One thing that came to mind is a blog I follow called The Longest Way Home, which is one man's (years-long) search for a new place to call home. It's a fascinating idea - to have no ties to a place you grew up in and to decide to travel the globe (slowly) looking for the ultimate place to live. Perhaps that's an option for people like Allan?

As I wrote already to Allan, I guess I'm lucky because I always felt like Perth would be home again - mostly because I still have some close family members here - and because I consider it a good place for kids to grow up. That's not to say that I don't often feel a pull to some of my other "homes", and in particular, of course, to Germany, my husband's homeland (although if I asked him, I'm pretty sure he'd say Perth is his home!).

But I'm certainly nowhere near the position that Allan seems to find himself in - when you have been wandering the globe for so long that nowhere really feels like home. Are there any readers out there with some tips or advice, either from personal experience or from people they know who've found themselves "globally homeless"? Please let me (and Allan) know in the comments.

Passport pirouette: Feeling criminal in Heathrow

2011-10-14T10:14:00.000+08:00

Landing, for once, in an English-speaking country, I really didn't expect to have any problems at passport control. Two British airport employees who seemed to be watching the queue (I'm not sure of their real function!) were quite literally having a cup of tea and I felt like all was right with the world.

But then it was my turn at the immigration counter. All of a sudden, I was being quizzed. More than you'd expect. Why? It turned out that my new passport was the problem. I'd run out of pages in my previous passport and applied for a new one via the Australian embassy in Berlin, since I was living in Germany at the time. What I hadn't realised (and wouldn't have worried about if I had) was that for some reason, the Berlin embassy had then shipped my application over to London and my new Australian passport actually stated that it had been issued in London. What the British immigration officers didn't understand was how I could have a new passport issued in London if I hadn't actually been to London in the last few years. Fair point.

It took some explaining, and some random computer checking on their part, to explain my way out of this one. They let me in. And they let me keep my record of unpleasant experiences at Heathrow intact.

Place names with dogs ... in Western Australia

2011-10-13T08:18:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, some of the oddest place names are the ones you're most familiar with. You know how it is when you live somewhere long enough - you get so used to place names that you forget they might sound odd to the ears of others. While planning a multi-generational shopping centre trip this week, I realised that Western Australia is home not just to some tongue-twisting Aboriginal place names but also a bunch of names including the word "dog". Is this a case of men naming places after their best friend instead of their wife?

I'm not sure, but soon we'll be heading over to an area known as Dog Swamp. There is a small swamp there (no dogs in it that I know of) and the more well-known Dog Swamp Shopping Centre. There is meant to be some connection between the suburb name of Yokine and dogs - the aboriginal word is similar - but I do think that "Dog Swamp" is a not entirely beautiful name.

Dog Rock in Albany

It reminded me that down in Albany, there's a similar place to shop: the Dog Rock Shopping Centre (and even a Dog Rock Hotel). These doggy places get their name from this big boulder which has somehow avoided being hauled away through decades of development around it. Yes, it looks like a dog (a bit); a lot more with the painted collar and heaps more if you're expecting a dog.

What is it about Western Australia and dogs? And don't even get me started on the Corrigin dog cemetery, where city folks will drive several hours so their late pooches can have a proper burial, tombstone and all. Perhaps it's just because I'm more of a cat person that I can't appreciate it all; or maybe I need to get in partnership with a big-time developer and open up the Cat Bowl shopping centre. You read it here first.

Let me know some of the more unusual place names near you in the comments!

Thanks to Stephen Edmonds for the image

Happy 100th birthday, Taiwan

2011-10-11T09:07:00.000+08:00

One of my former Taiwanese students (thanks David!) alerted me to the fact that yesterday was the 100th birthday of Taiwan (aka the Republic of China). I don't want to get all controversial about whether or not Taiwan is a country in its own right, but surely nobody will argue with me that it is certainly separate from China in many ways, not least of all physically. Anyway, I wanted to jump on the bandwagon and wish Taiwan a happy 100th birthday, and have a quick look at some of my favourite Taiwanese experiences while I'm at it. I spent most of my time in Taipei, so here are a few great Taipei spots ...

Lungshan Temple

One of the first places I went on arriving in Taipei was the Lungshan Temple. I was living in Japan at the time that I visited Taiwan so I'd had a lot of recent experience with Japanese temples, but this one was quite different - a strong smell of incense, plenty of colour and action. Plus part of it was being renovated and it was the first time I'd seen renovations being covered up by a billboard depicting the finished product - you can see part of it in the left of this picture. So clever!

Gardens of Chiang Kai Shek estate

I also keenly visited the Chiang Kai Shek estate - curiously back in my high school days my History curriculum covered copious amounts of Chinese history (and hardly any Australian!) so I was eager to get around to the (many) Chiang Kai Shek related spots in Taipei. Most of my pictures from the estate visit are of beautiful flowers, including an amazing orchid display! Not exactly what my history books would have led me to expect.

Chiang Kai Shek

And so of course I also visited the Chiang Kai Shek memorial building in central Taipei - in fact, my Twitter profile picture shows me on the steps of the building - and I got to see the man himself up close. This was an amazing place and getting there early in the morning and seeing numerous crowds of locals practising tai chi together was pretty special.

T-shirt travel: Stocking up in St Petersburg

2011-10-10T12:37:00.000+08:00

It's (almost) a whole month since I last mentioned Russia, so here I go again. I actually remember very well when I bought this T-shirt, at a stall outside near the Peter & Paul Fortress in St Petersburg. After almost three weeks on the Trans-Siberian and without access to a washing machine in Moscow either, my hand-washed, dried-in humid-bathrooms clothes were leaving a lot to be desired. That made me a real sucker for a cheap tourist T-shirt.

Nevsky Prospekt, as shown on my (wrinkly) T-shirt, is actually the main street in downtown St Pete's. It's a gorgeous main street too - wide, long, and full of fascinating sights, both touristy and everyday. Although you have to turn off it down one of the city's many canals (it's not called the Venice of the North for nothing) to reach my all-time favourite spot in St Petersburg - the Church on Spilled Blood.

I could drone on about St Petersburg for a hundred years, but instead I'll save up some of my other ramblings for a post another day. More than anything, right now I feel quite grateful to be living in the one spot for a while so I can regularly put my T-shirts through the washing machine. One of the big positives of not travelling. (Yes, there are some. Phew.)

Weekend Wanderings: Food, glorious food!

2011-10-07T13:04:00.000+08:00

Time to wander around the web for a weekend again with my next instalment of Weekend Wanderings. As it happens, I'm feeling a bit peckish so I decided the theme of this weekend's Wanderings should be FOOD.

Picking my favourite food post from the archives was quite tricky. After considering my giant okonomiyaki and my very sweet Brazilian brigadeiro, I finally settled on my post on Colombian ajiaco soup. This soup scores high on the sentimental value points since we eat it every winter with the same special friends, and on top of that, it is truly delicious.

Super-delicious ajiaco

So check out your own blog's back list and link up below with your favourite post about food. I can't wait to travel the world through your cuisines ... although I will try to do it on a full stomach lest your posts make me want to go off and eat way more than I should!

If you haven't joined up before, take a quick look at the Weekend Wanderings guidelines, and remember to have a look at the other links - share and share alike, as they say!

My Kiva loan to Peru and the Not A Ballerina Kiva team

2011-10-05T13:29:00.000+08:00

It was time again. My Kiva borrowers just keep paying back their loans on time so I had enough money sitting in my Kiva account to hop online and find another worthy entrepreneur to give a loan to. For those not in the know, Kiva is an organisation which helps predominantly small business owners in mostly developing countries by giving them a loan to help them expand their business somehow, and they pay it back (without interest). People like you and me get involved by loaning US$25 (or more, of course) and whammo, we make the world a slightly better place!

This time I decided my loan should go to South America - I've made two to Africa (Togo and South Sudan) and one in Asia (Tajikistan), so it was about time I sent my money to another spot. It didn't take me much browsing to find my target this time - a woman in Peru, close to my age, whose name is also Amanda. She runs a small general store and will spend her loan on buying more products to sell (including cookies, in fact - another point in her favour?!). She's from Ucayali in Peru and when I went looking I found this simply gorgeous picture of a sunrise in Ucayali - so I'm sharing it here.

Sunrise in Ucayali, Peru

While I was cruising around the Kiva site I remembered to do something I've wanted to do for ages - I have set up a Not A Ballerina team and I encourage any of my readers who are Kiva lenders - or who would like to be - to join my team. You still make your loans as an individual but you can also see how much of an impact we as a team can make - you know, the more the merrier! You can click through on my team invitation link to join me and then allocate new loans you make to our team.

Thanks to sdpuckett for the photo.

Meandering the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

2011-10-04T11:26:00.000+08:00

Meandering on the Mekong ...

This week, by some strange coincidence, not one, and not two, but three of my friends - none of who know each other - are exploring Vietnam. I had a fantastic backpacking trip through Vietnam and still yearn to return to see the bits I missed and to revisit pretty much everywhere I did go. I imagine it's one of those places that will have changed considerably by the time I get back there (and has already changed in the few years since I went) - hopefully mostly for the better.

One area that concerns me though is the Mekong Delta. I spent a day exploring it on various kinds of boats (progressively getting smaller!) while I was staying in Ho Chi Minh City. It was a great day out and I saw how the local communities rely on all the various bits of the river (and how they manage not to get lost in all the crossovers of water - I would!), but I wonder how it looks these days. With China upstream doing all kinds of not-so-natural stuff to the Mekong (including building lots of dams) there is no doubt that the Vietnamese end of it has also been affected.

Smiling on my Mekong trip

I've also read that climate change may cause many parts of the Mekong Delta to be flooded, leaving a whole heap of people with nowhere to live and nothing to do for work. This is definitely not good and is something to think about on your travels ... but in the meantime, if you do get to Vietnam, take some time to explore this beautiful area (and eat some pineapples). And I wonder if any of my friends are unknowingly bumping into each other this week?

Hot air ballooning is on my one-day list

2011-10-03T12:33:00.001+08:00

Thanks to the cover of our edition of Dr Seuss's Oh, The Places You'll Go! - yes, it features a hot air balloon - the small boy is going through a phase where he points out such balloons all over the place - in books, puzzles, and even where they don't really exist. But he's got me thinking - one day I'd really like to go hot air ballooning, but where would I do it? It's possible to do it not too far from Perth, in the Avon Valley, but I'd really rather save the experience for somewhere that's more exotic to me.

This led me to google around, as you do, and find a few spectacular spots where taking a hot air balloon ride is popular. I haven't decide which one is "the" place, but at least I've got some good ideas. And they include ...

Cappadocia, Turkey

When I lived in Europe I always planned to get down to Turkey for Anzac Day - many Australians make something of a "pilgrimage" to the town we call Gallipoli - but the timing never worked out. So, I've still got to get there one day, and I've heard Cappadocia is incredible - add a hot air balloon ride over the top and it sounds pretty much perfect.

Ballooning in Cappadocia, Turkey

Queenstown, New Zealand

Before you become amazed that I'm an Australian travel-lover who's never been to New Zealand, I'll remind you that Perth is actually considerably closer to Asia than it is to New Zealand. But I definitely want to go one day and now that I've discovered you can take scenic balloon rides over the gorgeous New Zealand landscape around Queenstown, there's another reason to go.

View from a Queenstown ballooning trip, New Zealand

Namib Desert, Namibia

I almost visited Namibia once - unfortunately my then-boyfriend and I split up and he went without me. After reading and planning for months about that trip, I've always been fascinated by Namibia and a balloon ride over the Namib Desert does sound spectacular. Plus I remember there are a whole heap of other gorgeous spots to visit there, lots of unique landscape and the chance to see some of my favourite animals (giraffes, anyone?) up close.

View from a balloon to the dunes of the Namib Desert, Namibia

So I've got three great ideas already, but I'm always open to more - have you got any hot air balloon trip tips for me? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks to myhsu, western4uk and jriggert for the images.

Apologies to Spain and the Mas Nou swimming pool

2011-09-29T13:03:00.000+08:00

I had another look through my old travel diaries (from 25 years ago in Europe) the other night and found what is probably the reason why my nine-year-old self was not impressed by Spain:

See the fine print? Under this attractive-looking (well, for the 80s) swimming pool at Mas Nou Caravan Park on the Costa Brava, Spain, I've written

It looks nice but when we got there it was yuck.

Very profound! I have often wondered why Spain features so low in my recollections of our time in Europe and I think I may have hit upon it. Swimming pools were a very important feature of caravan parks for my sister and I both during our European trip and a few years later as we campervanned around Australia, and if this place ended up with a rating of "yuck" it probably tinged my entire Spanish experience. I hadn't even remembered or really realised that I had been to Barcelona before until I saw a caravan park receipt for a city spot in this diary. It took me a while to return to Spain and I have really only explored Barcelona, but I adored it!

Now, I have done my research - the way we couldn't back then, online - and found out that the poor Mas Nou Caravan Park still exists. The photos (the modern ones) make it look lovely. I wonder what it's like today? My sister's off to Spain shortly so I might have to send her on a research trip for me!

Around Australia in a van: Mining at Muswellbrook

2011-09-27T12:21:00.000+08:00

Moving down from Queensland, the next stop in my family's semi-circumnavigation of Australia by van was, well, New South Wales (a fact that will be very obvious to Australian readers, but perhaps not to others). I don't quite remember the connection (although I'm pretty sure my mother will email me about it as soon as she reads this post) but we had a family friend living and working in Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley (Silent W in its name, in case you're wondering).

This man we knew worked at the coal mine there and was apparently important enough to invite visitors to explore the mines and one of its ginormous trucks. We got to pretend to drive one and to climb all over it as well, and they surely are incredible because even the wheels are significantly taller than me.

Such an Australian thing to do - exploring a mine. Later in life I got to see mines up close in Kalgoorlie and Newman back here in Western Australia, but I have never since had the chance to "drive" one of the trucks. These days mines are apparently very keen to hire female drivers for their trucks - no offence guys, but we gals are better (and safer) at it! - but until blogging and writing really sends me broke, I will probably avoid signing up to drive in a mine.

Chileans rate as great tourists and I agree

2011-09-26T12:17:00.000+08:00

ESL class party with Chileans circled. Find out why below!

My friend I-Lyn (previously mentioned for her discovery of tigers in Denmark) sent me an article on the World's best tourists last week and as I suspected from the title, it was both a bit odd and rather controversial! I guess anything categorising people by their nationality can be risky. I do it occasionally - I wasn't scared to say that Japanese people are lovely but it did make me a bit nervous to suggest that some Americans might need to travel more. But let me plough on because in some ways this list is kind of hilarious. To summarise, the world's best tourists (phew! what a big statement!) are:

Chilean
German
American
Swedish
Japanese
Italian
Australian
Chinese
English
Canadian

There are all kinds of bizarre and not-quite-so-bizarre reasons why the author of the article chose the nationalities he did, but the funniest is for number one - the Chileans. Or should I say Chilean, singular, because it seems that he has only ever met one Chilean, and had a particularly good experience with her, and has thus rated Chileans in the #1 spot. Well, I can do better because I have met at least two Chilean tourists, and they were wonderful people (hello Javier and Carolina!) so I agree!

Of course, I have my own stories about the way certain people from certain nationalities behave in certain situations, and although there are some definite trends I would be really hesitant to put these stereotypes in print. I guess I just have to pleased that we Aussies have come in at spot #7 on this list. Although according to the article I am not an Aussie because I don't follow the "Identifying travel feature" of Australians:

Wearing the Aussie uniform of shorts, singlet and flip-flops regardless of local climate or cultural sensitivities.

For proof, see this picture of me in Finland in -14 degrees C - no shorts and thongs for me here.

And on that chilly note, I'll leave you to go away and laugh about your favourite crazy tourist stories. Or share them below? But without nationalities, perhaps!

Swimming in a cathedral in Budapest

2011-09-23T15:26:00.000+08:00

In my post on the Heviz Baths in north-west Hungary, I hinted that there was an even more spectacular place to take a dip in Hungary - and here it is. Well, it's my personal favourite, anyway.

What I'm talking about is the Gellert Baths in Budapest, an incredible complex of various thermal baths, the most photogenic of which is basically a large swimming pool housed in a room that looks like a cathedral. As you can probably understand, there are sadly no cameras allowed inside the baths (although the cathedral-style bath is for everyone so you're wearing your swimsuit there) so thanks to Wikicommons for this idea of what it looks like (although personally I think it's a lot more majestic than this photo suggests).

There are other smaller baths and an outdoor area, plus all kinds of treatment rooms if you're after a massage or beauty treatments and so on. It's also part of the larger Gellert Hotel complex - my budget didn't stretch that far but if I return to Budapest rich it is definitely a place I would love to stay.

And just to prove I really was there - these were the tickets we used to get in and then to confirm how many hours we spent - if I remember correctly we had to pay the day fee up front and then received a refund for staying less than the full day. Although if I'd had more time on that trip, I could definitely have imagined spending the whole day swimming in a cathedral.

Picture pirouette: Flowers in the Netherlands

2011-09-22T11:40:00.000+08:00

I've given you a peek at some of the magic of the Keukenhof Gardens before, but there's more. Much more! With a little boy whose favourite word is "flower" at the moment, I wish I could whisk him over to the Netherlands (oh, and adjust things to the right season) so he could spend a day saying "flower, flower, flower!" as we wandered around these incredible gardens.

In fact, given my mother's love of tulip, perhaps a well-timed visit to Keukenhof could also satisfy my grand plan of having another exciting mother and daughter trip sometime in the future? Probably by that stage the small boy's interests will have moved on from flowers to trucks or karate or girls, but you never know.

China dreaming - literally

2011-09-21T08:32:00.000+08:00

I guess as a travel blogger it's no surprise that scenes in my dreams often take place in foreign countries, but the other night this went a step further and I dreamt about being in a country that I've never actually visited: China. (In fact, I tried to visit China on the way to my Trans-Siberian trip but SARS and flight cancellations waylaid me).

In my dream, I had apparently just arrived in a small town in China to live for some time (I presume as a teacher), and I'm afraid to say I'd been allocated a particularly dirty and dusty flat, whose entrance was through a large array of scaffolding.

I headed off to a nearby pharmacy - apparently the only shop nearby, and although it looked nothing like the one I visited in Japan on my first night there, it is curious that I also tried shopping at a pharmacy for necessities like food when I first hit Osaka! Unlike my apartment, the pharmacy was very modern, and through the window I saw a towel and thought I could get rid of some of the dust using that. Unfortunately when I made it to the counter, I realised the towel was part of a display and not for sale.

While in the pharmacy, I saw a guy advertising very cheap medical treatments on the back of his T-shirt - just 2 Yuan - and I realised I needed to look up the exchange rate when I got back to my apartment. Now that I type that, I'm pretty surprised - one of my pet hates is people who land in a country without knowing what the local currency is worth!

Anyway, China still remains on my list of places to travel to one day - and I hope it will be more spectacular than what my dream suggested. Have you been to China - or do you want to? And what are you tips on the best places to visit? Let me know below (but I don't need any more visits to Chinese pharmacies, thanks!).

Thanks to kafka4prez and hsingy for the pics via Flickr CC.

Leaving friends in foreign places - stay in touch!

2011-09-20T10:10:00.000+08:00

A recent post at the (beautifully-named) Farsickness blog talked about the problem of friendships when you live abroad. Not so much the friends you leave behind when you move abroad, but the friends you leave behind if you move on from your "new" home, and the friends (often fellow ex-pats) who also leave but scatter to other parts of the globe.

Aussie (other side of the country though!) and German friends in Heilbronn

It's kind of annoying because often, just making these friends - amidst culture shock and language barriers - was hard enough in the first place. It doesn't seem fair that after creating these friendships, you then have to leave them.

I have to admit that in the second half of my two years in Japan, I started to avoid making close friendships with fellow ex-pat teachers - because I got sick of being sad when they left. Of course, this just left me absolutely distraught when I had to leave all my Japanese friends, so I'm not sure I gained anything, but at least it all came at once!

My first Japanese teacher in Japan, Midori

Leaving foreign friends can be really sad - one of the saddest parts of living abroad. Thankfully, the modern wonders of social media like Facebook and communication tools like Skype have made it a lot easier (and cheaper) to stay in touch with friends you make abroad, but it's never the same.

Have you ever got a bit lazy about returning an email or sending a birthday message to one of these friends? I sure have. I often make resolutions to myself to stay in touch better with some of my best friends abroad, but it doesn't always work. However, since starting to write this post I have already sent a quick text message to a much beloved friend in the eastern states (of Australia, that is!), and am going to go and look up my old Japanese teacher's email address. And I'd encourage you to go off and do something similar, okay?!

Travels with my mother ... in Russia

2011-09-19T14:18:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was my mother's 70th birthday - happy birthday, to one of Not A Ballerina's most devoted readers! By coincidence, I have been writing pieces on Moscow and St Petersburg for Europe a la Carte and as a result I've been (electronically) flipping through the photos of the trip my Mum and I took to Russia together a few years ago. For both of us it is still one of our favourite ever trips - and the only time we've travelled together, just the two of us (hmm, we should do that more!), and I thought it only right to celebrate my mother's big birthday with a trip down Russian memory lane. There are so many highlights of our trip, so it's pretty hard to pick out the best bits, but here are a few:

Standing on Red Square, Moscow

On Red Square in the heart of Moscow

On my first trip to Russia, Red Square was closed off thanks to some kind of terrorist threat. I was so disappointed not to be able to walk on this famous square - but the second time round, with my mother, we could walk all over it as much as we want! I love this picture for many reasons, but having my beloved St Basil's Cathedral in the background is obviously one of them.

Eating out in St Petersburg

Eating in St Petersburg

Our delightful homestay host in St Petersburg was a wonderful source of information, but the best tip she gave us was to eat at a place called (I think) Leima, on a canal near the city centre. Suitably for my Mum and I, it had incredibly delicious vegetarian food, including to-die-for garlic rye bread which we took home for snacks each day and an eggplant dish so delicious we went back for it three times.

Day tripping to Sergiev Posad

On my first trip to Moscow, I didn't make it out of the city, but I was determined to the second time around. My Mum's knowledge of basic Russian helped us get the right bus to visit the town of Sergiev Posad, about an hour out of Moscow, a gorgeous place with some of my favourite onion domes, and a very good-value marketplace with lots of typical Russian souvenirs.

I could go on, but you get the idea! So, happy birthday (for yesterday) to my delightful Mum, and perhaps we need to start planning another dream trip before your next decade rolls around?

Weekend Wanderings: Your round-numbered posts!

2011-09-16T15:21:00.000+08:00

It's on again. Bloggers, get ready to link up below to share one of your favourite posts with the world again; readers, be prepared to start wandering the web and discovering some new blogs. Yes, it's Weekend Wanderings time!

I had so much fun looking back at my 100th, 200th, 300th and 400th posts this week that I thought I'd give you the chance to do the same. Well, in a small version. Pick a suitable "anniversary" post - a round number, at least, if you haven't made it into hundreds - and do let us know in your link title what number post it is (like I did with #250). As usual, though travel blogs are my big love, I'm not discriminatory and welcome any bloggers!

Since you've already seen all my "hundreds" posts this week, I thought I'd look back at half way, so I've linked up to my 250th post, about some of the things I learned about life (and me) after my first year of living abroad. And yes, it includes cute pictures of my former Japanese students (who are now - eek - getting close to starting university!).

If you haven't joined up before, take a quick look at the Weekend Wanderings guidelines, and remember to have a look at the other links - share and share alike, as they say!

R U OK? - Even travellers can get depressed

2011-09-15T12:52:00.001+08:00

Here in Australia today it's R U OK? Day. It's a day when we are encouraged to "check up" on people we're worried about; it's a time when we are reminded that talking about mental health issues like depression and suicide is really important. Many Australian bloggers have got behind the cause by posting about depression and suicide and you can read a bunch of them below, although I'd like to make special mention of a series of posts by my lovely friend Rachel at Because I Said So - I'd highly recommend reading her series called Dave, R U OK?, parts one, two and three.

When it comes to travel blogs, I'm pretty sure many people would think that talking about depression has no place here. After all, travel's all about fun and following your dreams and getting away from "real life". But do stop and think - because obviously, nobody's immune to suffering from depression and with the Australian stats showing one in five adults will experience depression at some stage, the odds are there that some of these people will be travellers and in fact, there are even some good reasons why some people will suffer depression while travelling - especially longer term travel like I've done.

Homesickness can be an obvious cause of depression - I remember during my first weeks in Japan that several fellow English teachers who had been in our training course in the first few days had returned to their home countries because they were so homesick. Culture shock and dealing with sometimes scary and different situations can also tip some travellers into depression.

Fortunately, my own story is kind of opposite. I suffered from an anxiety disorder in my early twenties - and looking back, probably some undiagnosed depression as well - and before I moved to Japan I was concerned about what would happen if my anxiety flared up again. In fact, I remember having some nightmares about the scenario of suffocating in one of those jam-packed Japanese trains at peak hour. But in my case, getting away from Australia seemed the perfect cure and I only ever felt anxious at very appropriate moments (like being in a speeding Egyptian taxi on a dark road with no headlights, for example).

Probably the nearest I came to travel causing me something close to depression was when I returned to live in Australia after almost six years away. Getting past my reverse culture shock was quite a trying time and I was lucky to have almost ideal circumstances - I think that for others, the shock of returning to "normal life" could be a lot more difficult to deal with.

So in the spirit of R U OK? Day, I'd love all my travelling and non-travelling friends to keep it in mind that we really need to talk about how we're feeling and to check in our fellow travellers (on the road and in life in general) now and again. And for my readers who are on the road on long-term trips, especially, do remember to look after your mental health as well - it can be lonely out there, it can be not what you expect, and it can be hard to find someone to talk to - so take care.

500 posts later and the ballerina is still (not) dancing ...

2011-09-14T08:14:00.000+08:00

If I could go back 500 posts, I might change the whole ballerina theme to this blog, but I'm too sentimental to do it now. Yes - 500 posts ago, I wrote for Not A Ballerina for the very first time. Of course, it has taken me over six years to reach this milestone so I am not exactly a prolific blogger but I am a steady one (and they win the race, if you recall).

Anzac Day, Perth

I had a browse through my blog and found some of my other significant milestone posts, and I think they give a balanced taste of what Not A Ballerina is all about. For example, my 100th post was about experiencing the Anzac tradition at the dawn ceremony in Perth. For those not in the know, Anzac Day is all about remembering those who have served for Australian defence forces and it is a solemn but proud day for us Aussies.

Post number 200 was my patriotic (patriotic on my husband's side, that is) post on Germany and a soccer tournament. Yes, you wouldn't have to read this blog for long to notice I have a bias towards Germany (although my bias towards Australia is bigger!). I'm not exactly a soccer maniac (well, not even close really) but it's a good demonstration of how travel broadens your horizons because soccer and especially the FIFA World Cup have often come up in my global wanderings.

By the time I got around to my 300th post, I was reminiscing about my first big trip through Europe as a nine-year-old and wrote about one of our most exciting episodes there, driving with the Italian police. That trip through Europe certainly cemented my love of travel - fortunately this run-in with the police didn't have the opposite effect.

Amagatsuji train station, Nara, Japan

My 400th post remains a sentimental one for me, with several photos of everyday life in Amagatsuji, the little town I lived in during my second year in Japan. That's another thing you'd notice if you hung around this blog for a while - I love Japan, and nearly all things Japanese. How could you not?

And my 500th post? Well, that's this one! I guess when I started this blog at my tiny wooden desk in my small flat in Heilbronn I didn't really know what it would lead to. Not only have I gone on to write 500 posts, it's also led to all kinds of freelance travel writing jobs, the opportunity to teach others how to blog, and to start a small consultancy business in blogging and social media. Thanks, blog. And happy 500th post.

Music on my travels: I heart Herbert Groenemeyer

2011-09-13T13:36:00.000+08:00

There is a lot of music in my life. Granted, these days a lot of it is nursery rhymes and children's songs, but even with them I have made sure we have a good selection of both German and English CDs plus several with multicultural kids' songs in all kinds of languages. And when I travel, I love to pick up local music.

Having lived in Germany and being reasonably fluent in German, I do tend to get quite excited about German language music. Yes, you might well think, clunky, non-romantic German might not be the language for inspiring and beautiful lyrics, but that would only be until you discovered my big German music crush, Herbert Groenemeyer. He is an extremely well-known German singer/songwriter (well-known in Germany, I mean), he has been around for years, and for my Aussie readers, he is perhaps something like the John Farnham of German pop culture except that he has almost literary lyrics and has never sung about a cleaning lady (he did sing about a sausage dish, though).

I first encountered Herbert Groenemeyer at fourteen, when I visited Germany on a school trip and bought a few cassettes (yes, cassettes) from the top ten of the time, one of which was Groenemeyer's album Luxus. When I returned to live in German my interest became a bit of an obsession and every now and then - this week, for instance - I have a Herbert week and listen to his music non-stop. I have even started trying to make some of his lyrics sound like nursery rhymes so I can get away with singing them more often. Listening to and singing along to his songs (or any German music, naturally) is also great revision for my needs-improvement German.

The video above is one of my favourite songs, Der Weg - it's sad (about his wife who died) and beautiful and the lyrics are so lovely. You can read about what they mean on About.com's Der Weg page if you're keen.

Do you try to get involved with local music when you travel? Do you get as obsessed as I do? Confess below!

Thanks to Sinn City Blog for the pic of a Hamburg Groenemeyer concert

New York City honeymoon, YMCA-style

2011-09-12T15:32:00.000+08:00

With the 10th anniversary of 9/11 over the weekend, I feel like I've been endlessly reading about New York but not always in a good way. I adore New York - and this is saying a lot since I'm really not a "big city" kind of girl. But New York is something very special and one of my dreams is to spend a few months living there one day - to immerse myself in all things New York.

Ubiquitous New York cabs

I've only been there once so far, and that was for part of our honeymoon trip. You might be a little shocked to learn that on this honeymoon trip to New York we stayed near Central Park ... in the YMCA hostel! We were a little short on cash at the time, as we were just preparing to move from Germany to Australia (if you've looked at the costs of shipping containers over that distance you may understand where I'm coming from) and had the prospect of being jobless for a few months. The rates for real hotels were ridiculously high (we thought) and we decided to stay centrally in the YMCA for a whole lot less. We did have the foresight to get our own double room though - before you imagine we spent part of our honeymoon in a dorm room with a dozen other backpackers!

New York apartments, just like in the movies!

As I predicted, I certainly didn't miss anything by not splashing out on a fancy hotel. We barely spent any time at the hostel anyway, because we were so busy being out and about in New York. With fantastic galleries (and we just scratched the surface with MoMA and the Guggenheim) and just the excitement of seeing so many familiar streets and scenes, I was enthralled. We sat in Starbucks and heard people talking about a sit-com script development at the next table. This is New York! We ate donuts and bagels and pizza and Hershey's chocolate (I still wear my Hershey's cap from Times Square) and just soaked up New York's one-off atmosphere.

I guess New York's particularly sad this week, and understandably so. But that city is so much more than its absence of towers and I will be back there one day, I promise!

Tigers in Denmark ... one day

2011-09-02T17:35:00.013+08:00

My lovely friend I-Lyn recently returned from a trip to Denmark (amongst other delicious places) and as I looked (enviously) through her photos on Facebook, I came across one with a tiger passing in front of her car. Yes, go back and read that again, she was in Denmark, northern Europe, not on safari in Africa. So how cool is this: there is a safari park in Denmark that looks just divine and I am adding it to my places I'd like to go list immediately!

The place she visited is Knuthenborg Safari Park near Maribo in southern Denmark. When I went online to investigate it I fell a little bit more in love because I read this as their opening statement on why we should visit:

The whole family will experience a day to remember. A day free from meaningless kitsch and plastic.

Giraffes in Knuthenborg Safari Park

I wonder if it's true because I don't remember ever visiting any animal-related park that didn't sell a bunch of animal toys in the gift shop on the way out. But anyway, you can drive and/or walk through various parts of the park and as well as having tigers cross in front of your car you'll see giraffe families (you know I love giraffes and look how lovely this family looks!), zebras, rhinos and all their African friends; apparently they also have an Australian bit with kangaroos and emus - I wonder how all these animals cope in winter. Anyway, although visiting Africa properly is still a big goal of mine, Denmark is certainly a lot closer to Germany (where, by necessity of in-laws, I travel often) so this might be a good first step.

Big thanks to I-Lyn for the cool photos!

Picture pirouette: Sailing ship near Nida, Lithuania

2011-09-01T09:22:00.003+08:00

I had a magical day on the Curonian Spit in Lithuania a few years back. Perhaps you've never heard of the Curonian Spit - I certainly hadn't - but it's a funny skinny bit of land running through the Baltic Sea, half of it belongs to Lithuania, and half of it is Kaliningrad, a tiny piece of Russia which is unconnected to the rest of Russia (strange, hey!).

It was a day with a bit of everything - a film crew were working on a movie in the sand dunes, I played mini-golf on a slightly overgrown outdoor course, I watched a rather wrinkly woman go skinny-dipping in the Baltic Sea, and I saw sailing ships like this. All in all, a highly recommended spot.

Happy Blog Day, and here are six diverse blogs ...

2011-08-31T09:29:00.055+08:00

August 31 is Blog Day (in case you didn't know) and this year it's the sixth time that Blog Day has been celebrated, making it just a matter of months younger than my own blog - how appropriate! To celebrate Blog Day this year, bloggers around the world will be putting together posts listing six new blogs that are from different cultures and topics to their own - a nice little experiment in blog and reader diversity, I guess.

As you'll know from my recent post on my advanced blogging course, I'm no stranger to blogs from different topics, but of course those blogs all originate from people living in Perth and thus don't exactly qualify for Blog Day. So I've sifted through my RSS feed and wandered around the web to bring you some of my favourite but rather random (in origin and topic) blogs. Some are large and popular; others are small, new and (so far) little-known. But they're all worth reading, IMHO.

Birding for a Lark. Clever title, hey? I'm a bit jealous. Now, I'm not exactly a birding person myself, mostly because beyond differentiating a magpie from a crow I'm not too talented, but this blog still interests me. Currently Rob's birding is taking place largely in Bulgaria, before that it was Libya, which is how I'd heard of his blog as he befriended my old colleagues Helen and Andy of Two Drifters.
Parenting, Illustrated with Crappy Pictures. As a newish parent, I adore this blog. The concept is great and I wish I'd thought of it. It's exactly as the title says and uses simple pictures drawn in Paint to illustrate the typical tales of parenting you'll find in any parenting blog, but the pictures just make it hilarious and so lifelike.
Em's Journey. Blogging really began as journalling, I think, and this blog shows you exactly why. This is a friend of a friend who's fighting breast cancer at the moment and her blog entries are the raw truth on how she's going. She's so upbeat and positive about it and I think these kind of blogs are so important and inspiring to people who come across them later when they're going through something similar.
This is Not the Six Word Novel. Definitely on the famous side of blogs, this one has a spin-off book on the way! It's written by Jen Campbell who works in bookselling in the UK and often writes about the bizarre questions bookshop customers ask and so the book that's coming is "Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops". And you'd be surprised how weird they can be!
Project 183. I've been following Heath's blog for years - he's an Aussie ex-pat in London at the moment - as he tries to complete 183 goals he's set himself. They're quite diverse which makes it interesting and his latest post about competing in a Scrabble tournament (without training!) is hilarious.
Free Amigurumi Patterns. I told you this list would be diverse! A little known fact about me is that I don't mind doing the odd spot of crocheting in my free time. (Ha! Like I have free time these days!). Anyway, this site has provided me with a few handy patterns. Cute stuff.

Perth's big blue sky

2011-08-29T14:55:00.000+08:00

Today's Perth sky. Blue,big and beautiful.

I've often thought, when I return to Australia from overseas, that the sky is simply bigger here. And I've heard other people say it too, so I'm not entirely mad. Obviously, it is the same sky up there, but I think living in a wide, open, flat land, with very few tall buildings around, and a heck of a lot of sunshine all goes to giving the impression that the sky up there really is bigger.

This is one of the things I really love about Perth, and Australia in general. When I lived in a tiny apartment in Japan, and didn't have much of a chance of having a clear, empty view (even in the smallish, quiet suburb of Amagatsuji where I lived in my second year there), I relished any chance to take a big trip to the mountains or sometimes the coast where the view of the sky was more undisturbed.

I guess I grew up here, and that makes a big empty sky my normal. What's your normal? Have you seen a bigger sky somewhere on your travels? Take the time to look up above your head and then let me know what you see!

Weekend Wanderings: Asia, Asia and more Asia!

2011-08-26T08:31:00.013+08:00

It's Weekend Wanderings time again, when I invite all my bloggy friends (and bloggy strangers!) to link up one of their old posts so both bloggers and readers can discover some interesting new blogs. I've been contemplating future holidays this week and with Asia on our doorstep (pause for interesting fact: Perth is closer to Indonesia than Sydney) it's an obvious destination. Despite that, I haven't seen much of south-east Asia and only consider I have a reasonable grasp on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore. So there's plenty left for me to see - yay! And your posts might help me find my dream destination.

So, if you haven't joined in before, please have a quick look at the Weekend Wanderings rules, then link up one of your blog's posts on Asia. Of course, as usual, I'm pretty flexible, so posts about Asian food or festivals or culture in some way - even if it's your local Chinese restaurant - qualify too.

About to flip the giant okonomiyaki ("cabbage pancake") in Osaka

My contribution to the Asian edition of Weekend Wanderings was a difficult one to pick - I've written plenty that fit - but I've gone with one of my favourite unusual experiences in Japan, watching the cooking of the world record-breaking giant okonomiyaki at Osaka Castle Park. This is probably very different from other Asian experiences you might be able to read about below - but that's Asia, right? Full of all kinds of interesting things to see and people to meet.

Happy weekend linking and reading!

1. Giant okonomiyaki in Japan	2. My Thai: A Month in New Siam
3. Traveling the World with No GPS	4. Apples &Twigs
5. Plain plane food

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My international flag obsession and how it's obviously genetic

2011-08-25T08:54:00.001+08:00

After being driven around Europe for six months as a child, I developed quite an obsession with things geographical: capital cities, currencies, languages and especially flags. One of the local banks put out a poster every year or two showing all the flags of the world and I adored this poster. Yes, I was a geek.

But apparently geeks breed geeks. This photo is not a set up - the small boy was left to his own devices for a minute or two and flipped over the pages in this big standing-up book thing to the page full of flags. However, given that he is not even two yet, I should say he's not exactly pointing to particular country's flags on demand. What he is mostly interested in is the flags which feature moons (a surprising number, actually - and the background is explained in Wikipedia's bit on Islamic flags) because he's going through a moon-obsession phase. I did manage to briefly distract him with flags featuring stars (also a large number) but the moons won over. Pakistan was a particular favourite.

But I'm hoping that his interest in flags will remain. And grow. And he'll be begging me to take him to some distant country or other and I'll just have to go travelling again, you know, for the sake of his development.

Web pirouette: More travel writing than I thought

2011-08-24T13:05:00.000+08:00

At my blogging course on the weekend, one of the participants asked me about the pirouette tag which seemed to have more posts attached to it than any other. Apart from explaining it was a great example of the "ballerina syndrome" (by which inexperienced bloggers choose "clever" titles which are absolutely hopeless when it comes to people searching for them), it's a tag where I record the other travel writing I've been doing lately.

Seurasaari, Helsinki, in mid-winter

I have the feeling that I do a lot less these days but when I actually sat down to put together this post, I realised I'm doing a lot more freelance writing than I'd realised - and it's still a lot of fun. So without further rambling, here is a selection of some of the travel writing that's helped paid my mortgage these past few months:

Something I have trouble thinking back to - How to pick your destination for your first trip abroad. I've been trying to be less judgemental of others and in doing so recognised that lots of people have quite reasonable concerns and fears about travelling, and so I've tried to help them out ...
Despite my reservations about its grey weather, I did manage to put together a post on 25 fun things to do in England - without mentioning London once.
For people around Perth or visitors to my fair city, I've got a great Japanese restaurant - Shou Japanese Kitchen in the northern suburbs - and a fantastic brand new cafe, Louis Baxters in Subiaco - ready for your dining and drinking pleasure.
Remembering back to my early travelling days when most museums just didn't excite me (they do now!), I also wrote a piece on 9 tips to make sure museums and galleries are never boring.
And as I sat shivering through a (not very cold) Perth winter my mind was cast back to my time in (properly cold) Finland, with my piece on Tips for things to do in Helsinki. And yes, that's why there's that chilly-looking photo from Helsinki up above.

Spreading my love of blogging around Perth

2011-08-23T11:50:00.000+08:00

On the weekend I was lucky enough to spend a day with a bunch of Perth bloggers, as I ran a course on Advanced Blogging for UWA Extension. It's almost a year since I first ran a beginner blogging course for them, and I've done several more of those since, but I have to say, this advanced course was the most fun yet!

After blogging for six years in a pretty solitary way - as a lot of bloggers do, I suspect - it's so lovely to be meeting people face-to-face who are so enthusiastic and excited about their blogs and who are ready and keen to hear about all the bloggy-stuff I want to tell them. Fitting everything I wanted to share into just one day was quite a challenge and but I hope my students were left just on the good side of overwhelmed and definitely in a state of inspiration, ready to go home and blog themselves silly.

The "Perth and Other Places" blog

The participants in my advanced course, of course, have already set up their blogs, and in some cases have been plugging away for some years, although most of their blog-lives could be measured in months. Their blog niches are many and varied (although a few are travel or writing related - a bonus for me!) and so are their personalities, but I think we all managed to have a fun day together. But what I really am writing this post for is to introduce some of these exciting blogs to the wider world. And to say, yes, there are so many fantastic up-and-coming bloggers in Perth - yay for my hometown! So without further rambling, here are some of these blogs:

Perth and Other Places is a beautiful blog full of photographs of (um, yes, you guessed it) Perth and other places! One of two very travel-ish blogs in my list ... closely followed by -
A Taste of Travel - a beautiful blog with a beautiful name (I think I've used up my mentions of the word "beautiful" now!) - so far centred on travels in Italy with, of course, a heavy emphasis on food - don't read this blog on an empty stomach!
The Ponder Room - an inspiring blog about inspiring people and places and happenings and ... well, all kinds of things! The Ponder Room blog actually began in one of my beginner courses so of course, I'm extra proud of this one ... as well as
Creativity Doesn't Come From a PhD - a graphic design-ish blog from the friendliest Gen Y artist-type I know. Lots of interesting stuff on this one.
The Chook House - a writing blog from a real-life published writer whose novel I just finished reading (I love getting to meet all these cool people on my blogging courses!) - and with a hat-tip to travel too, as there are some great posts about a recent Hawaii trip.
Beyond IQ - a business-based blog, and such an interesting business, involving coaching about communication and compassion in the workplace.

If they spark some interest for you, do pop by and visit - and leave a comment to say you called!

Getting past reverse culture shock: My Australian story

2011-08-22T11:37:00.000+08:00

Long-term readers will know that every now and then I rave on about reverse culture shock - that awkward feeling you get when you don't quite fit back into your own country after spending an extended amount of time abroad. I do think it took me a good couple of years to really feel at home again here in Australia, even though it's a country I really do love.

Australia ... a country where you can enjoy the beach in winter

But today I read a column by Nikki Gemmell, one of my all-time favourite novelists, who has just returned to Australia after living in London for many years. She had a similar reluctance, over the years, about returning to Australia - she even wrote a whole book about it, Why you are Australian. Something she wrote in her weekend column summed up my experience pretty accurately (and much more beautifully than I could!):

I feel like I’m being marinated in a sense of belonging, something I fought tooth and nail against in the younger, wilder years. But I need it as I age. Returning is about the serenity and stillness that comes from being part of a deeply known world; the ease of it. My husband and I spent years being outsiders in foreign lands and revelling in that status; but my God, the relief, now, of belonging.

Of course, enjoying a feeling of belonging doesn't mean I don't constantly have the urge to travel, or the desire to live somewhere other than Australia for a while some time in the (probably distant!) future, but I certainly don't feel the same unease I had when I first returned to Australia. I'm pretty sure that part of this comes from having started a family here and wanting to see my son grow up enjoying all the perks of Australia - and certainly his obsession with being outdoors would make life in a less sunny country pretty tricky! But I think I'm also just at a stage in life (I don't want to say "age", just stage!) where being at home fits in pretty well with me.

I know I often have readers drop by who are going through reverse culture shock - I hope this gives you some hope for the future - it does get better! Do let me know your experiences below in the comments.

Picture pirouette: Heviz Thermal Baths, Hungary

2011-08-18T11:41:00.000+08:00

Heviz Thermal Baths, Hungary

I'm not sure how it's happened that despite two thoroughly enjoyable trips to Hungary, I've never blogged about the country. I'm rectifying that with showing you a photo from what's probably my favourite Hungarian experience - a dip in the Heviz Thermal Baths in the north-west. Pretty flowers, hey? Not so pretty when you unwittingly touch their roots with your toes while you're trying to relax, but still. Although the weather looks a bit grey this was actually in summer - but it doesn't really matter as these baths have a (natural) warm temperature usually around 33 C (and always above 26 C).

Heviz Thermal Baths, Hungary

This definitely rates as one of the prettiest places I've ever bathed - but the big winner actually goes to another Hungarian spot - you'll have to wait to hear about that one. I'm feeling inspired to head off for a nice warm bath now instead of doing any more blogging!

Five quirky reasons to visit Japan

2011-08-16T08:18:00.000+08:00

I'm getting keener and keener to visit Japan again soon(ish) and any blog posts about Japan are grabbing my attention with a vice-like grip. And so it was with a recent Enduring Wanderlust post on 5 Great Reasons to Visit Japan. They were great reasons: delicious food (even if they failed to mention okonomiyaki), the culture, the cherry blossom, the trains (oh! I love a speedy shinkansen!) and the landscapes and cityscapes.

Great reasons, but I came away thinking these reasons were kind of on the mainstream side and although Japan is a modern, more-or-less Western country, the main reasons I adore the place tend to belong on its quirkier side. Which led me to my own counter-post, with five quirky reasons to visit Japan.

1. Japan loves the English language

... and Japanese marketers are not afraid to use it, with little regard for how their weird and wonderful translations might come across. I found it so fascinating that the English language was so beloved and trendy there - and that some shops might use our alphabet exclusively for their names despite the fact that a significant proportion of (especially older) Japanese then wouldn't even be able to read it.

2. Japanese are shy people, but they LOVE karaoke

It takes a special personality trait to sing into a microphone in front of people who've never heard you sing before (and I have to admit at the start of my time in Japan, it also took me a few drinks!). But I love the fact that Japanese people will all have a go, no matter how badly they sing - karaoke is a moment when they can all laugh at themselves and have a heap of fun.

3. Authorities plant cabbages as flowers for New Year

These cabbage-flowers were at Yakushiji Temple in Nara. I suppose they do pretty much look like flowers, but I'm betting some people eat them.

4. In autumn, you can get deep-fried maple leaves

By rights, this quirky food should probably belong to Canada. Japanese are very keen on pursuing different activities depending on the season and the counterpoint to cherry blossom-viewing, six months on, is going somewhere to see the autumn leaves. I never tried a deep-fried one but my students assured me they had no particular taste.

5. In Japan, fishing can be very easy

Some friends were very keen to take me fishing and assured me we would definitely catch some fish for our lunch. I soon realised why - a man brought a bucket of wriggling fish and dumped them into our allocated section of the "river" and we then went about the process of catching them. Cheating? Yes. Full bellies? Also yes.

Tips for travel planning: My Tasmania workings

2011-08-15T08:47:00.022+08:00

Ann from Likes to Write asked me a very good question recently: have I ever written a post about planning a trip? She was looking for tips as she plans a European holiday and since I'm just in the process of planning my (smaller!) trip to Tasmania, I realised I did have some tips to share - so here they are, Ann!

First up, for me the most important thing is that planning a trip should be fun. It shouldn't feel like hard work, because what's the point of doing hard work related to a holiday? This means I always put aside some special time to do trip planning when I know I can enjoy it - mostly with a glass of wine in front of my computer when I don't have any other pressures.

Once I get there, I make drawings like this. (Warning: I am not an artist).

My first scribbles on our Tasmanian trip

I like to start with a really rough idea of an itinerary and then get more detailed. This depends, of course, on how much I'm booking in advance - in my old pre-child backpacking days I would plan a lot less and really just take things a day or a week at a time, but with the small boy in tow things are a little different, and I'm booking all our Tasmanian accommodation in advance.

So after assembling some ideas on where to visit (via Google and tips from readers) I scribbled some of my destination ideas into my very rough map and used Google Maps (how did I plan trips without it?!) to get the driving distances. This was important this time round since the boy is of an age where sitting in the car for too long is not on his list of favourite activities. So this step got me figuring out what was possible and of course, then I started prioritising what we might like to do - taking into account my husband's preference for "lots of nature and no cities", along with nap times (probably of the small boy but perhaps of the husband too!).

Doesn't look like Tasmania any more? But it is!

With an itinerary thus planned (and eliminating several ideas using the "less is more" travel principle I ascribe to!) I looked into options for booking accommodation. Usually I like to book directly with the accommodation provider but I'd also got a quote from a local agent and when I compared the costs they came out very favourably (the same, in fact), and with a lot less hassle, so I got them to do the dirty work. And thank goodness for Google because it sure beats trying to figure it out from a guide book which is probably way out of date by the time you land in your destination.

As for the day-to-day activities of my trip, I prefer to use an "informed spontaneous" approach. In other words, I read a lot ahead of time about the kinds of activities available - hikes, museums, wineries, beaches, and so on - and then once we arrive, see what takes our fancy. Long gone are the days when I tried to see everything in a place in fear that I might miss the best thing and never be able to come back. I've noticed I enjoy travelling no matter what I decide to do or see. And I also enjoying planning my travels.

What are your travel planning trips? Please add them below to help me, and to help Ann!

Weekend Wanderings: Islands we love

2011-08-12T14:55:00.002+08:00

This weekend, Not A Ballerina's Weekend Wanderings link-up is on again. Since I've been using a few spare minutes this week to plan our upcoming trip to Tasmania, Australia's only island-state, I thought that the theme for this weekend should be islands. Any post that you can vaguely relate to being about an island is fair game. If you haven't played before, check the Weekend Wandering rules, and tell all your bloggy friends to come over and join in.

My island link-up post is not about some far-flung tropical island holiday - in fact, I've had far too few of those! - but about a tiny island in the middle of Sydney Harbour. A couple of years back we went camping on Cockatoo Island and found it just so incredible that we could sleep in a tent in the middle of one of the most scenic harbours in the world (and not pay the earth for it). Definitely a highly-recommended experience if you're passing through Sydney (or, indeed, if you live there!).

Early morning view from Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour

So, get linking, I'm looking forward to reading your island posts - and in particular the tropical paradise kind of island so I can do some vicarious travel. Go to it!

1. Cockatoo Island camping	2. Exposure Therapy in Boracay
3. Zakynthos, Greece	4. Roadtrip to Chiloe, Chile
5. Sea Lions, Essex Rock, and Boullanger Island.	6. Bali: Off the Beaten Track and onto Unpaved Roads
7. Carnac Island

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Guest post: The unusual Japanese cure for toothache

2011-08-09T09:19:00.003+08:00

We haven't had a guest post here for a while but today's is a special one from a blogging friend who I knew in real life first - before she even started her blog! Rachel usually blogs about parenting over at Because I Said So but like me, she's spent plenty of time living abroad and travelling and has heaps of great travel stories to tell. Take it away, Rachel ...

Have you ever been sick enough to require medical attention whilst overseas? A few years back, while in the UK for the summer break from university, I was deliriously sick with the flu. I felt as though I was endlessly walking, surrounded by unfamiliar faces in a crowded environment and that it was constantly dark. Oh no...wait...that last part was true as it was the English winter and daylight hours were over by 3pm! I ended up having to visit a doctor which was fairly easy - no language barrier or unexpected medical advice - and within a couple of days I was back on my feet enjoying my trip.

A few years later I found myself in Japan with a bad toothache. I'm not one for making visits to the dentist - not because of the drill as you might expect, but because I have this overwhelming fear of needles - so that was not an option. I wasn't sure where I could get cloves from (my 'at home' remedy) either. I figured I would just sleep it off and hope that it would go away.

Japanese dental clinic: Rachel wasn't going to one of these!

Sometime in the middle of the night I realised that the pain wasn't going to go away and that I would have to take a pain killer if I hoped to get some sleep. We had been in Japan for a while at that point and my supply of Panadol from home had unfortunately run out, so I decided to make a quick trip down to the convenience store.

After scouring the store with little success, I plucked up my courage and went to ask the sales assistant. I didn't know the word for 'pain killer' in Japanese but I did know the grammar required to ask for something. Considering Japanese is quite a syllabic language and many foreign words are included into the language by changing the pronunciation slightly, I figured I could have a go at asking for some 'aspirin'.

"Sumimasen, ha ga itai. Asupurin ga arimasuka" (Excuse me, my tooth hurts. Do you have Aspirin?)

The sales assistant looked puzzled at me for a moment, which I guessed either meant he was surprised to hear such fantastic Japanese coming from a foreigner's mouth ... or he had no idea what I was asking for. A moment later he motioned that I should follow him and led me towards the back of the store to the fridge section and then pointed to the desserts.

"Purin" (pudding) he said quizzically and left me there.

Japanese pudding ... "purin"

Well, I was just as puzzled as he was, but I learnt two things that night. One, "pudding" and "aspirin" sound remarkably the same in Japanese, and two, they don't sell medicines in convenience stores in Japan, which is decidedly inconvenient!

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Thanks Amanda for letting me share one of my funnier moments from living in Japan on your blog!

German not-quite-cuisine - I want some Currywurst

2011-08-08T09:00:00.000+08:00

Currywurst mit Pommes

If this photo makes you hungry, it is totally not my fault - blame Ally at The Alibi who wrote about eating Currywurst in Berlin last week. If it doesn't make you hungry and you're wondering what on earth it really is, read on and all will be revealed.

Currywurst, if you haven't had the pleasure of snacking on it in Germany, consists of a chopped up sausage covered in a sauce made from tomato ketchup mixed with curry powder. Well, that's the simple version of it, and that's how I like to recreate it here. Some of you may remember that I'm semi-vegetarian but this is by upbringing more than moral choice so it happens that Currywurst is on my approved list of foods! You can buy it all over Germany from little snack stands and it is inevitably served in one of these flimsy paper plates and yes, the last time I had one (last year in Koblenz) I managed to spill some down a white T-shirt. So beware.

But try it. Currywurst is such a part of German life that there is even a song about it. And I'm not talking an advertising jingle or something (like we Aussies might say of our Happy Little Vegemites song) but a song by a popular pop singer, Herbert Gronemeyer.

Of course, the lyrics are in German but it's basically a song about a bloke who's really craving Currywurst and wants his brother-in-law to come with him and get one. You can see how much the crowd get into it!

Thanks to WordRidden for the eat-me-now photo! (from Flickr under Creative Commons)

Around Australia in a van: A happy Hervey Bay Christmas

2011-08-05T11:41:00.000+08:00

In my series on our family trek around Australia I left you back in Far North Queensland, but just in time for Christmas we moved a little further south to a town called Hervey Bay (and it sounds like Harvey, despite the spelling. Can anyone explain that to me?). Kids being kids, we obviously wanted to celebrate Christmas properly and for my sister and I that involved two things: swimming and ice cream. (Apologies to northern-hemisphere-dwellers who consider Christmas in other ways!)

Look hard and you'll see us sitting next to our campervan in Hervey Bay

I loved staying in caravan parks - in fact I still do - and Christmas time in a caravan park is even more fun than usual. Obviously everyone's away from home at a traditional "family time" and that seems to make everyone extra friendly. Add warm weather to the mix and you can see from these photos that we thoroughly enjoyed a Christmas in the caravan park pool and some large bowls of ice cream.

Christmas ice cream in Hervey Bay

As for exploring Hervey Bay itself, well, being Christmas (and all those holidays around it), most things were closed. We didn't get to nearby Fraser Island and didn't do any Hervey Bay sightseeing. And now that I'm older and Googling it - it doesn't really sound like we missed too much.

This was the first of many Christmases away from home for me - and to be honest, although I like to spend some Christmases with my extended family, going away on a Christmas holiday is probably my preference more years than most! It's only just August and already the family Christmas here is being (complicatedly) planned - why didn't I book to go to Europe like my smart sister? What about you - do you like to travel at Christmas? Tell all below. You can anonymous if you're worried your family will see what you really think!!

We privileged travellers and Homeless Persons' Week

2011-08-04T09:02:00.001+08:00

Here in Australia it's National Homeless Persons' Week. So I'm going to hop on my soapbox for just a few minutes. Because I want to remind myself that I'm truly privileged to be able to write a blog about travel (and to even complain, sometimes, because I can't travel as much as I'd like to!). The closest I ever get to homelessness is landing in a city without an accommodation booking and having trouble finding a place to stay because everything's booked out for some big festival. That is like 0.000000000001% of the feeling of being homeless, I guess. What I mean to say is, I really can't imagine what it must be like not to have a home for the night.

But it can happen to anyone. A couple of years ago, when I was teaching English as a second language to foreign students here in Perth, I regularly took in copies of The Big Issue and talked to my students about the problems faced by Big Issue vendors (a number of whom are homeless). Some of my students were from countries that are generally considered poorer than Australia - south-east Asian and South American nations in particular - and those students expressed their surprise at seeing homeless people on Perth streets. They thought that in a rich country like Australia there wouldn't be any homeless people. Their logic is absolutely reasonable but sadly their thoughts are just not true.

So my thought for the week is to hope that I can encourage you, my readers, to also consider what it would be like to be homeless, and consider how you can help. I'm a big fan of The Big Issue because I know the vendors who sell it receive half of the cost of the magazine, and I know that The Big Issue as a whole does great work looking after homeless people and others with various disadvantages. But I'd love to hear some other ways so let me know in the comments. And whether you're at home or off travelling, remember that we're really lucky. Okay, I'm dismounting from the soap box right now. Thanks for listening!

Tasmanian travel tips: I'm asking, not giving!

2011-08-03T08:11:00.001+08:00

I know, usually I'm the one telling you guys all about travelling, after all, I am a travel blogger. But this time I thought that before I travel I'll ask you guys for some tips. It can't just be one-way traffic here, you know!!

You see, I'm currently planning a short trip to the beautiful island of Tasmania. For non-Aussies amongst my readers, Tasmania is an island state dangling off the bottom right corner of Australia, and I like to liken it to Europe - or at least to say it's the most European part of Australia. I've actually been there once before but it's well over ten years ago, and this time there's an important difference - we'll be travelling with an 18-month old boy in tow!

Richmond Bridge

So, what I'm really after are your helpful tips on the must-sees of Tassie, with a caveat that a small boy will be involved. What I remember last time is fantastic scenery and great food, and more of those will be great. Of course, my husband's never been to Tasmania, and I'll be trying to impress him with the diversity of my homeland (and given that he is oddly a big fan of Cadbury's - oddly because he's from Milka country! - the Cadbury factory may go a long way towards impressing him).We're heading down towards the end of the year when (fingers crossed) the weather should be reasonably warm.

Port Arthur

I will be terribly grateful if you can chime in with your Tassie tip below, whether you're a genuine authentic Tasmanian or just someone who's been there, or even just somebody who's heard about a great spot there. I'm not fussy and I will cherish every suggestion. Of course, I reserve the right to ignore them too, especially if they involve any extreme sport type action. Chocolate suggestions will all be accepted, though. Thanks in advance!

Thanks to Christopher Neugebauer for the Richmond Bridge pic and to elisfanclub for the Port Arthur one.

Stop press: Free loans on Kiva

2011-08-02T08:25:00.001+08:00

Edit: Despite doubling the number of free loans they'd planned to offer, this campaign was so successful that they've all been used. Thanks to all the people I know who signed up - well done! More than half of the people who signed up via my link went on to give a second, paid loan yesterday too. That's fantastic.

If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll have heard me banging on about Kiva loans in the past. If you haven't (and don't want to wade through all my posts about it, which is fair enough), let me summarise: great organisation, provides loans for people in (mostly) developing countries to help them, for example, buy more stock for their small business, buy a vehicle, and so on - basically, it helps people help themselves, you can loan as little as $25 (they pool funds), and so far my loans have always been fully paid back on time - which is the norm.

And the reason I'm Kiva-ing again today is they have a special on to get people to try it - they're giving 4,000 "free loans" to new Kiva users (so when the people pay them back the money goes back to Kiva - fair enough - but you get to try out the experience without spending a cent). If you sign up using my Kiva free loan link then they will know I sent you. I get a warm, fuzzy feeling at seeing how many people I can persuade (and possibly a T-shirt) but I really just want to get the word out.

So far I've loaned money to women in Tajikistan, Togo and South Sudan - I've chosen to send mine all to individual women but there are, of course, also men needing loans, and lots of groups, too. Browse through the different people in need of loans and you'll find someone who interests you, I guarantee it.

Incidentally even Oprah has said Kiva loans are great, but I said it long before she did. Just for the record.

Cherry blossom = beautiful stuff in Japan

2011-08-01T08:12:00.002+08:00

A friend of mine began painting a picture today (I know this, because she posted it on Facebook) of something that I find very beautiful ... a tree full of cherry blossom. For me, these are one of the symbols of Japan - and to be honest, I would almost actively avoid seeing them elsewhere because they so typify my Japanese experience! The Japanese coordinate special picnics around the cherry blossom season and the mood really seems to lift around this time - who can be sad when there are these beautiful blossoms falling like snow around you?

I spent two years in Japan and in the first year, the cherry blossom season took me a little by surprise and I didn't make the most of it - not realising quite how fleeting it is, I guess, and how you really want to spend every possible minute you can gazing at these trees in bloom. The second year I was much better prepared and watched the evening news anxiously for the most accurate blossom dates - they often showed maps showing the "sweep" of blossoming starting in the warmer south and heading north to Hokkaido, the last part of Japan to get this special treat. Then I spent almost every non-working hour chasing cherry blossom, through Nara Park and Osaka Castle Park and in Koriyama and Ikoma and a dozen other spots. I harassed my students for all their best spots (even the secret ones where few foreigners have ever been!) and became a cherry blossom obsessive.

At Osaka Castle

All of which goes towards this: if you can time a stay in Japan to coincide with the cherry blossom season, do it. Of course, given that the season is short and its arrival a little unpredictable, this can be tricky, but you can at least try! Late March to early April is the main time on Honshu (the main island and home to Tokyo and Osaka) but don't quote me, it's pretty variable.

Yes, more cherry blossom.

Weekend Wanderings: The happy place edition

2011-07-29T10:00:00.001+08:00

Time for another round of Weekend Wanderings, and this link-up will be all about being happy! Not for any particular reason other than spreading a bit of happiness around can never be a bad thing.

Tigger and I in Tokyo Disneyland (aren't Disneylands the happiest places on earth?)

My happiness post is, well, about happiness - in fact it's about the happiest nations on earth. There's some dispute about this, you see, because even North Korea considers itself to be high on the happiness list and that's just a little at odds with the impression I've got about that nation. Anyway, if you like you can hop over to my post and discover the other happy nations and leave your opinion on happy countries, too.

And, of course, you are very welcome to link up below to your own blog post about happiness. For travel bloggers I'm imagining this might be about a place that made you feel particularly happy, or for other bloggers about some happy event - as usual, I'm not discriminatory so any post that makes you happy will make me happy! Remember the Weekend Wanderings rules - which basically are to like/subscribe to my blog, post your link, and then visit and comment on the other links you find - and then we'll all be happy! Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and I'm looking forward to reading your happy posts.

1. Three happy countries (perhaps)	2. Things that make the Little Emperor Happy
3. Happiness Project @ Three Lil Princesses	4. $1. 65 for my daughters happiness
5. The Happiest Place on Earth! : )	6. Universal Studios: having fun is the only goal!

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Underground in Fremantle: The tunnels tour

2011-07-28T20:30:00.000+08:00

Look! I got a certificate! Not only that, it was for something extreme. I'm not normally good at extreme things (you won't ever read a post about me bungee-jumping, I can assure you) and perhaps I shouldn't be comparing this adventure with throwing yourself off a bridge, but still ...

Anyway, recently I went back to Fremantle Prison and for the first time, took their Tunnels Tour. This is totally different from their daytime tours and torchlit evening tours through the prison itself. This one involves climbing twenty metres straight down into a set of tunnels which were dug by prisoners as part of an attempt to supply the prison with fresh water (which, incidentally, worked for a few years until they made the water table sink ... and so began Western Australia's sad history with water).

Once you're "down below" you spend most of the time in a two-person boat bumping your way through tunnels and learning all about the tough time prisoners had digging them, as well as hearing the traffic rumble way above you (if everyone's quiet enough) and seeing the long, long roots of trees reaching down into the tunnel. Our guide was fantastic - both knowledgeable and funny, which I consider to be an important combination for this kind of work!

The tour begins with slightly scary warnings about the physicality and concerns about participants with a fear of heights or claustrophobia, but in reality, it was pretty harmless. Well, except for the fact that my arms ached for days after pulling myself back up the ladder at the end of it all! I thoroughly enjoyed myself and definitely highly recommend adding a Tunnels Tour if you make it to Fremantle Prison (in addition to a daytime or evening tour - they're totally different!). And no, they certainly did not pay me to say that. It's just a heap of fun and interesting as well.

Visiting the most visited countries, or not

2011-07-23T14:50:00.001+08:00

The lovely Enduring Wanderlust blog just published a summary of the 10 Most Visited Countries according to recently released statistics on international tourist arrivals. I guess I'd never really given much thought to which countries would be on such a list - I'm the kind of traveller who prefers to avoid the crowds instead - but with a margin of some 16 million visitors over the next most popular, France was the most popular tourist destination in the past year.

Street art in Paris

I've been to France a few times - I even got engaged near the top of the Eiffel Tower - but I don't have that romantic pull to France and all things French that so many people seem to have. In fact, I have to say that most of the countries in the top ten are not really the countries that most draw me. European countries including Spain, Italy, the UK and Germany all feature, and notwithstanding my natural attachment to Germany (after all, my son is half German!), none of these places would be on my list if I suddenly won a trip to anywhere in the world. The United States is on the list, Mexico too (one assumes that most of those visitors are from the nearby US), Malaysia, apparently due to Kuala Lumpur being a business hub, Turkey and China also make the cut.

Obviously I am not normal. My favourite trips ever are to countries not even close to the list (Russia, Finland and Tunisia, if you're wondering). If I could go anywhere tomorrow, it would most likely be somewhere in South America or Africa (both totally unrepresented on the top ten list) or perhaps part of Asia I haven't yet explored. Or even somewhere in my own backyard - although I can certainly understand that Australia's distance means it won't feature on a top ten list like that until air travel becomes miraculously cheap and instantaneous.

Strasbourg, France

So, two questions for my readers today: what is it with France? And are you normal enough to want to visit lots of countries on the top ten list?

Pining for a white Aussie beach - in Japan?

2011-07-18T20:36:00.000+08:00

At the beach in Shirahama, Japan

I'm in denial about it being mid-winter here, and went down to one of my favourite Perth beaches on the weekend. I've got a chilly looking picture from there, but I'm not going to make myself any colder by looking at it again - instead I've found a picture from warmer days.

This beach in Japan is at Shirahama (which I believe translates to white beach, if my memory serves me correctly) which is a couple of hours by train south of Osaka in Wakayama Prefecture. I popped down here for a bit of a "beach holiday" while I was living in Osaka a few years back.

Two things stand out very clearly in my memory of this trip. The first is that I dared to go swimming before the beach was "open". This is not a "life guards have closed the beach" kind of affair - I didn't know until I spoke to my students upon my return that beaches in Japan "aren't open" in May. It's not summer so you don't swim. My protests centred on it clearly being warm enough to swim already - I'm not one for taking dips in cold water - but they wouldn't accept it. Being reminiscent of them telling me there are certain dates when it's okay to wear short-sleeved clothing and certain dates when it's not, I accepted their viewpoint and stopped telling people I'd swum at Shirahama.

Secondly, I heard the rumour then, and today Wikipedia's Shirahama entry concurs - the white sand at the beach at Shirahama is imported from Australia. Yes, you read correctly, they import the beach sand all the way from Australia. We are not talking a few cartons of Aussie beer here but an entire beach of sand. I mean, it's beautiful and all, but I still think it's odd. But I'm odd enough to go swimming outside of summer, so don't trust everything I say.

My 7 links: Re-imagining old posts thanks to TripBase

2011-07-14T09:19:00.085+08:00

A travel blogging friend of mine, Sophie, has just nominated me (thank you!) to take part in the My 7 Links endeavour from TripBase, which means, in plain English, that I get to tell you about seven blog posts of mine that are a bit special for various reasons. So, without further ado, sit back and let me take you on a journey through my last six years of blogging with these seven special blog posts ...

My most beautiful post:
I think I have to go with one of the most beautiful places in the world for this one (in my opinion!): Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. I took literally hundreds of photos here over a two-day period but none of the photos really show how beautiful it is - you should definitely go there yourself!

My most popular post:
That's an odd one (I think) because it's actually a pretty run-of-the-mill post about pink galahs and the Pinnacles, a great tourist destination here in Western Australia. It got picked up on Stumbleupon and went a little bit viral, making it my most visited post ever.

My most controversial post:
I'm not in the habit of being controversial but the closest is perhaps my post titled Americans need to relax (and travel). Fortunately I managed to get my point across without insulting anyone (or if I did, they didn't complain!) although this post did receive quite a few detailed comments.

My most helpful post:
I often receive queries about travelling on the Trans-Siberian, and that's what led me to write a post titled Q&A for taking the train across Russia. Travellers who decide to take on the Trans-Siberian as independent travellers, like I did, can find it hard to access useful information so I was trying to help out a bit - I hope I did.

A post whose success surprised me:
I really didn't expect my post about washing the dishes (Australian style) to get so much attention! I do enjoy making quirky observations about cultural differences but I didn't really think my thoughts about dish washing would create so much interest. There you go!

A post I feel didn't get the attention it deserved:
One of my favourite trips ever was my time in Tunisia in northern Africa, and I wrote a post describing the backpacking route around Tunisia that I took. I guess Tunisia (pre-revolution) was mostly just known to Europeans as a place with a few coastal resorts, and to the rest of the world barely known; now it's probably wearing a "danger" label, and I guess these things explain why few people are interested in my backpacking post - but you should be! Tunisia's an incredible country to visit!

The post that I'm most proud of:
I like to show quirky, I like to show cultural traditions and I love Japan, so my photo essay on eating giant okonomiyaki at Osaka Castle is easily one of my favourites. I'm also pleased that it uses a few more photos than usual, something I'd like to get better at.

Finally, this My 7 Links scheme requires that I nominate up to five bloggers to pass this on to, and in the spirit of moving beyond travel bloggers to all kinds of others (as the TripBase people hope for), I'm tagging: