When I returned from living abroad in Europe and Asia for more than five years, I suffered from some reverse culture shock: I found it hard to settle back in to "normal" life in Australia, I felt detached from my friends, and I was sad that nobody seemed to want to hear about my time away and many …
Europe 2013
Dubai Airport and how the difficult parts of travelling fade quickly from my memory
En route to DubaiBefore our Europe trip this year, I'd managed to get a bit nervous about the first week which involved travelling on my own with a three-year-old: a long-haul flight from Australia to Europe with an overnight stop in Dubai, a couple of nights in Vienna, a couple of trains to Trnava …
Meeting the locals, the Inis Meain way
Easily one of my favourite things about travelling is meeting local people, which is one of the reasons I particularly loved living in Japan, Slovakia and Germany for a year or more each, because that was really the way to get to know the locals. On our recent trip to Ireland I cheated: I stayed …