A lot of the finer points of travel escape your memory when you're looking back on the great times you had, and it wasn't until I was browsing my passport again that I remembered how complicated it was when I wanted to take an overseas holiday away from Japan, during the two years I lived …
passport pirouette
Passport pirouette: Working in Germany
One of my most hard-won visas is this "Auftenthaltstitel" for Germany. Having learnt German as a kid at primary school, and gone on with it through high school and university, I was desperate to live in a German-speaking country to have half a chance of getting a second language up to scratch (and …
Passport pirouette: The storks of Marchegg, Austria
During my wonderful year spent living in Bratislava, Slovakia, I hopped across the border to Austria numerous times. This was pretty easy to do given that I could see the border to Austria from my living room window, and that train fares from Bratislava to Vienna were just a few dollars.There were …