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Spain I fell in love with Toledo the first time I went there. This time, I crammed five weeks of Spanish at the WEA and I spent six glorious weeks there. I still love it. First I visited Barcelona, though. From Toledo, I went to Bilbao, to see the Guggenheim. (If you want Granada or Madrid, that's last trip.) |
France I had no particular plan with revisiting France. My first time there, I was a 15-year-old exchange student and stayed in Paris with Chrystèle, who became a pen-friend. I wanted to see her and also visit Carcasonne again and see places I hadn't seen before too. Oh, and practice my French and maybe pick up sexy French people? |
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The Baltics Before I left, I chatted with my Dad about my itinerary. He knows my tastes pretty well and said Riga was a must for me. I ummed and ahhed about how to get there, and he suggested a boat from Germany. Best. Idea. Ever. I had planned to go straight from there to St Petersburg, but a snap decision to go to Lithuania meant a day-stop in Tallinn as well. Superb. |
Russia & Ukraine Started out as a hint from Dad that since I'd be so close to St Petersburg in Riga, I should visit his cousin Jascha and his daughter Marina. I figured, why not trace my roots and visit Kiev, where Dad's father was born. I also made a side-trip to Moscow to visit Difa, another of Dad's cousins who had visited Australia in 1986 and was getting on. |
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Art, art & a bit more art I didn't set out to make this an art tour. I'd always planned for the visit to Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria and to cover digital art for the Australian, but I ended up visiting the Guggenheim, Bilbao, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and on a whim, the Venice Biennale. Wow. Amazing. Yay for art! (This section still to come) |
Czech Republic One of my best friends in high school was Czech. Every other year as adults, it seemed, she went to Czech and had a ball. She kept asking me to come with her. I told her I was finally on for it... and she bailed on me. Doesn't matter: Cesky Krumlov and Prague were fabulous. |
In
2003, I found myself single, catless, jobless and generally
unattached to anything much. My best friend Christina
said "that means you're free!" I figured travel was the
only answer.
I set off on a grand tour of Europe: partly a test to see if I really loved Toledo as much as I thought I did last time, if I could really live there; partly a trip to find my roots in Eastern Europe, visit family in Russia, see Kiev where my grandfather was born; and partly a trip to see digital culture around the world, the Ars Electronica festival I'd heard so much about. How to fund this extravagance? Well, I had my severance pay from Fairfax for the ticket and the travel and I lined up a fortnightly column with The Australian to cover food and accommodation. It turned into 14 countries in four months and was life-changing.
And of course, being a digital babe, I kept an online diary the whole time. These pages are an edited version of that diary. You can go straight in or pick a country you like below. (Start from the very beginning >>>)