The Psychology of Travel

Pretending to be an artist

Professor Fastl seemed like a kind man. He was tall, handsome and pre-occupied. He had renovation projects going on all over Austria and wasn’t going to look too carefully at this scruffy applicant. He had no reason to not believe …

Meeting Princess Diana in Vienna

– You want a job? Here? In Vienna! Are you mad? You don’t even speak German! My new friend Andras was most amused. He was short, athletic, handsome and spoke fluent English. His family were obviously rich; he had his …

Cheating the system in Poland

I finally made my move and got a train ticket to Warsaw. After a few minutes the train stopped in East Berlin’s hauptbanhof (main station). There was a wild bustle of activity as hundreds rushed for the carriages, clouds of …

Flogging books and driving trucks

Having finished university and gone back to Edinburgh, the big challenge was to raise enough cash to get to Shanghai – my target destination. Every job I’d ever done had only paid peanuts; washing dishes, selling books and working on …

Overcoming my fear of travel

Although I loved the city of Liverpool I found the university itself really boring. What helped me stick it out was mixing with ordinary people. In my first year I had hung out on a building site – there was …