Before I went travelling I had no idea about how to get a job abroad. I was beset by other fears: language, accommodation, money and the difficulty of beating my own complacency. If I had thought about it too much and if I had listened to my inner demons (“Who the hell do you think you are trying to get a job abroad?”) I probably wouldn’t have gone anywhere.
There is something rather alien about arriving in a new country like Moldova, where you don’t know your way round, you don’t have any of the local currency and you don’t know anyone. (more…)
Berlin has played an important part in my life: it was the first place I visited on my trip to Tibet and I spent a month there in 1986, before the wall came down, and I was lucky enough to get a good look at a city that had been carved up by the great powers. (more…)
When I was a kid we lived in a white house by the Firth of Forth, an estuary just north of Edinburgh. The house was so close to the sea that waves would splash into the garden when it was rough. Inside one of the garden sheds was an old kayak made of thin fibre glass but I never knew who it belonged to, how it had got there and as far as I remember I was the only one who ever went kayaking. (more…)
I’m staying in an old military base on one of the thirty thousand islands that lie outside Stockholm. From where I am sitting I can see massive cruise ships pass by, en route to the capital city, making their way through the forested islands.
“A submarine was spotted over there recently” says my host, a retired policeman who now runs a kayaking centre on the island, “it was spotted by a retired naval officer. The submarine surfaced for a bit and then went down below.” (more…)
By Silvana
Some time ago Rupert asked me to explain why I live abroad and what are the advantages of travelling. After a while I thought maybe I’m complicating my life too much. Maybe I should stop living in a foreign country (Germany at the moment, France before that) return to Romania, get a job and a husband and lead a normal life. I know my parents would be thrilled. I don’t want to convince you to travel or live abroad, just explain how it changed me as a person and why I keep doing it. (more…)