T-shirt travel: 2006 World Cup fever in Germany

For a gal didn't know the first thing about soccer - aka football - while growing up in a country where football meant something totally different (non-Aussies, check out Wikipedia's explanation of AFL), I've really become a big fan of at least the every-four-years excitement of the FIFA World Cup.

And I've got the T-shirt to prove it:

You might recall I blogged about the 2006 World Cup at the time, celebrating every time Australia won a game, and I even went out to watch the Australian team train one day as they were staying near my town. This was the T-shirt the Australian supporters put out for Oz fans - yes, if you didn't know, the Australian team is known as the Socceroos - and I love the fact that they made a joke about the town name of Öhringen - "the town with 2 dots", since we Aussies don't know we could call it an umlaut. About the only thing missing from the whole affair were some actual living kangaroos, but the pictures were everywhere.

I've said it before: travel somewhere to see your favourite sports tournament. There's something so special about combining regular sightseeing and looking around with the atmosphere that comes with a whole bunch of sports fans turning up too.

Latest news: Unfortunately for this household, Germany and Australia have been drawn in the same group for the World Cup, along with Ghana and Serbia. Come June 16, 2010, when Germany plays Australia in Durban, you might want to stay clear of our living room.

Europe, according to a 10-year-old Australian

Quite a few years ago (nearly 25 years ago, but I don't like to say that too loudly) my parents drove my sister and I around Europe in a campervan for six months. To say that had an impact on my future travel bug would be putting it mildly! But in any case, I learnt a heck of a lot about the other side of the world - back then, with no internet and even a lag until we got the latest fashion or technology, Western Australia was really worlds and worlds away from Europe.

Tidying up my bookshelves, I found an old creative writing book from Grade 6. Looks like one day we had to write cinquain poetry (although mine wasn't quite right on the syllable count) and I chose Europe. I laughed at my main impressions - in case you can't read the picture, it goes like this:

Europe

cold, wet

different and quaint

lots of people everywhere

Europe

Remembering that the six months we spent in Europe covered the European summer, I think it's hilarious that my big impression was still that it was cold and wet - I guess it was, compared to Perth. The fact that it appeared crowded to me is no big surprise, although now I would definitely rate other areas - Japan springs to mind - as much worse. "Different and quaint" - I wonder what my 10-year-old brain thought that meant. I still kind of agree with it!

Picture pirouette: Bathroom window view to a Tunisian landmark

Remember I promised to tell you more about Tunisia? Bit by bit, here I go. This is literally a view out of the bathroom window of my hotel room in El Jem, Tunisia. That amazing structure is the World Heritage-listed El Jem Colosseum, although they technically call it an amphitheater (but guidebooks seem to prefer colosseum - I guess it sounds more impressive). It doesn't matter what you call it, it's fantastic, and walking distance from the El Jem train station. One more in my long, long list of reasons why you should visit Tunisia.

Soccer fans, plan your Down Under trip for 2022

Growing up, I never knew too much about soccer (or football, as I've finally started to call it). But how things change, because now I have this postcard pinned up in front of my desk! It's from the Australian FIFA World Cup bid website: Australia is bidding to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup, and I really hope we get it!

Of course, this is a travel blog, so I'm about to tell you how this related to travel. First of all, I seem to have followed the World Cup. I was living in Japan when Japan and South Korea hosted it in 2002; I inadvertently spent finals week in Seoul, and watched the South Korea versus Germany semi-final in the centre of Seoul with some million other Koreans. When Germany hosted it in 2006, the Australian team stayed near where I was living and I really got involved. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be in South Africa next year, but I'll definitely be watching the games on TV.

Championships like these really bring a lot of people together, and if you're lucky enough to travel in a country hosting a tournament as big as the FIFA World Cup, you'll have a very special experience. That's why I'd love Australia to be the host sometime soon. With South Africa and Brazil hosting the 2010 and 2014 respectively, I can't imagine that a third southern hemisphere destination would be picked for 2018, and that's why I'm encouraging you to start planning your 2022 trip. Scarily, I'll be in my mid-40s then, but I'm hoping I'll still be blogging and I'll be able to show you how my travels in Japan and Germany changed my mind about football.

Successful writing about Heilbronn, Germany

There's a not-so-well-known town in south-west Germany that is special to me for several reasons. I lived and worked there for a couple of years, met my husband and got married there (can you see the tiny bridal couple in this photo of the town hall?) and, from a writing perspective, my most popular article ever is about this town.

I'm talking about Heilbronn, a town in Baden-Württemberg, population around 120,000. I taught in-company English at firms in and around Heilbronn from 2004 to 2006, before I moved back to Australia. Not long after that, I wrote the article Visiting Heilbronn, Germany: Where To Stay and What To Do for Hubpages, a site I used to write for quite regularly. It gives an overview of the main attractions in the town and a few tips on accommodation, too.

The surprising thing about this article is that even a couple of years on, people keep commenting on it. Somewhere along the way, it became a bit of a centre for former American service personnel who were stationed in Heilbronn, and pretty much anyone with a connection to the town, and they all show up on this article's web page to make a comment. In fact, if you do a Google search for Heilbronn these days, my article comes up second only to Wikipedia, and is listed before Heilbronn's own official town website. Amazing, hey?

Passport pirouette: A week in South Korea

Like every South Korean I've met since (and teaching English back here in Australia, I've met several hundred of 'em), the immigration officials at Incheon Airport near Seoul were friendly and polite. Unfortunately that didn't stop them making a mistake and initially stamping my passport to say that I had to leave Korea the same day that I'd arrived - but fortunately they realised, voided the stamp and gave me another pretty one, allowing me to stay 90 days. Unfortunately I only had about 6 days, because I was on holidays from my teaching job in Japan, but I'd love to go back again.

In fact, I think South Korea is a bit like Taiwan - in the sense that there's so much great stuff to see, that it's easy to get around and that the people are helpful, and that it's not too far away from anywhere, yet not that many tourists get there. I know plenty of Australians who go to Japan for a sightseeing trip, but not South Korea. I guess they just need a better publicity machine - their Korea Sparkling campaign might not be doing it for them. Okay, another pledge from me to write more about this great country, and why you should go there. Watch this space.

Northern Europe and lots of snow, a la Joanna Lumley

Recently the ABC screened a documentary called Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights and the trailer - featuring lots of beautiful shots of snowy landscapes - made me keen to see it. It was all about Lumley - a British actress/comedian best known to me for Absolutely Fabulous - chasing her childhood dream of seeing the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. She journeys around both Finland and far northern Norway, crossing the Arctic Circle with husky dogs and snowmobiling around to her heart's content and yes, finally seeing those elusive lights.

While I'm not sure I'd recommend the show to anyone other than real Lumley fans (she kind of takes over too much, and unless you liked her you might go crazy - or you could watch it with the sound off just to enjoy the scenery), I was just feasting on all the snow shots. It made me jump into my archive of photos of my Christmas trip to Finland a few years ago and I found I've only put up one gratuitous snow photo on this blog so far. For an Aussie, particularly a West Aussie, snow is something eternally magical, and snowscapes like you get in the Arctic Circle regions in winter are pure gold. Any excuse for me to post some here for me to daydream about. Plus, it's nearly Christmas, a truly snowy time for many of you in

the other hemisphere to me.

Defending Melbourne's "ugly" Federation Square

I know that a lot of modern travel writing has been reduced to Top 10 lists (they buzz around the internet fast, apparently) and I probably should ignore them. But I just read a top ten of the world's ugliest buildings and feel obliged to step in to defend one of them.

According to this list (put together by members and editors of VirtualTourist.com), Federation Square in Melbourne is the fifth-ugliest building in the world. They describe it as "frenzied and overcomplicated". Well, yes, maybe a little, but I like it. I'm no architecture freak, but nine times out of ten, I'm just happy for a building to look a bit different from the others, and Fed Square satisfies that for sure.

I figure what makes a building in any big city is important is whether it's used or not. When I was in Melbourne last year there was an exhibition on at Federation Square, inside and out, and I get the impression that there are always plenty of people around. It's also an easy place to arrange to meet someone, even an out-of-towner. I have no idea if the locals consider it ugly (perhaps any Melbournites out there can let me know?) but I don't think it deserves a place on the ugliest list.

So what does? Well, pick any eastern European city and find the suburbs most rapidly developed during the communist era and you'll have a spectacularly ugly set of Soviet-style apartment blocks - they're definitely ugly. More than enough there for a top ten. Of course, it wouldn't make for such exciting travel writing, but that just brings me full circle and reminds me why I should ignore all of these top ten lists. Let me just finish with a reminder that Melbourne is cool, so don't put it on any more nasty lists, okay?

Life lessons from living abroad

Now and again, I hear from one of my foreign students about how their experiences living in Australia have completely changed their life. I always nod in agreement, because I remember how I felt after my first year in Japan - the world was such a different place. That feeling was only reinforced by spending longer away from my home country. Recently I came across something I wrote after just one year living in Osaka, and it seems to explain this whole thing pretty well, at least for me. Here's part of it, with apologies for sentimentality.

My lessons from Japan

One year away in a strange, strange foreign country and now I’m older and younger, wiser and dumber. I’ve lost a lot of the crippling ambitiousness I used to have, I’ve learnt the joy of being happy with every aspect of your life, I’ve acquired an unrealistic sounding optimism about the rest of my life which most people would dismiss as teenage dreaming.

I’m older because I can hold a really good conversation with a whole spectrum of people, and keep up the conversation when their limited language ability, or shy personality, forces their side to wane. I’m older because I really want kids and have worked out how to deal with them. I’m not scared of them anymore!

I’m younger because I can roll on the floor with a classful of three year olds and love every minute of it. I don’t care anywhere near as much about image or what other people think of me and above all I don’t mind doing or saying slightly crazy or inane things to help put people at ease or make the best out of a situation.

I’m wiser because I have a bigger perspective of the world and a much greater tolerance for different opinions, especially those that I totally disagree with. I’m wiser because I’m not going to be burnt out at 30, I’m not going to work in miserable situations and I’m looking after my health better.

I’m dumber because I can’t find the apostrophe key on this Japanese keyboard. I don’t know when to take my shoes off. I stare like a child as my dear Japanese friends place restaurant orders for me. And I don’t even know how to ask for a dine-in meal at MacDonald’s.

T-shirt travel: Into Australia's red centre

I'm no compulsive collector of anything when I travel, but as I go about my daily life back home I have noticed recently that I have more than a couple of T-shirts I've bought on various trips. Often they've been bought less as souvenirs and more out of desperation for clean clothes on a backpacking trip with limited washing options, I admit, but nonetheless, I get a flashback to each trip every time I put on one of these shirts.

And if I get a flashback, then you get to hear about it too. This shirt is, I have to admit, no spring chicken - I can't remember exactly when I travelled to Australia's Northern Territory but it was before 2001 - perhaps 1999 or 2000. I spent a few days exploring Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) and the nearby Kata Tjuta (aka the Olgas). No T-shirt of classic icon Uluru for me - I went for Kata Tjuta. I can't wait to go back to this area one day, because it's truly unique - if you ever get there, be sure to fly into Yulara (the township near Uluru) if possible, because it's quite incredible to be flying over vast deserts of nothing and then suddenly find the famous shape of Uluru coming into vision.

And if I may make a plug for not climbing the rock - please don't climb it. The traditional owners prefer us not to, and you can read their request here. I figure they've been good enough not to make a big drama out of it, and they still allow us on to their land, plus they have good reasons, so we should respect their wishes.

Made in Taiwan, seen in Taiwan

While I was living in Japan, I was keen to visit nearby countries, and none more so than Taiwan. Why? That's easy - it's because when I was a kid, pretty much everything I owned had a label saying Made in Taiwan. It's only natural that as an adult, I'd still have the curiosity to go visit the place where seemingly everything was made.

I spent most of my week in the capital, Taipei, which was bustling and busy, but no great shock after living in Osaka. What I did love was moments like you see in this picture: these locals are practicing tai-chi, as they apparently do every morning, outside one of the most important buildings in Taipei - the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, erected in memory of the former president. Having learnt all about him in high school history classes, it was all the more significant to me to sightsee around here.

It's been a week of thinking about Taiwan - for the first time, the most represented country in my current ESL class is Taiwan (and yes, at our school, we consider it a country); and when channel-surfing this week, my husband landed on the commercial travel show Getaway and we watched a feature on Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan - it's pretty rare to see tourism promotion for Taiwan here in Australia. But I'm keen to get back there: my first taste was great, and now that I've met a lot more of the locals and had some insider tips, I'm eager to see more. Even if most stuff is now made in neighbouring China instead.

PS: Just found even more promotion for Taiwan, with an article in our local paper describing Taiwan as easy on the wallet - among other good reasons to go there.

Web pirouette: Flying the Aussie flag

In recent writing, I've been flying the Aussie flag a little: certainly at Jaunted, where I proudly put Vegemite in the #1 position on my list of the Top Five Aussie Foods to try; a little less proudly, I had to mention an additional ban on alcohol on some intrastate Qantas flights because some of the fly-in, fly-out workers were getting, shall we say, over exuberant.

But it's not all Down Under for me. Europe always gets plenty of mentions, not least because it's a continent full of so much variety - this month I blogged about chocolate in Estonia and day-trips to Trnava, Slovakia, to name but two. Over at HotelChatter I was also interested to learn that a pretty snazzy hotel has opened up in one of my favourite countries, Tunisia, and I wonder if my budget will stretch to this new Monastir resort next time I'm there; I also wonder if the funny (and cheap) place right on the beach where I did stay on my trip to Monastir still exists; I remember meeting an unusual Scandinavian there, but can't remember his nationality or why he was so unusual.

Finally, I'm also doing some real Australian blogging, yes, for an Australian blog (no wonder I'm flying the Aussie flag in this post) - it's not travel, but something that still affects me a lot, and perhaps curtails my travel - mortgages. It's strangely satisfying to help pay the mortgage bill by complaining about mortgages.

Picture pirouette: Ports and coffee shops in Seattle

I'd almost forgotten that I'd ever been to Seattle: it was back in 2002 when, from Japan, we went to visit a friend in relatively nearby Vancouver. Looking back through my photos of the trip, I can recall visiting all the usual tourist spots there, but it was the port that seemed to fascinate me most, both with the huge cruise ships heading off for Alaska, and the working side of it, with these fantastic orange cranes.

That, and for the first time, I didn't feel like it was wrong to go to Starbucks. Usually I'd feel a bit like you do if you eat at a fast food franchise when you're travelling - you know you really should try something local, and you're just being lazy if you go for what's familiar. But Seattle, of course, is the very home of Starbucks, which makes drinking something here the very epitome of doing something local.

(Just for the record, this feeling has since extended to "anywhere in the USA is OK for Starbucks", after we absolutely gorged ourselves on Starbucks during our honeymoon in New York. Hmm, seems the rules are always changing, even if I'm the one making them!)

Every city's just the same

A musical touch on travel today, especially for Australian music fans: over the weekend, the fantastic Triple J radio station (stream it here if you're outside Oz) organised two Paul Kelly Tribute concert nights, not because the afore-mentioned singer-songwriter Paul Kelly has passed on and needs a tribute, but because he's still alive, is an absolute legend, and therefore needs a tribute! If you haven't heard of him, grab some of his music and you'll know what Australian poetry is all about.

In any case, one of Paul Kelly's lighter songs is a classic tale of young Australians going backpacking in Europe. The long-ish tour of Europe (usually by Eurrail although budget airlines also get a look in these days) is a bit of a rite of passage for young Australians, although I never did it in the classic sense. And when I listen to this particular song of Paul Kelly's, Every F***ing City, I'm glad I didn't. The song follows a backpacker criss-crossing across Europe, hitting the typical destinations like Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid and Dublin but even making it as far as Helsinki. Classic "such a typical tourist" moments mentioned in the song include:

Now I'm in a restaurant in Stockholm

And the waiter here wants me to know his name

And I can order sandwiches in seven different languages

But every f***ing city tastes the same

Actually, I'm not sure if every Aussie backpacker ends up being able to order sandwiches in seven different languages, but they can probably order a beer in a dozen different tongues. In any case, a big thanks to Paul Kelly for writing a great song and for commiserating on the way we Aussies (and the rest of the world, too) sometimes travel a little blindly.

Thanks to Roland via Flickr/CC for the pic