I always thought I’d done a fair amount of travel. My travelling… career (I guess?) started when I was just four, when my parents took my sisters and I caravanning around Australia for an entire year, followed shortly after by two years living in the UK, Ireland and Belgium, and then over the years various trips, predominantly to Europe, but also to various spots in Asia, Fiji, and a Caribbean cruise that visiting a handful of islands. This all eventually culminated in my moving to the UK a couple of years ago, where I’ve been living and working ever since. I was so wrong.
Sure, I’ve done more travel compared to some people, but in the grand scope of things I’ve seen very little. I can’t remember if it was the first Christmas after I moved to the UK or my birthday following that, but for one of those my parents gave me a scratch map of the world. It’s one of those posters where you scratch the foil off to reveal images underneath, like a scratch-and-win or a scratch-and-sniff without the hundred different funky smells. You’ll see my map below – if you’re interested, it’s by a company called Luckies of London, I’m sure you can easily find it elsewhere on the internets if you want.
Anyway, I’ve had the map for several years but I didn’t put it up on a wall until after I moved in December, at which point I decided it was about time for me to scratch off the places I’d been to. It was surprisingly difficult to do, partly because I’d placed the map quite high up (the bottom edge is about chest height) because it was the only practical place for it, and partly because I decided to start with Australia, which required a lot of scratching to completely clear. A lot of scratching. Then I scratched off the rest of the places I’d been to, as you can see from the image.
Then I stepped back and was like, ‘holy crap’. The places I scratched off don’t account for a large proportion of map space. Admittedly a lot of my scratching is central Europe, which includes a lot of countries for the space, whereas a lot of the rest of map is taken up by single countries like Canada, the USA, and ginormous, bigger-surface-area-than-Pluto Russia, but even still… It was about this moment that I decided this was something I needed to rectify.
In a nutshell, my overall travel plans are to cover, or rather scratch off, as much of this map as possible. My overarching goal is to visit all the continents – at this point I’m only at three out of seven (Australia, Asia and Europe) – but also there’s a lot of Europe and Asia that I’ve not been to before that I’d like to see. Even the places I have been to before I mostly visited as a kid, so I’d like to go again now that I’m an adult (technically speaking).
That’s long term. Now let’s talk about short term.
I’m starting my trip off with a group tour, something I decided to do for a number of reasons (which I’ll get into in a moment). It’s with a company called Topdeck, and the trip itself is called the Red Star Special. It starts and ends in Berlin, and between those Berlins it spends 37 days travelling through Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. As you can see from my map, of those countries I’ve only been to Germany and Poland, and even then, not to Warsaw, which is where this trip goes, and admittedly, yes, to Berlin, but not since I was thirteen (you can see where I was going when I was talking about going to the various places a couple of paragraphs ago, now, right?).
Now, those reasons. First of all, it seemed like doing one of these kinds of tours would be a great way to, sort of, ease myself into the travelling mentality. I’ve travelled solo before, but never for as long term as I anticipate doing this time, so being able to get used to the place-to-place lifestyle at first without having to worry about transit or accommodation seemed like a good idea. Plus, since I’m travelling solo, it seems like the perfect way to meet some fellow travellers.
It also seems like an easy way to visit Russia. Part of the reason I picked this trip specifically was that it goes to Russia (the main reason, arguably, is that it goes to Norway during the midnight sun, plus Scandinavia in general is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go). The first Visa I’ve ever had to get was the Russian Visa that I need for this trip, and based on all the documents and stuff I needed for it, I don’t know how easy it would be to arrange a trip to Russia without being on a guided tour or a cruise (it might be very easy, like I said, I don’t know).
Also, finally, the trip ends in Berlin. Berlin is fairly central to Europe, and from there my options are practically unlimited as to where I can go next, so it seemed like the perfect choice. However, this ties into the next thing I want to talk about.
Right now, I have no plan for my travels post-Topdeck trip, for a buttload of reasons that I’m not going to go into now because this is already becoming a fairly long post. Let’s just say they range from the fact that not having a hard and fast plan means I can keep my options open, to the fact that I submitted the first couple of chapters of my book to the Bridport Prize First Novel Competition, and in the improbable case that I’m shortlisted I would need to be at the prize-giving ceremony in London in mid-October, so obviously I can’t make a plan for that time until I know whether or not I’ve got to be there. Like I said, there are other reasons why I haven’t made a solid plan, but those are sort of at the two ends of the spectrum.
I think that pretty much covers it. I know I’ve been pretty vague, but my plans are pretty vague at the moment, so what can I say. Once I have something more solid, I’m sure I’ll procrastinate for a while before finally posting about it at the last minute, like usual. I fly to Berlin on Sunday morning, and from then on I intend to update this blog as frequently as I can with both travel stuff and my regular(ish) other stuff. There are also a couple more posts I want to put up before I go, so keep an eye out for them. And, of course, remember to submit restrictions for the Flash Fiction Challenge if you so choose to.