Travel Bug...
 

...not the contagious kind:D

Just being a bit nosey really. I know a fair few of you on here have/do travel, but where do you think it comes from? Did your parents travel? Is it just for work? Do you love/hate it? Or is your migration the only time you have/will travel?

I am VERY envious of people who have travelled, especially to the more obscure/lesser known areas. My parents have never traveled. Farthest my mum has gone is Scotland, and I think the farthest my dad has gone may be York? (they're from darn sarf) Two of my brothers have travelled quite a extensively, mainly for work, but the farthest I went prior to Aus, was Florida. I would have loved to have travelled more, but just didn't have the funds (was one of the reasons I joined the Army, but that wasn't meant to be:()

ROMFT is pretty much the most travelled of his family and enjoys it and I hope that the kids get the chance to do it (although L is saying she hates flying because she has been ill following 2 long haul flights:()

I have dreams of when we are in our twilight years, of selling up, buying a <small> gin palace and just sailing around the world (avoiding certain areas of Africa;)). That's after we've campervanned around Australia and NZ:lol:

Re: Travel Bug...
 

My dad was in the Met office and was stationed in various places around the world on RAF bases.

I was born in Bahrain, then my brother was born in Bedford, we moved to Wildenrath, Germany, where my sister was born, and then became fairly boring, moving to Pershore, Worcs, and then Urchfont, Wilts, where we stayed, so as not to disrupt our secondary education. Dad still went off to postings in Aden, Mazeirah, Cyprus, Malta, and Ascension Island, for up to 6 months at a time. I think the love of travel and seeing new places was inculcated by our lifestyle. With my OH we've been around France, Holland, Yugoslavia, and to Lapland and Scandanavia in Europe, St Lucia (on honeymoon), Dubai, NZ, and now Aus. DD has got the travel bug and has been to New Caledonia and is off to Fiji in June. OH also travels on business to the Pacific rim countries and India.

In December we are going to have a few days in Tokyo.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I NEED to have holidays planned at all times...don't like it if I don't have flights booked to somewhere!

I don't do any work travel any more and although I'd like to I think that would involve a change of jobs. I've told my boss that she can send me anywhere she likes as long as there are frequent flyer points involved.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I have always loved to travel. My parents didn't really travel much - ok, I guess they did a bit. I can remember my dad going to Winnipeg when I was about 8 and he used to travel within Ontario for work. Bear in mind that Ontario is 4 times as large as the UK, that's a pretty wide area to travel. He used to go to a lot of remote areas, so would have to be gone for a week or more at a time. My mom used to go to my auntie's cottage every summer for a week (4-5 hour drive) and once a year she and her best friend would go to Florida for a week.

I left home when I was 16 and travelled to Winnipeg with my then-boyfriend. I left him about 6 months later and bought a CanRail pass. I would get on the train and jump off in some random small town, work for a few months to earn some $$ then move on to the next town. I lived and worked in some really great places - Banff/Canmore, Vancouver, Estevan SK, I helped a guy renovate an abandoned railway lodge into a B&B in Northern Ontario. I did that until I was 21 then moved back to my hometown where I lived with 2 of my brothers.

Over the years I've travelled to about 35 of the US States. I love the US. There's such a variety of people and places to see there. I know people talk about things being "American", but America is so diverse it's impossible to say just what "American" is.

Anyway, I'm a little like BC in that I always have to have the next trip planned. Travelling overseas is relatively new to me, as living in Canada we never even had passports until we decided to move to Australia. We never needed them to travel around North America and some parts of the Carribean.

Since moving here, though I've been to all kinds of great places. I try to get to Canada every second year, but alternate years I go somewhere different. And when I do go to Canada I try to go different routes each time so I can get a stopover in a new place. Last year I went via Dubai and had 24 hours there. The time before I did it 'round the world and stopped in Singapore and London on my way to Toronto and in Honolulu and Auckland on the way home. Two years ago my sister and I met in Bangkok and then went to Cambodia and Vietnam. This year we're going to meet in Prague and then spend a couple of weeks travelling through Czech Republic and Poland with a side trip on the way home to Sydney for 4 days to meet up with the lovely Dreamy, beautiful Seasider and :fingerscrossed:gorgeous Moneypenny.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

We love travelling. It's our 'thing' and since we don't have children (and don't plan on having any) we are those DINKs(?) double income no kids that have the time and money to go on cool holidays instead.

We always have one or two trips planned. In June we are going away for 6 weeks to Mexico, Cuba and Colombia. I can't wait! And in September we're going to Singapore Grand Prix and then having a week in Langkawi while we're there. Over the last couple of years we've been to Costa Rica, Japan (Tokyo and skiing), a couple of different places in Malaysia etc. When we lived in London we used to have weekends or long weekends in European places all of the time (so quick, cheap and easy! How I miss that!) or even New York.

When we moved from England to Australia (4 and a half years ago now) we went via South America, since we were between jobs etc, and had 6 or 7 weeks seeing some of Brazil, Argentina and Peru (LOVED it) and then Fiji on the way to Brisbane.

I think we've both always loved to travel (the husband is an Aussie, and we met in London when he'd gone over there with some mates to live in London for a year and see a bit of Europe - met me and ended up staying for 8 years....!).

But I think our travel bug really stuck when we both took 12 months off work (about 8 or 9 years ago now) and went travelling for 12 months. It was like a gap year but as grown ups with money. It was the best thing we've ever done. We travelled through South Africa, Mozambique, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, drove around Australia (we borrowed his brothers car lol), New Zealand, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia/Bora Bora (for a mini holiday at the end :lol:)

My Grandparents started travelling when they sold their farm when they retired. They always told us that they were so lucky to have the money and health when they finally retired, and encouraged us to travel while we were young. They were dairy farmers and never had days off (the cows always need milking!) let alone holidays their whole working lives.

So yeah, I just absolutely love it. I think it's weird when people don't want to get out there and see some of the world. Is such a big place full of amazing things! I know some people that have barely left the small town I grew up in :blink: Just seems quite narrow minded. But I guess the world would be a boring place if we were all the same.

Mind you, as well as fancy or far away holidays, we also love doing things like going camping on the beach at Fraser Island for a week, like we did last year. I love 5 star hotels, but I can slum it with the best of them :)

Re: Travel Bug...
 

Oops, apologies for the long post! :o

I'm procrastinating from studying for some detective exams.... And looking forward to our holiday in June is keeping me going!

Re: Travel Bug...
 

We spent our tenth wedding anniversary in Prague.We had a ball there.I would hope to go back again one day.The trip to Sydney to visit the girls sounds great.:thumbsup:

Re: Travel Bug...
 

We got engaged in Prague :wub:

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I love travelling, fortunately Mr BS does as well. Like BCWorld and Dorothy, I have to have my next holiday booked always, I love investigating my trips and spend a lot of time on it.

My parents did not travel and I did not travel growing up. I was 23 before I went overseas or "abroad" as we called it. Once I started to travel I never really stopped. I think I got the bug from school, learning about far away places made me want to go and see things for myself and I did as soon as I could afford to.

I think I am well travelled, been to at least a couple of countries in each continent. Apart from Antarctica, which I have never visited but we definitely plan to take an Antarctic cruise one day.

Travel Bug...
 

I got laid in Prague.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

Me too. Well it would've been rude not to after being given a big rock to put on my finger!

Travel Bug...
 

Love it!!

Good for you!!

:D

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That was Nassau Bahamas for me. The old man gave me a 1.2 ct solitaire set in a 1 ct band of diamonds for my 40th so it was only right that he got a little something in return. ;)

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I was dragged around everywhere as a kid as the old man was in the army. Born in east coast of Scotland, then moved to east coast for 2 years, then moved to Germany for 4 years, then back to west coast of Scotland and moved around there for years and ended up in 4 different primary schools :thumbdown:

Soon as I hit 16 I was outa there, went to the south of England and moved around there for 9 years before returning to Scotland for 10 years, and inbetween spent some time in Republic of Ireland.

Now here in the land of Oz. Won't be for ever, I can't stay put for more than 5-10 years.

Is it any wonder?

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I was a RAF brat then married an army man. I am still travelling Australia is a new jumping off point:thumbsup:

Re: Travel Bug...
 

My parents love the adventure of travelling, they jumped on the idea of the package holiday all over Europe in the late 60's when many were still staying at home in the UK.

My parents had 3 of us under the age of 5 and still took us all over Europe on trains, buses and planes. One of my earliest memories when I was 5 travelling by train first from London Victoria on the boat train, getting on a boat to Belgium and then another train all the way to Rimini in Italy. I can still remember travelling through the night and pulling back the carrage curtains to find that we were twisting our way through the Alps. amazing for a 5 year old to see. You don't get the romance of travel like that now with the Euro tunnel, used to be SOOOOOOOO SOOOO exciting arriving at London Victoria and seeing the sign for 'trains for boats to the continent' sign. I know you can jump straight on a flashy modern train at St Pancras that wil take you all the way but it just isn't the same as the boast train and then changing at Dover Western Docks for the boat.

My parents also took us to Eastern Europe just as the Berlin wall was coming down and before it became trendy for bucks and hens nights. I can remember us all being ordered off the bus at the border between Germany and Czecholsolvakia as it still was then, it was about 2am and surrounded by pine trees, we all had to stand in a line with our passports. It looked like a scene out of some war movie, you half expected machine guns to open up!! There we stood for at least and hour before getting back on the bus on on our way.

Then we went to Africa and worked our way through Kenya and the border area between Kenya and Tanzania.

So many adventres growing up, not just overseas but in the UK as well. I parents always loved to explore and most weekends we would go somewhere around the UK. I was very lucky indeed to see the majority of Europe growing up and other parts of the world also and I feel I have been to every corner of the UK.

I guess those experiences always meant I would keep on exploring and looking for adventure as an adult.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

Last month on my personal blog (February, "Expats in the family tree"), I speculated that travelling and expat-dom could be "in the blood". It certainly seems to be in my family and my wife's, and our Norwegian granddaughters are going to have to be pretty freaky NOT to become expats in their turn. They are Norwegian because their mother was and is; she and our son met up on the hippie trail in Latin America, and he had been a true expat there at the time.

If BritishExpats members were to peer up into the branches of their family trees they might find some expats there, as I did. There was more international movement than one might expect, among the British of earlier times.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I'm the only one out of my large family to have travelled all over the shop,i love the freedom,the adventure,the places ya see,but mostly the wonderfully kind/funny/drunk/weird/****ed up strangers i have met and friends i have made along the way.Keep on keeping on,there are so many more adventures ahead,in this life and the next:amen:

Re: Travel Bug...
 

You truly are 'The Littlest Hobo':wub:

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The ears are too big:p

Re: Travel Bug...
 

My mother's family had lived, certainly back 7-8 generations, in the same very small pit village in the north east. I feel that it was probably the same much, much, much further back. Her family were horrified when she married a man from 7 miles away and moved to a completely different village (4.6 miles away)

My dad's family had lived, certainly back 10 generations, in the same village in the north east. My gran caused scandal and outrage when, on remarrying, she took up with a man from Basildon. That's practically foreign! Mind you, he was working as a postman in her village, so it's not like she went far to find him.

The only overseas travel that any of them had was during the first and second World Wars.

Growing up, an exotic holiday for us was a trip to Scotland. Mostly, it was a week in a caravan in Whitley Bay or (very special holidays) in Whitby.

We were pooooooor people!

My overseas trips were all courtesy of school although my brother and Mam did go on an exchange trip to Paris with my brother's Judo club. (oh the excitement!)

My dad though, he was in the Merchant Navy when I was born and travelled all over the world. He'd come home with his exciting tales of warm seas and white sandy beaches, how he'd swum off the coast of Australia, snorkelled in the Caribbean, etc etc. My mam made him give it up when I was about 2 :)

When I was 7, my parents were offered the chance to emigrate to Australia, it was a different world, both sets of grandparents pitched a fit so they didn't come.

Once I left home and married someone who could keep me in the standard to which I longed to become accustomed, we travelled a lot. Nothing particularly exotic (Greek islands of various descriptions, European driving holidays, lots of the Algarve and Northern France) but we tried to stay off the obvious tourist trail and explore when we could. I loved it. I loved finding out about the culture and learning some of the language etc etc.

So here we are, several years down the line - both my brother and I have successfully migrated - he has lived in Greece for 9 years (anniversary today, he says he's spending it sitting crying in a corner, rocking back and forward but I'm sure he's joking :) ) and me in Australia (obviously). No family history of travel until my Dad, so it's all his fault.

Since we came here, we've mostly concentrated on discovering the different areas of Australia but there's plenty more to explore once we're fed up with that.

(Emma, this is what you call a 'pontificating waffle'... although some of it is even relevant to the OP :D)

(Oh, and Dorothy/MP/Seasider, I'm really looking forward to the next instalment of 'The Girls Go Wild in Sydney')

Re: Travel Bug...
 

Yes my great, great several greats uncle was an expat he came to Tassie as a convict :rofl:

Re: Travel Bug...
 

My grandfather and his brother (one of 14!) were shipped off to an orphanage at the end of WW1 (their dad was killed in August 1918 and their mother had died in 1917. They were being cared for by the eldest sister, but she couldn't cope with 13 kids, so the boys got sent to the orphanage till they were old enough to work. Anyway, he and his brother emigrated to Canada. The brother stayed, and he came back. My aunt emigrated to NZ in the 50's.

If you go far enough back in my father's family, they were Dutch, and then went to Cornwall to escape religious persecution. (Zeale-Holmes was their surname.)

Re: Travel Bug...
 

Travelling is definitely in my blood.


Historically, my mothers family are from lots of places - she's a blend of Dutch colonial merchants, local Sri Lankans and an adventurous Scottish woman (my great-grandmother) who followed her heart to go and live on the sub-continent with her exotic dutch boyfriend she met at Glasgow Uni and walk away from everything she knew. In the meantime her sister left Scotland and moved to NE USA somewhere... reasonably radical for a late 1800's family of a successful civil engineer?!

My fathers side are lot more sedate - just a bunch of Cumbrians who never went anywhere much - but he does have a sister who moved to Canada on a whim in her early 20s... so the adventurous spirit is clearly somewhere in those genes too.

When I was growing up (back in southern England) my family always enjoyed travelling, we had countless holidays all over Europe. I cant remember the first time I holidayed abroad 'cos it happened so frequently. Some holidays were well trodden locations (Majorca, Paris, Portugal... Alpine skiing etc etc) - others were slightly less mainstream (Tunisia, Northern Portugal, Norway). When I got the chance I joined school trips that travelled Europe further and when I was 15 I was in an orchestra that had a 5 week tour of Australia. I was hooked.... Not necessarily on Australia, but on travel - even the 'exotic' smell of Bangkok airport (during our 2 hour transit stop) was fascinating... I needed to travel further afield than Europe.

My uni days unfortunately saw little opportunity for exotic travel - I simply didnt have the funds, but I did hitch-hike all over the UK and Northern Europe for holidays and got to meet some really interesting folk and see some great places (Belgium remains Europes best kept secret if you ask me).

After I joined the workforce I dreamt of trekking huge mountain ranges, lying on fine white sandy beaches and discussing world events with lowly goat-herders and spent many an hour thinking about where to go. I spent some time trekking in the Peruvian Andes and loved every second (even the ones spent doubled over with agonising stomach cramps or cursing the thieving git who left me with insufficient clothing on a mountaintop). When I returned to the UK I was culture shocked by how horribly uniform and compliant everyone was... I couldnt settle in again. The thought of a commercial xmas drove me insane - so I planned a getaway. This time there was very limited budget, so I couldn't go far.

As luck would have it Egyptian terrorists stuck out and gunned down a bunch of tourists in Luxor just before xmas and the bottom fell out of prices of flights to Egypt! I announced I was going and to my surprise I soon had a gang of 7 friends also keen to escape the xmas madness and go somewhere different. It was a tough holiday - too many people with different ideas of what 'the right thing to do' was. But in the end everyone had a fascinating experience and a memorable xmas and new year.

Soon after, life in the UK lost its sheen again and I felt a more permanent move was in order. I took a sicky from work, grabbed a working holiday visa and booked a flight to Australia.... the rest is history!

I have since then travelled extensively around SE Asia, East Africa and of course Oceania. I go through periods now where the 'itchy feet' aren't quite as itchy as they once were - but then it picks up a gear and I really want to visit somewhere. I still haven't made it to the Himalayas - and its on the 'to do' list. I don't think I'll ever lose that hunger for new experiences that drives the need to travel.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

'lucky' those innocent tourists got murdered so you could have a cheap holiday.

Re: Travel Bug...
 

[QUOTE=DadAgain;


As luck would have it Egyptian terrorists stuck out and gunned down a bunch of tourists in Luxor just before xmas and the bottom fell out of prices of flights to Egypt! I announced I was going and to my surprise I soon had a gang of 7 friends also keen to escape the xmas madness and go somewhere different. It was a tough holiday - too many people with different ideas of what 'the right thing to do' was. But in the end everyone had a fascinating experience and a memorable xmas and new year.
[/QUOTE]

We flew to Egypt (planned holiday) on Boxing Day that year!!

Re: Travel Bug...
 

I bow to your superior knowledge! :p

Re: Travel Bug...
 

My wife and I met at a youth hostel and travelled around the Middle East and Eastern Europe for the next eight months. It's all too long ago now to interest anybody here in this Forum - although any parents who visited those areas might identify with some of my stories, as briefly reported. Jon, you might try to persuade your parents to write a bit about their adventures - for the benefit of their grandchildren, if not for themselves!

I've had fun remembering my old travels, and one day my grandchildren will get a kick out of my blog-posts. I hope. I've identified my travel-stories in my blog-archives with the letter T. T1 was the first, posted in December 2011 - crossing the Berlin Wall at the wrong place; T2 was meeting up with my wife in Greece. (I had a car and she was hitching; what can you do?)

Jon's parents might like T4, T6, T9 and T11, which are about Eastern Europe in the Communist days. DadAgain might get a smile out of my report of the crime (yes, it really was on the books) of "aiding and abetting adultery" in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) when it was under British/French control; that's a posting from last November, but not one of the T-series.

Asher, your ancestral uncle must have been a bad hat. Most of the convicts sent to Tasmania were sent there from convict settlements on the mainland, for misbehaving! Did you ever make contact with his descendants?

Re: Travel Bug...
 

He was a drunken Irish murderer who left a wife and 6 kids in the workhouse. Apparently he had a wicked temper when drunk he killed his landlord. His Australian descendants went to South Africa and we are in touch. His brother my many greats was only an embezzler ;)