I visited a Travel Show this morning. I found out about it through the Kiwi's in London Facebook page, there were free tickets available so I thought it couldn't hurt to get one and if I don't use it, no worries. But I went anyway - deciding to get there when it opened at 10am before it got mega-packed. When me & Dion went to the Travel Show in Wellington in February last year (me for London, Dion for Canada), we arrived when it opened and by the time we left the place was so packed that you couldn't move around very easily - London's a much bigger city so it seemed reasonable to expect that the same would happen here.
I'm not the kind of person the Travel Show people want at such an event - because I had no intention of handing over any money to purchase any of the trips at bargain prices then and there. Not the trips, anyway - I knew I could be tempted by cheap flights to places though and build up a trip from there. But the main intention is to come away with a tote bag (that they give you) full of "ideas" (more commonly referred to as brochures or catalogues). I may not decide to go on any of the advertised trips (I'm not saying that I won't completely, I might) but if nothing else they can give me ideas on what is possible, how best to get from A to B and where are good entry and exit points in a country or where best to base yourself for a trip as that sort of information is not necessarily easy to glean otherwise. Take for example my trip to Germany for the Harz steam trains, it was only by looking at the tour itinerary of a tour company that I was able to figure out Wernigerode was the best place of the 3 main townships the railway served - and after visiting, it is now clear to me by quite how much Wernigerode is THE place to be based if doing that again.
Which leads me to my point, a sort of conundrum - any trip to anywhere for the first time is always frought with an element of the unknown if going somewhere by yourself or with others but they've never been there either. Basically, the first trip is always going to be a "scoping" trip and from that you'll get ideas about what you'd want to do next time, if its worth going back, and what to miss - it is never going to be a comprehensive "Been there, Done Everything" type deal. And until you go and see, you're never going to know if there is more to do or whether it wasn't worth visiting in the first place. A lot of the trips on offer at the Travel Show were, naturally, your Contiki and Topdeck type "tour around and see as much as possible in a short amount of time" where you get to spend a day or two tops in various countries - basically like a taster or sampler of what Europe or wherever has to offer. Or, in other words, a kind of comprehensive Scoping Trip. The problem? the price of these trips is fairly up there, its not cheap and for a decent one, you're talking 20-30 days or a little bit more. I'm working now - taking that much leave would really only be possible entirely in or around School Holidays, and realistically would have to wait till July/August. Not ideal for an initial Scoping Trip from where to base future trips from, because a lot of time has already passed for doing trips!
I guess ideally, I would have had more money when I came over and done such a trip when I first arrived and not worried about looking for a job or any of the other stuff until the trip was over. Reality at the time seemed far more prudent to start job searching straight away when I got here and try and get myself sorted as soon as possible, and leave such trips as a fallback way of seeing Europe if it became apparent I couldn't get a job and my money was going to run out. I still stand by what I did - I think it was the most sensible and prudent thing to have done. Plus in the lead up to coming over here, a Contiki-type trip didn't really appeal to me as I had notions of hitting the ground running and being able to go visit various places already knowing what I wanted to see and what I didn't, which is still true to a degree but it would be nice to have some sort of perception where the nice parts of Europe actually are. Turns out you can only hit the ground running to a certain degree when going to places or in countries you have never been before - getting a feel for things is much harder when there's different languages and currencies involved. Nevertheless, I have brochures and catalogues to refer to now which helps a lot as the internet can be not so good at making things apparent about where is good to travel nor how best to get there - you have to go digging, but sometimes you're not sure what you're necessarily digging for or what to dig with. Because lets face it, with my eccentric interests conventional trips aren't necessarily going to take me to the places I want to go or the things I want to see.
Back to the travel show - have to say it wasn't anywhere near as big as I thought it might be, it was even smaller than the show in Wellington last year my virtually any measure and mustn't be the only or the biggest travel show London has. There were two things which caught me by surprise at the show. The first was there were no airlines there at all, not one - at the Wellington show, both Air NZ and Virgin Australia were present with lots of flight deals along with Emirates, Malaysian Airlines and Korean Air having stands and deals. Although I didn't purchase my flights to the UK there, discussing the Virgin deals at the stand is how I hit upon the idea of flying Virgin Australia & Etihad over to the UK and also the idea of having a stopover on the way. There were lots of your Contiki/Topdeck type companies offering discounts for trips in the low seasons, when I pretty much can't get leave off for anyway. Another thing which struck me was they were advertising the usual destinations, but alongside those was Australia and NZ - just seemed weird seeing them but I guess it makes sense over this side of the world. Another thing I noticed - very few trips to Greece, but lots to Croatia; no Russia, but as expected lots of Turkey and a semi-surprise, a huge amount to Egypt. I keep forgetting Egypt is as far away from the UK as Turkey, but since Turkey just counts as part of Europe while Egypt is Africa, it keeps falling out of my radar which is stupid since I would love to take a trip there someday and visiting from the UK makes a lot of sense since there's a huge tourism industry leaving from here to there. I think I spent about an hour there before I decided there wasn't much point sticking around any longer. But I did walk out with the bag of ideas, which was the point of going.
I do feel like I should have taken an NZ Contiki brochure just to see what was on offer for trips back home, and see what they get to see and what they miss out on - perhaps putting their trips through Europe in perspective. I doubt it would have made me homesick, that feeling hasn't really kicked in yet as I'm still able to keep in contact with friends and family back home and keep apace of what's going on. And speaking of home, I feel like I should mention Dion has chosen to pull the pin on Canada as it wasn't working out for him, not able to earn enough over there to fund his projected travel plans - he's back in NZ as of the 3rd March, where he can earn more for his travels in the next 6-9 months.
So that's that - got a few trip ideas up my sleeve, let's see how that pans out?