Words from my friend Dion, commenting on how I've just ticked over being in the UK for 6 months - a quarter of the way into my 2 year Visa for the UK. I wasn't going to do this post, as I thought the comment at the bottom of the last post was sufficient but after seeing Dion's comment, it has me wondering whether I've spent the first 6 months wisely so far in terms of "seeing the world". Chances are, yes I will run out of time and I won't get to see everything - but so long as I see most things, I'll be happy. The first 6 months were always going to be not as well spent as the subsequent time, simply because of trying to get established in a flat and job so I could earn money to travel etc.
I do have to say, when I arrived in the UK and in London in particular, it seemed like a very big, depressing and unforgiving place. It was so busy, cold and grey - I didn't know if I would like it much, although my first actual venture out into "fairytale" London made me feel much better about the place and as I got more familiar with things, and especially once I had a job and flat its got a lot better - almost in keeping with the weather, which has got a lot better in that time too!
For those who actually read this blog, and pay attention you may remember that I set myself a goal of two trips a fortnight (with trips being a fairly loose term) once I had landed a job, because the name of the game for being here is to "see the world" and travel. I'm sure I mentioned that somewhere here on the blog - for the life of me I can't find it now. If I have somehow forgotten to explicitly mention it, well you know about it now. Pre-job period I had much more free time and was able to explore London a lot more easily; on the downside, I had to be careful with my money reserves. Post-job, I had much less time opportunity - but the money situation was better, although somewhat lean in the first few months after getting a job. So what have I done so far? Quite a bit I feel, and so far so good - there has at least 2 trips a month not counting any "London Outings" (remembering that May is only half over), some of the trips visiting multiple places in one. So how's the list of Visited Countries looking?
- Australia (I'd been to Sydney and Melbourne before; but Canberra was new)
- Belgium (Brussels, Louvain-a-Neuvre, Leuven)
- France (Mulhouse)
- Germany (Dortmund, Hanover, Wernigerode, Friedrichshafen, Stuttgart, Speyer, Sinsheim, Nuremberg, Dresden and technically a number of other places over the course of two trips)
- Spain (Islands of Corralejo and Lanzarote, Canary Islands)
- Switzerland (Zurich, Romanshorn, Basel - if ever so briefly in each place)
- United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai)
An interesting, if somewhat motley list - I wouldn't have thought initially it would have looked like that before I came over, and at least would have thought Paris in France would have featured, as well as either a mainland city in Spain or Italy; nor the close-to-home Ireland, or The Netherlands which was a looked at target earlier on. However I'm seemingly a bit more focused on doing trips to some of the harder places and the things I want to definitely see first, so that I actually get to do them and the more 'typical' places can wait as they will always be easily accessible. A lot of this first 6 months of overseas travelling was also partly "testing the waters" and "gearing up" - now that I have a much better idea of what to expect for a lot of things, more trips should be easier to accomplish.
What about within the UK, where have I been? (somewhat subjective, but these are the main places I can say I have visited, although I have seen or been through many more places in the course of travelling):
- England (London, Brighton, Bletchley, Folkestone, Hythe, Dungeness, Birmingham, Kidderminster, Bridgnorth, New Arlesford, Alton, East Grinstead, Sheffield Park, Lincoln, Carlisle, York, Bath, Windsor, Salisbury, Luton, Gatwick, Stanstead, Liverpool)
- Wales (Swansea)
I've done quite a bit of England, and have been to Wales if just the one place - but no Northern Ireland features, nor Scotland which is perhaps the bigger glaring omission in terms of territory. Carlisle was close to the border, so I've been almost all the way to the top of England, and as far south as Brighton (but there's further south to go yet). Snowdonia in Wales, in particular the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways are places that I definitely thought I would have been in my first 6 months as well, and had been planned although for various reasons (mainly money) I didn't carry out those plans.
For the Foamers - what railway stuff have I done so far?
Excursions - 60009 London-Lincoln-London, UK - 46233 London-Carlisle-London (diesel hauled out of London and via Settle-Carlisle), UK - 35 1097 Dresden-Nossen-Dresden, Germany | Railways - Bluebell Railway, UK - Mid-Hants Railway, UK - Severn Valley Railway, UK - Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, UK - Harz Mountain Railways, Germany - Weisseritztalbahn, Germany | Other trains of note that I have ridden - ICE High Speed Train, Germany - Eurostar, UK/France/Belgium - HST/IC125, UK - IC225/Class 91, UK - Virgin Pendolino tilting train, UK - Javelin High Speed Train, UK - London Underground - Docklands Light Railway | Railway-related Museums Visited: - National Railway Museum, York, UK - DB Museum, Nuremberg, Germany - Cite du Train, Mulhouse, France - London Transport Museum, UK (and their Acton depot) - Science Museum, London - Thinktank Birmingham, UK |
So on that note, I feel like I've done a good amount during the first 6 months especially when you consider I didn't have a job and therefore any income coming in for the first 2-and-a-bit months. So what of the next 6 months, or 18 months in general? I have a long list of places and things I want to do; I am cautiously optimistic that I can do most, if not all of it within the next 18 months. As for the next 6 months in particular, this will be the acid test for me I feel on whether I am making sufficient headway on the list or not. There is a lot already forecast and planned; in less than a fortnight I will visit Sweden for the 3-day May Bank holiday weekend, based in Stockholm; Mum & Dad are in the UK for the whole of June, and for a week of it we will be basing ourselves in Basel, Switzerland with lots of day trip opportunities to be had (as well as lots of UK things done in and around that); and in August, Dion arrives and we do a slightly unconventional 2-week trip through Europe visiting a number of countries, some of which are repeat visits for one or the other of us and maybe some other things while he is still around in the UK post-trip. Expect at least another Germany visit in this time as well. Some of the bigger questions I have right now are how to achieve some of the "bigger" countries on my list in a meaningful way using what annual leave I have in my remaining 18 months - some of which is not Europe, namely Egypt and the USA. The USA is the biggest "outlier" - for some reason I failed to realise that although the USA is just the other side of the Atlantic from the UK, its still quite a distance away and to get to the West Coast is almost half the distance/time of flying back to NZ. Which does in itself suggest a way of doing it, but do I really want to wait until the end of my time here? Could I do 2 trips to the States? As for the next 6 months - will I finally get to Snowdonia in Wales? visit Scotland and Ireland? I guess only time will tell...