BootsnAll Travel Network



A little history of Fabien

Born January 10, 1978 (yeah, I’m a lot younger than Jenny) in Amiens, Picardy (great region specially known for its farmers), I had a really quiet childhood. A young Fab
My first trips (I think that my first one was when I was a couple of months old when I went to Corsica) were of course with my parents and their caravan during summer. We basically went through all France from Brittany to the Alps through the mountains of the Pyrénée.
I also had some holidays in the mountains during winters specially to learn how to ski, and some short experiences outside my home country : Europe and a trip to US when I was about 10 (a little to young to remember a lot more than DisneyWorld, some skyscrapers and a lot of swimming pools in hotels.
I guess that it is a combination of different things that led me to start travelling by myself :
– First, it is probably all these little trips with my parents (I say little because often less than 3 weeks which is short holidays for French standards).
– Second things is that except holidays, I stayed my 22 first years of my life in the village nearby Amiens. I can’t say that it was bad, a little bit too quiet though, but very comfortable and easy (always easier to stay in an environment you know). During these decades, my life was mostly rhythmed by school (I graduated successfully high school and college – more specifically engineer school), friends, sports (specially tennis) and computer games (first with my loved Atari ST and then with some PCs).
– Third thing is that boring summer I had in 1997. I had planned with my friend Bruno (from Cagny too) to go to Britain to work but with bad organization we didn’t find any job from France before going and we finally decided to not go. This summer was so boring (I was too old to find any fun to go to holidays with my parents) that my friend and me promised to be better the next summer and do something that could be interesting.
– Finally, I think that Bruno was one of the main reasons I started to travel. I guess he was a lot more motivated and fearless than me to go.
Visa
That’s for all these reasons that we decided in 1998 to go to the US for the summer. As poor students that didn’t like to work during their studies (like a lot in France), we didn’t have any money. So the only way was to go there to work. So we broke our savings plan to buy a visa and airplane ticket to NYC to live our first journey without our parents.
I’m not going to give details about this adventure (see this web site instead : Work and Travel USA) but that’s how I get my first independant traveller experience.
The next summer, with my last money coming from my work in the US (yes, I made a lot of money – but I also worked a lot), I went to China to meet Bruno and travelled through China : from Beijing to Karachi (Pakistan) along the ancient Silk Road. A fantastic and low budget trip where I saw my first sand dune, the Great Wall, my first (and still only) 8000m peak, a lot of Chinese people… Machu Pichu Watch some of the pics : Silkroad Web Site
After another year at university and after graduated, I went with other friends to Egypt, Jordan and Israel for a little less than 2 months.
It was before starting to work. As I was conviced that I had spent enough years in Picardie, I started to work (in IT but it’s not the main purpose) directly in a foreign country and what a foreign country : Luxembourg (for those who doesn’t know this large country, it’s between France, Germany and Belgium). Totally different than France. No it’s a joke. My flat was 20km from France border. MarocI stayed there for 2 and half years where I used my holidays to continue to explore the world (this time it was easier with money but a lot less with time) and specially American continent with Peru (2001) and Mexico (2002).
As I was starting to be like a lion in a cage in Luxembourg, I decided that it was enough and that I have to do something to leave the wountry. That’s when, my company offered me to go to Morocco for 6 months. It was my first real long term experience outside France (if we consider that Luxembourg is not really a foreign country, and I think that it is almost that). Of course, it was great, not always easy but a lot of good memories.
At the end of this, I had the opportunity to go to Czech Republic for another 6 months (special thank here to my boss who helped me a lot to get both positions). I was actually the IT guy that Jenny met (A little history of Jenny). She was the English teacher (like almost all Americans in Prague) I met. Do you believe that she waited the last two weeks to realize that I was the love of her life ? I realized that a lot before… But it doesn’t matter now as she realized before I left.
The last part of my life (2004 and 2005) was in Paris at the headquarters of my company (with of course few short trips to Barcelana, Armenia, Florida, Madrid, Prague, Marocco, Egypt, France). Jenny joined me a couple months after I left Prague.
We had a quiet and nice life like a couple. But could we be like a lot of couple : go to work, enjoy too short holidays to travel and stay like that for years. I guess it’s still not the moment to do that… And that’s why today you can read this blog !

Fab and Jen Paris



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-10 responses to “A little history of Fabien”

  1. Jen says:

    Hi Jenny and Fabien. My name is Jen and my boyfriend is Fabien. What are the chances?! Looks like you two have had some great adventures. Take care, from the other Jen and Fab!

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