Off the Couch and On the Road

It seemed a lifetime later, though it was really only about a year, when I boarded my flight home, with as much anticipation about arriving as I had about leaving. I hadn’t counted on the world being so fascinating, so beautiful and scary, so addictive. In short, I hadn’t expected to love the anarchy of travelling as much as I did. I left a planner and came back a traveller.

As I thought back over the entire year, I realised that the moments that epitomised my trip, that I looked on with fond memories, were ones I could never have captured in photographs, that I couldn’t hand over to a fellow traveller with a phone number and instructions on how to book. When I looked at advertisements in travel agency windows and smiled, saying ‘I’ve been there’, it didn’t so much remind me of looking at the pyramids themselves, for example, as when we all threw ourselves into the Nile on inflatable toys and felt the sun on our faces and the cool water on our feet. Or when I sat next to a praying nun looking up at heavenly art in St Peters Basilica, or viewed sunset over the Greek islands, or saw the majestic Lion rest after a kill on the Masai Mara.

Surprising then, that I settled into life fairly quickly after arriving back in Sydney. I found myself a great job in PR in the tourism industry, and worked on getting the new house and a few other things on my list.

There was a second list though - 4W-driving through the Australian outback, trekking Maccu Pichu and the Grand Canyon, Irish pubs, the famous Trans-Mongolian railway, Michaelangelo’s David, the streets of Prague and the city of New York…true, I wouldn’t be able to do them in a year, but I would try for a lifetime.

-Sarah

Our time in Vancouver passed swiftly, the only real measurement being the seemingly sudden change from sunny days warmed by the kaleidescope of fall colours, to the cold, bare trees and bright white of winter snow.

Working in a coffee shop during the week, we spent our weekends sightseeing in Vancouver, mostly on foot, standing on Capilano suspension bridge overlooking mountains of fir trees one day, and walking the entire circumference of Stanley park the next.

The wages were terrible, by Australian standards, and so we neither ventured far nor lived it up, but as I told those who sounded amazed that we weren’t going ‘there’, living and working in a different country was a travelling experience in itself, right? (And then I cried because, damn it, we could afford to go ‘there’, wherever it was).

Being Sydney girls, we were amazed by the snow and it’s everchanging state, and began to look at the clouds as perhaps Tim Bailey might, and nod, mumbling to ourselves that yes, there would be snow tonight.

We shopped and dined, danced and drank, slept and watched movies, and became intensely familiar with the names of streets, the neighbourhoods, friends and customers - until one day someone asked me where I was from and I stared blankly at them, replying, “Oh, just down on West 13th”.

We fell in love with Vancouver, especially over the holiday season, where Santa and his thermal coast and sleigh made perfect sense, and we could make snowmen in our front yard and hum tunes about Jack Frost nipping at our noses, with ease. We had dreamed of a white Christmas - and although we both worked Christmas day and trudged through the freezing sleet/snow/rain there and back - I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

In retrospect of course. Ideally we would have been sipping hot chocolates on a mountain resort somewhere, watching chestnuts roast and whatnot, but damn it, we couldn’t afford to go ‘there’ either.

-Sarah

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