Being back and feelin’ flat
My wife Joan reckons I need to write this to get it out of my system.
Gee, I’m feeling flat since returning to Canberra. I was kind of hoping and expecting to feel uplifted and invigorated. Any other intrepid travellers out there who have had the same experience?
Mind you, I’m not really “intrepid”. I’m 57 and have only been overseas five times, the last being 12 years ago. That trip (to the UK and Malta, with brief visits to Rome and Berlin) was a bit of a disaster for me. Very demoralizing and a trip I ended up wishing I had not undertaken (though Joan disagrees on this – she views it more positively). We travelled then with our son who was two years old. And Joan was pregnant with Hannah. We both experienced health problems, too, and had to cut the trip short.
My previous overseas trips were in 1985 (with my London-born mother) to England (and Malta, on my own); in 1980 to Malta and UK (on my own), and to China (yes, RED China!) in 1971 (as part of a delegation of the Australia-China Friendship Society). (I reached Beijing, or Peking as it known back then, before Nixon and Whitlam – nyuk, nyuk).
Malta features prominently in my travels because my dad is Maltese.
I think on all my previous overseas trips, I returned home feeling good, glad to be back. Currently, I’m wishing I was still in the US. Maybe it’s just to do with the break from domestic routine and wage-slavery (not that I don’t like my job – but, hey, I do it primarily for the money!). It was highly stimulating just being away from the predictable and venturing into the relatively unknown. Every street corner offered a new view, new risks, new excitement, the unexpected – whether in Manhattan, Roscoe, Binhamton, Hollywood or Frisco.
Maybe it’s to do with my age – I’m more aware of my mortality these days. Will I be able to go overseas again? If so, when?
Oh well, better start saving!
Barry
Tags: Travel
canberrians
Barry,
I’m hardly an intrepid traveller, but every time I come back from holidays in NZ (my only o/s destination) it always takes me a while to settle back into normal life when part of me keeps thinking, it’s going to be another year before we get back again. I tend to get caught up getting photos developed, making scrapbooks, and last year I made a short video (our first NZ trip with a video camera). And I tend to accumulate a lot of research materials on the places we’ve been, thinking that one day I will write something more substantial than a travel diary with it all. Instead of focusing on how long it will be before I get back to NZ I focus on where I’ve been and the stories I have gathered and eventually I get it all out and I’m right again. You have some wonderful stories about your trip, maybe doing something with them will help. (I loved the letter to the Binghamton paper, that’s something I would do) Or given your love of blues music, why not write a ‘post-holiday blues’ song!
My two cents, for what it’s worth…
Louise
Hi Louise,
I hope to do a scrapbook, as I collected a huge amount of restaurant business cards, receipts, serviettes, tickets (everything from cable-car to admission to Ripley’s Odditorium). I’m not one to buy souvenirs, as I prefer these very personal kind of items. Each brings back a flood of memories.
I’ve occasionally fanatasized about the idea of travelling America as a kind of ‘tracing my cultural origins’ exercise, a possible book. Truth is that both the Anglo-American and the African-American cultures are a major part of my cultural upbringing, more so – if truth be known – than my father’s Maltese ethnicity or the fact that I was born in London.
Next time I think I’ll travel without my kids – they’ll be old enough to remain in Australia. Maybe it will happen.
Hope to catch up soon.
Regards,
Barry
PS – Also took about 1300 photos.
dear Barry……would love to have contact with you as I was on that trip to RED China…..regards Jim Downing