"Planes fly and so does time" mikey_e's Profile

I have been rather tardy in updating this and many other pages, but the fact is that I have hardly noticed the time pass since I last edited my homepage. Over the last four months, I have been uprooted from Canada and transplanted to Saudi Arabia, where I now have a somewhat permanent abode that will be my home for the next year and a half. I'm quite busy with my work, which involves a job that allows me to travel a fair bit. Still, the overtime hours that I have been logging have been preventing me from discovering many of the smaller locations in the country and region that I would otherwise have visited. They have also made it near impossible to update my pages, despite the presence of hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of Hong Kong, Macau, Riyadh, Jeddah and Beirut on my harddrive, all waiting to be uploaded and explained. Inshallah, the next few months will allow me to do this, as well as add to my collections for Spain, England and Egypt.

Mike and Dad with Lindsay

Why are many of my pages lacking anything, despite being well-known tourist destinations? Well, I started traveling quite young, usually with my father and, although we have some pictures of our travels, they aren't easily transferable to digital media, nor do I remember quite exactly what we visited and when. The list of my trips, as far back as I can remember, is:

2011
January to December: Riyadh
January: Damascus, Barcelona, Algiers
February: London, England
March: Bahrain
May: Rome; Lyon, Orange and Carpentras, France
June: Bahrain
July: Bahrain; Dubai, UAE
August: Medina, Saudi Arabia
September: Bahrain; Istanbul, Turkey
October: Bangkok, Thailand; Jeddah

2010
January to August: Ottawa
January: Frankfurt
January-February: Al-Kuwait
April: Boston
June: Lisbon, Miami, San Salvador
July: Quito, Panamá
September to December: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
September: Kowloon, Hong Kong and Macau
November: Beirut, Lebanon; London, England
December: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Alexandria, Egypt; Ha'il, Saudi Arabia; Manama, Bahrain

2009
January-July: Kitchener-Waterloo
March: Stratford
April: Boston and Cambridge, MA
July: Niagara on the Lake; Montreal
August-December: Ottawa

2008
January: Ottawa
May: Moscow
July: Ottawa, Barcelona, Puigcerdà and the Cerdanya
August: Toulouse, Pau, Bayonne, Donebane Garazi, Donostia, Iruñea, Barcelona, Brussels, Budapest, Novi Sad
September: Belgrade, Sarajevo, Podgorica, Pristina, Skopje, Thessaloniki, Athens
October-December: Kitchener-Waterloo

2007
June: Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania
September: Buffalo, USA

Mike in Gernika 1998

2006
January-June: Barcelona
January: Tarragona, Catalunya
February: Ripoll and Ribes de Freser
March: Lisbon, Portugal
April: Toronto; Sitges, Catalunya
May: Bologna, Firenze and Modena, Italy
June: Trieste and Gorizia, Italy; Ljubljana, Slovenia; Zagreb, Rijeka and Pula, Croatia
December: Santo Domingo, Rep. Dominicana

2005
June: Southern Italy
July: Edinburgh, UK and Barcelona, Catalunya
September-December: Barcelona
October: Puigcerdà, Catalunya
November: Gerona
December: Bilbao and Portugalete, Euskadi; Puigcerdà

2004
February: Vienna, Austria; Bratislava and Trnava, Slovakia; Budapest, Hungary
June: Savannah, Georgia, USA
August: Havana, Cuba

2002
August: Mallorca, Spain

2001
April/May: Los Angeles and Anaheim, California

2000
August: Spain, Portugal, France, Andorra

1999
June: Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, France

1998
August: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Monaco

1997
June/July: Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Canada; Vermont, USA

1996
August: France, Spain, Portugal

1994
June/July: Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Liechtenstien

1993
May/June: Germany, France, Spain, Andorra, Switzerland

1992
August: Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Germany, France, Vatican City, San Marino

1991
August: South Carolina, USA

1990
August: Netherlands, Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, Germany

Mrtvi-Kanal in Rijeka

My parents have always said that I liked to travel because I liked languages and, naturally, visiting other countries was a surefire way to be exposed to new modes of communication. Perhaps this is true, although this could be a bit of a chicken-and-egg question, since foreign languages are very handy when you travel to foreign parts. Whatever the origin, language has now become a major part of my travels, one that is as ingrained in the preparation process as checking up on hotels and ensuring I've stocked up on clean underwear before I leave. Language has also been the key to making trips unforgettable because it helps create such unusal experiences as: chatting with the Imam in Arabic at Hjuncar in Skopje about Muslim culture in Macedonia; fending off a cell-phone store employee in Bologna looking to crash at my apartment in Barcelona; joking around with the Turkish owners of a döner shop in Vienna; and explaining to our host in Havana that my sister and I were just quiet and not extremely devout.

Columbus points the way

Ok, now there's little reason in searching for the source of my wanderlust: I travel because I enjoy traveling, simple as that. The challenge now becomes where to go, how to get there and when to cram in the trip between faimly events, schooling and job searches that never seem to end. Here are the places I'd like to visit sometime in the next 5 years and the reasons behind my choices:

Armenia: Brooding mountains, fantastical architecture and a people who survived a Genocide

Georgia: Rustaveli's Knight in the Pather Skin, the Rose Revolution, languages that are group together only by virtue of being spoken close to one another and mountains, mountains and more mountains

Brazil: Is a reason really necessary? Oh, and because the latest addition to the family was just born in Porto Alegre

Argentina: Jorge Luis Borges and Silvina Ocampo, beef as far as the eye can see, Colonial Spanish architecture and the most beautiful people on earth

Mali: Timbuktu, African Islamic culture and learning, and, for all of West Africa, Amadou and Miriam's incredible musical talent.