mikey_e's VirtualTourist Home Page

I don't really have any more new pictures to share now (March 2008) but I did feel as though an update is in order. And I felt as though I should thank all the great VTers who have visited my pages and who have provided info on Hokkaido and possible accomodations. The job in Ottawa didn't quite pan out (unfortunately), which is a shame not just because it would have meant full-time employment, but also because the people I met and the topics I would have dealt with were incredibly engaging and interesting. Nevertheless, I now have lots on the horizon - including plenty of travel related information to share. I was thinking of taking a trip to break the monotony of the longest winter I can ever remember, but it seems as though that side of things has been taken care of. I have a tentative trip to attend a conference and training session in May in Moscow (watch out Moskva!) and plans for this summer's trip to Hokkaido and Tokyo are really shaping up nicely. Expect to see me much more often on your pages and scrolling through your tips!

Finally, two weeks into the new year, I have some form of new travel news that I can share. Maybe I should simply do away with the Gregorian calendar all together and proclaim it a New Year's trip according to the Julian calendar.... In any case, an arm of the Canadian government was exceedingly generous and flew me to Ottawa for interviews for on night. Although the morning was a bit stressful, a night in a great hotel and an afternoon taking pictures of a place I know fairly well (albeit in summer) was quite a lot of fun. And, true to form, there was a blizzard that raged from the early morning up until about 4PM - and I didn't have my boots or a hat! Still, it made for some great pictures and a memorable day in the nation's capital.

I felt it was time for me to update my webpage, particularly since I have almost entirely exhausted the postable pictures on my harddrive. Although I will still add a few more - both those that I have scanned from trips during the 90s and ones I have taken in my home city - my posting and tip creation is gradually slowing down. Instead, I am settling in to life in humdrum suburbia and looking for work. The unfortunate thing is that, when you're trained in finance and economics and everyone is worried about a US housing implosion, banks are a bit reticent to hire new staff. In the meantime, I'm maintaining this page, working with my research group (www.g8.utoronto.ca) and scanning the sites for information on my next foreseeable trip: the G8 Summit in Lake Towa, Japan.

I just returned from the most incredible trip through the southern Balkans and I'm still trying to absorb everything I did over my three weeks in Greece, FYROM, Serbia, Bulgaria and Albania. I have over 500 pictures, so it will take some time to sort through and post everything I want to, but I'm trying to build the pages fairly quickly (since the pictures bring back lots of very pleasurable memories).

The Balkans were more than new sights, tastes and sounds.... the people are absolutely incredible, very friendly and more than happy to talk to foreigners about pretty much anything. Never before have I had so many conversations on trains, busses, on the street and all with complete strangers, many of whom spoke little to no English but who babbled on to me in Macedonian, Albanian, Greek or Serbian.

Many of the countries/cities listed without pictures or travel tips are those that I visited in the days before I had a digital camera. Unfortunately, scanning prints is a tedious job, so I'm not entirely such those pages will fill up with anything.

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:

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

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

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.

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:

Russia and Belarus: Personal reasons have always drawn me to Russia and, more precisely, Belarus, but I'm torn between visiting on my own and trying to drag my father back to Belarus. Unfortunately the double distinction of being Europe's last dictatorship and polluted by the after effects of Chernobyl (my father is from the south near Ukraine) make Belarus a lesser-known tourist destination, but I still would like to see Rodina.

Belgrade and Bosnia: because of sevdalinke, ultranationalist politics, Ottoman culture, memories of glorious Socialist pasts and, of course, Ceca.

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

Turkey: Ottoman architecture, Atuturk's dream, dervishes, Greenmantle, the Corto Maltese series by Ugo Pratt (The Golden House of Samarkand)

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

Syria: Homa (the city of the water-wheels), the ancient cities of Aleppo and Dimashq/Damascus, Michel Aflaq and what remains of Ba'athist pan-Arabism

Algeria: Kabyle culture, the FLN's pan-semitic revolution, the Kasbah of Algiers, QusanTina and the Roman ruins

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