qaminari's VirtualTourist Home Page

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Lancashire to Somerset via India

I first left the UK when I was 8 years old, and my family travelled back and forth on the P&O liners that ran scheduled services to and from Australia until the early 70s. The first foreign country I set foot in was probably Sri Lanka (at least I don't recall getting off the ship before then), from where we travelled by train and ferry to S. India. I also flew to England unaccompanied at the age of 9 and back to India a year later, so I started travelling alone quite early in life. I have great memories of our 6 years in India, of "home leave" in N. Wales and a family trip to Belgium and Holland, as well as of our last sea journey back to England, stopping at Durban, Capetown, Las Palmas and Lisbon. Then my family went to live in Lagos, Nigeria while I stayed at school in Somerset. On the way back from visiting them at Christmas, flight delays led to all the Unaccompanied Minors having to spend the night at Zurich airport. Although I thought it was a great adventure, my mother's letter of complaint resulted in my receiving a goody-bag from Swissair, with a keyring that was long one of my favourite possessions (the chocolate, on the other hand, didn't last long..).

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England to Belgium via Switzerland

After Lagos, my next foreign trip without parents was the traditional school trip to France, to stay with a family near Tours. Later I spent a term at the University of Geneva, and travelled with university friends in Switzerland, Spain, Austria and Germany. After working in London for a while, I ended up in Brussels where I have been living for more than 25 years. I really like living in Belgium, and in my opinion Brussels makes a great base for travel. I can still remember the thrill of getting off a ferry in Zeebrugge for the train connection to Brussels, and seeing a train at the station that was bound for MOSCOW!! (Well in Ghent you can also take a tram to Moscow but it's not quite the same one..) With the Channel Tunnel and introduction of high-speed trains, we can be in London in 2 1/4 hours, Paris in 1 1/2 and Avignon in 4. Over the years, I have also seen Brussels Airport modernized almost beyond recognition, although it is true that Brussels lost a lot of direct air connections with the demise of Sabena in 2001. However, new airlines and routes are springing up all the time....

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From Brussels to the World

The only ambition I have ever really had in life has been "to see the world". In order to measure my progress, I decided to define this as 100 countries, and at the moment I am up to 82 - which includes some countries that don't exist any more as separate entities, like the German Democratic Republic and Hong Kong. I have had the great good fortune - although it did also remove any inclination/time for personal travel for a while - to have been able to travel in connection with my work, often to places I might not have gone to otherwise. However, it is getting harder to fit in trips to new countries because I also want to visit "new" places in countries I already know and love. Countries I could return to again and again are Italy, Spain, India, Japan, Greece and Croatia, and I also want to return to Turkey, Egypt, Peru, China, Morocco, Canada and Argentina (and, and...)