April, 2011

What do you do when you’ve been given a Notice to Vacate your suburban Melbourne home? Why, pack up your stuff and buy an old motorhome for an epic road trip across the USA, obviously. That’s what the Jonai do.

I confess it was coincidental, but it happened to be the Anzac day weekend that we visited Wolf’s Lair, in Poland’s north.

Freelance writer Troy Wilkinson writes: For most of my life, G T C Williams was nothing more than a name. I wasn’t even aware of my great-grandmother’s brother existence until a family road trip aged 12. At the War Memorial in Canberra my grandfather found the name of an uncle he never met on the wall of [...]

Unlike the layer of sweat ever present upon my forehead, the shine and glitz of Phnom Penh has begun to wane. What Crikey readers might view as an interesting odd spot most likely serves as a mundane daily annoyance to me. Take shower heads for example. I concede I’m slightly tall, six foot or if [...]

Nostalgia and resentment walk hand in hand through the picturesque amusement park known to local Lithuanians as ‘Grūtas Park’, writes Laura Soderlind.

Possessed of a vast history and sitting at the border between Europe and Asia, Istanbul, Turkey exists in popular imagination as both exotic and cosmopolitan. It’s a place where you can feel ok to be a tourist because Istanbul is a city that has attracted tourists since day dot.

People planning to visit us in Poland usually run their draft itinerary past me. And at some point, they almost all pause and sigh. “I suppose I should visit Auschwitz, shouldn’t I?” they ask. I always wonder how I should answer.

Sure, it’s not the calmest or safest country right now, and we’re not suggesting you hop on a plane tomorrow. But file this away for when things have settled in Syria. It’s also nice to remember that there’s beauty in a place where currently only bad news emerges. Travel writer Margaret O’Connor writes: Let’s cut straight to the [...]

Jean McBain writes: Andrew and I decided to spend our first year of married life travelling in Europe. Something we’ve always looked for in our travels is interesting food experiences and over the last ten months we’ve certainly had some memorable meals, both for good reasons and bad (one word: airports). Sometimes self-catering means you [...]