Dimensions of travel

I was listening in bed to Latin jazz and this made me recall the trip I made to Cuba three years ago. A trip can have several dimensions which are usually the reasons you chose to go there. In Cuba I followed the scenic and musical trail. There isn't a cuisine trail worth mentioning in Cuba.


In Italy I am just observing the Italians in their daily life and also trying the regional cuisines. I have no set plans to visit any museums, galleries or ruins, a stance which may horrify culture mavens. Any architecture I admire will be incidental. The towns I am spending the most time in are not normally on the tourist trail. Of those that are famous, such Roma, Firenze or Venezia, I will just be passing through.


I think it's just that I feel like doing something different these days. When I first visited Europe, I religiously visited all the major museums and galleries. Such was my innocence in those days, that after having seen many German paintings captioned Familie des Künstlers I remarked to myself, my what a famous family the Künstlers must have been. Fortunately I discovered what Künstler meant before I blurted out my admiration for this family to someone.

Off to the Adriatic

After years of dreaming and months of planning, I'm finally going to the Adriatic. The Dalmatian Coast had always held a fascination for me as a destination. Besides its much praised beauty, it always felt exotic to me that a dog breed and a coast would share the same name.

I have worked out that post-Yugoslavia, practically all the places I wanted to visit are in Croatia and Slovenia. I will also take in some regions of Italy I have not explored before such as Umbria, Emilia Romagna, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

I am in a sense also getting a fresh start. In 2006 the start-up I worked for ran into funding problems and stopped employing me full-time, although they called me in occasionally for consultant work. So I went back to being a freelance. Just before I left, they wound up, an outcome that did not surprise me. I felt that I needed a long holiday to put some distance between me and the work life of the past few months and get a fresh perspective.

Listening to Joyce singing L'Étang by Paul Misraki as the plane exits Australian airspace makes me wonder what it is about the melody that sounds so quintessentially French.

In KLIA I have a 3 hour layover so I paid to have a shower in the airside hotel. Later events proved this to be a good decision.