Travelling Makes Me Tick

January 22 2017

Having been brought up in what could be considered as a multicultural background, this is largely because in the rural Westcountry of England there were not many 'foreigners' as you might call them; both sets of grandfathers had met my grandmothers through the war on my mother's side the Ukraine (as far as we can tell from her paperwork) and on my father's side Hungary. My parents also took us away to France a lot, indeed my first trip was when I was three months old, we visited a tiny village in the south of France and my parents fell in love with the area. Soon along with their friends they bought a farmhouse to renovate as a holiday home (they had the barn conversion). This lead to private french lessons when we were back at home and many beautiful memories over the 25 years or so we had the house. My sister actually moved to Toulouse which is an hour away, she is now bringing up her first child with her husband there.My father travelled extensively with his job going to conferences and giving talks and we would on occasion join him, I was always delighted as it generally involved a trip to a new city somewhere. Foreign languages were not alien to me in the slightest and I quickly picked up the gist of most conversations where-ever we happen to be. I was lucky enough to have my grandfathers gift for languages which has served me well over my years of travelling across the world.I enjoy the excitement and smells of a new place, nooks and crannies to explore and languages to listen to. Even though I think the idea of a babelfish is great I think it would take the fun out of listening to others, to have information placed directly into your brain without actually processing it in anyway surely means that we will never learn or understand things - just to accept what we are fed.So now you understand a bit of why I love travelling and what makes me tick, would love to hear your thoughts in the comments, what is your favourite part of travelling? Picture is Chateau de Cornusson - Tarn et Garonne just across the valley from us.

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