Category: Travels for Fun
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FROM SYRIA TO HALLS HEAD
Great friendships know no geographic boundaries. So, when Padma and I moved to one of the most remote locations on Earth, we fully expected to be able to get together on occasion with our friends. Padma and I formed many great friendships more than 30 years ago while we lived in Syria. We kept in touch initially with posted letters at Christmas but when the Internet came around, we were able to keep in touch on a more regular basis, albeit at a distance. We have visited our friends Heiko and…
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SIEBENGENBIRGSWEG REUNION
It took Padma and me two and a half years to build our new family home on a beach south of Perth. But it only took two weeks after we received the keys before we welcomed our first overseas visitors. For three years, we lived next door to Markus, Claudia and Carla in a little German village overlooking the Rhine. Within a week after we moved in, they became part of our extended family. They helped us wade through German bureaucracy, taught us about Rhineland gardening, shared gossip about the neighbours…
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BRAVING THE WEATHER FOR THE PINNACLES
Anyone looking at today’s weather forecast for Western Australia would have thought the sensible thing to do would be to rug up and stay home. My weather app screamed of severe weather alerts … heavy winds and lots of rain. But Annie, our friend from our time in Cali, Colombia, came all the way from North Carolina to visit, and Padma and I wanted to show her around our State. We took our chances and pointed the car to the north for a day trip. The rain stopped just as we…
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TWO DAYS IN MARGARET RIVER
Padma and I are hoping that many of our friends and family will visit us in our new home in Western Australia. We’re still discovering the State and trying to figure out where to take our guests. Our friend, Annie Tomalin, is helping us get some practice as tour guides. Annie and Padma were colleagues at the Colegio Colombo Britanico in Cali, Colombia a few decades ago … so we’ve also had a chance to catch up and reminisce about living in Colombia during a tumultuous era. Margaret River is a…
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THE LEGEND OF THE ULM SPARROW
My friend, Karl-Heinz Linke, has a reputation for exaggerating the truth when he tells stories. He’s the kind of guy who is always pulling your leg, so to speak. So, when he told Padma and me about the legend of the Ulm Sparrow, we assumed it was another one of his yarns. Karl-Heinz insisted it was true and to prove it he and his wife, Hiltrud, took us to Ulm to learn of the legend ourselves. We were told that 80% of the city had been destroyed during World War II,…
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MY COUSIN WOLFGANG OF HERXHEIM
Can ‘home’ be a place where you’ve never lived? And a place you only learned about late in life? I discovered Herxheim only 20 years ago but when Padma and I travelled there in mid-June it felt like going home. Herxheim is the ancestral home of my father’s father’s family. My great-grandfather, Jacob Adam, was born in Herxheim in 1864 but immigrated to Cincinnati in 1880. He left behind a long string of Adam ancestors stretching back at least to my eight great grandfather Johann Georg Michael Adam who was born…
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THE JEAN AND EARL OF AMERY
I get stumped when asked ‘where are you from?’ or ‘where’s home?’ Australia has been my physical home for 27 years but when it comes to home of the heart I’d have to point to a little city in north-western Wisconsin. I only lived in Amery for seven years from 1969 to 1976 but they were my formative years … the years that most made me who I am today. Home also lies where your parents live. My mother still lives in Amery … so Padma and I came ‘home’ for…
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RAIN, RIVER AND A PINT IN DUBLIN
In mid-May 2022 Padma and I met up in Dublin with my sister Jenni and her husband Russ for a couple of days of steady wandering. We set out along the River Liffey on our first evening, crossing between the north and south quays as the light faded. Dublin is a city that reveals itself at walking pace – Georgian terraces, bridges stitched across the river, the dome of the Custom House catching the last of the sun. Later that night the weather turned and we pulled our jackets tighter, strolling…
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A PEACOCK, A BRAMEL AND A WINDY RIDGE
For a number of years, Padma and I have been hearing about a home on a hill in County Cork of southwestern Ireland. Despite numerous invitations from its owners, our friends John Peacock and Paula Bramel, we could never make the trip. But now we finally got a chance to visit our friends and learn of their adopted homeland. Padma and I knew John when we were all living in Syria in the early 1990s. We met Paula when she and John travelled to Australia in 2013 and then in one…
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