Do first impressions count?

Day one in most countries I visit is usually pretty disappointing/frustrating as I'm forced to deal with over-zealous airport security, incompetent bus drivers and sleazy taxi drivers to get to my accommodation, hoping I don't have to share it with pests (bed bugs or English people).

Sometimes I get rained on as well (the fact that you're even reading this anthology blog means the weather here hasn't improved, or I'd have some tedious travel photos to show you instead).

These first days may be quasi-traumatic on occasion, but they're at least useful for setting the bar extremely low so that I'm easily impressed when/if things go right. And sometimes, they give an accurate indication of what I can expect during my time there.

Nost-Italia-stalgia

I'm not homesick at all... sorry, people at home.

For a start, I don't have a place I identify as 'home' - every place I've ever lived in England or Scotland now presumably has other people living in it (or is hopefully demolished in a couple of cases). And when I think of the countries themselves, the only sickness I feel is being sick of them, rather than longing to return. As well as memories of chip shop batter, that makes me feel a bit sick too.

But weirdly, I've recently started to feel sad pangs of longing for Italy of all places.

The journey

'No man is an Iland,' wrote the metaphysical, can't-spell-for-toffee poet John Donne.

Taiwan is an island though, and sounds a bit like 'no man' if you're deaf and have a speech impediment and are mad, so this unfortunately required me to break my 'sacred' 'no flights' 'rule' to get in and out of the ROC. A self-imposed principle that I've previously upheld to the letter, only breaking it in the rarest and direst of circumstances as you'll see here and here. Oh, and here. And here.

I'm the Captain Kirk of the East; disregarding sensible precautions where'er I visit and corrupting their women. I also have ace sideburns.

But even when I took flights rather than other, better, greener, more interesting forms of transport, it was always as a last resort - either due to distance, border restrictions or simply a lack of alternatives. But now that I'm back on the mighty Eurasiafrican continent, and country boundaries are mostly political rather than geological, I have the opportunity to travel more authentically, experience the changing landscape and pay ridiculously cheap local prices. Flying is rubbish.

Here are some of the most notable journeys I've made so far.

The Great Museum-Off

Some experienced travellers claim you can't gain a true understanding of the world's myriad peoples by visiting museums, and that only by walking the streets and interacting with the locals will you really be able to appreciate foreign cultures.

But a lot of the time, the locals don't know anything and the streets are too strewn with innuendo to be of any cultural value. That's why sometimes, to truly appreciate a civilisation, you do need to visit a sterile museum and look at endless identical vases behind glass, viewed through the gaps in a Japanese crowd.

Travel evidence - Italy

I owned a digital camera for a brief time last year and had fun documenting my activities in and around Edinburgh. But then one night I got ludicrously drunk and the camera was one of several casualties (deservedly, I felt).

I didn't feel the need to buy a new camera to document my travels, mainly because there are already so many photos of the places I'm going to that are a lot prettier than any I would be capable of taking. Still, it's nice to have a few mementos of the things I've done and the people I've met, and it's always satisfying to use other peoples' resources, isn't it?

So here are some other peoples' photos to prove I was in Italy. It's taken a while just to get these few, so hopefully more can be added in the future (answer my emails, Pompeii people).

Note: Above photo may not be genuine.

Farewell forever, Europe

...well, probably not, but I probably/hopefully won't be back in the continent for a very long time. To turn back time (zones) now would seem foolish, now that I've finally broken my Asian hymen.

Not literally, mother, if you're reading.

I'm writing this in Athens International Airport, waiting for a flight to Tel Aviv. That's right, regular readers (Oliver?), my self-imposed no-planes rule has now been broken twice, but it's not like I didn't exhaust and stress over all the other non-options for days.

Italian Time

I don't know where I heard that Italy was a country ruled by efficiency. Probably on the same fictional TV show that I remembered showing giant snails the size of Alsatians sliming their gargantuan way past a disinterested man, which I only realised clearly don't exist when I took a second to think about it at the embarrassingly late age of about 17.

Maybe it's the oft-quoted but historically incorrect trivia about Mussolini making the trains run on time that gave me this mistaken impression of Italian efficiency. I'm not saying that Italy is a country in serious need of a fascist dictator to sort things out at the cost of the peoples' democratic freedom, but I am implying it heavily.

Up Vesuvius

Because I am an alternative and fascinating non-conformist, I skipped out Rome on my Trenitalia odyssey from north to south in the country, instead opting to spend my last three days in Italy around Naples.

This wasn't anything to do with the city itself, which I didn't even visit - famed as the home of the Mafia and excellent pizza - but for the nearby living legends (well, dead and dormant at least) of Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius, just a short trip from my surprisingly excellent hostel.

I've never walked up an active volcano before, only dead ones like Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, and while Vesuvius doesn't have the lava pools and scattered ash of something like Etna, it was still pretty fantastic to peer into the crater and consider the inevitability of its next devastating and long overdue eruption. Even if the tour guide had to ruin things by saying we'd all know at least four days in advance and would not be dying today.

Free Firenze

It's nice to pretend you're not a tourist sometimes, even when your skin is 7,000% paler than the locals and the extent of your Italian vocabulary comes entirely from the first of two pages of key phrases that you hastily printed out before leaving the UK as a flimsy attempt to assuage your post-colonial guilt by pretending you were ever going to learn more. You didn't even make it to page two, did you? I hate you.

Luckily, it turned out my last full day in Florence coincided with several unrelated national holidays and local events that most tourists seemed oblivious to, but which were a great way to tick off some galleries and museums I otherwise would have felt a bit hard-pressed to pay for. There was also plenty of free fruit drink and chocolate milkshake available - oh Florence, you are spoiling us.

Sunday was my best day in Florence by far, more than making up for the initial disappointment I had when confronted with the mental traffic and pollution after spending five days in snow-globe Venice. Thanks to my friend Sofi having put more effort and passion into researching the Renaissance masters than my own minimal contribution (which involved tracking down the four namesakes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the various museums, galleries and churches of the city on Friday), I was able to really appreciate the great sculptures of the Borgello and enjoy some rare proper food in the evening, without having to contribute to Florence's economy - take that, Florentines!

Venezia - The Venice of Italy

I've written thousands of travel pages over the last year, being paid to imagine what I think places might be like (or paraphrase what Lonely Planet said first), but if this new travelling lifestyle has taught me anything, it's that 70-cent carton wine is never a good idea. But also that you really do have to visit some places to get an idea of what they're really like.

Wow, who would have thought? Expect to have your mind blown with more original opinions like that one for however long I keep this blog up. I'm only writing this because you asked me to, so don't expect it to be good or anything.