long way home

glennji and dee are a couple of ex-pat Australians living in Britain and planning for the trip home.

Glennji was born nearly 3 decades ago on a little island floating someway off the coast of India and China, and has never been the same since. He spent his formative years in various country towns living off clean air, homemade bread, homegrown vegetables and milk straight from the udders of the local herd; the yearning for smog, high-rise buildings and imported beer drove him towards Melbourne, where he thoroughly enjoyed himself and almost completed two University degrees. In Melbourne he met his match in the form of Deeji, and she’s been looking after him ever since.

Together they left their Island and headed for another on the other side of the world: a rainy little collection of kingdoms off the coast of western Europe. They found work, despite their convict ancestry, in the beautiful town of Edinburgh (and the less beautiful but, perhaps, more vivacious city of Glasgow). The rain, if not more frequent, is at least more Scottish; this fact, combined with the promise of free room and board, convinced Glennji’s sister to move islands also; she now battles bureaucracy and a glacial decision-making process in order to just do some real science, and watch some real football, over in Manchester.

For a long time Glennji and Dee spent their days pushing electrons and their nights writing, drawing, discussing philosophy and planning holidays (and escape plans!).

We’ve been in London for three years now, and were in Edinburgh for two years before that. We originally moved over here after saving a little money and deciding on “the life less ordinary” — we were to travel Europe, stay in exotic locations, soak up the ancient history in cities and lands we’d only ever read about. The U.K. was the home-base of choice, as Dee has a British passport but I could only get an ancestry VISA which would limit my employment options outside Britain … and besides, neither of us speak another language.

And mostly it has worked out. We’ve had a few trips to a few places: fallen in love with Paris, drank eine mass bier in Augustiner, Munchen; decided to never, ever take another “package holiday”; and realised that trains are a much better way to travel (see more, better for Earth’s fragile ecosystem, actually meet people). But when my father passed away (February 2010) we realised three key things: we miss home; working is for chumps; and you have to take opportunity when you can.

So we’re going home – home to Melbourne via trains, buses, boats and possibly donkeys. The best way to get by train from Europe to Asia? The Trans-Siberian from Moscow to Beijing, of course!