This has really been an awesome month.

We began it in Trieste (and if you want to follow the whole route, which goes Trieste-Zagreb-BanjaLuka-Travnik-Sarajevo-Mostar-Dubrovnik-Kotor-Bar, start here):


It's really true that time does weird things on this kind of journey. Which is part of the reason I like them. You're really FORCED to live in the present. Trieste? Yes, beautiful. But that doesn't help me get the shopping done in Zagreb, or figure out how to get to Dubrovnik... Focus, focus...


We have been incredibly lucky, I think. We've had one really bum journey, but apart from that, everything has gone pretty well. Temperatures have varied from a bracing minus-5 in Zagreb to a balmy plus-15 in Dubrovnik (15 feels like at least 25 when you're climbing one of that city's ubiquitous hills in the sun). We've only had one lot of snow (in Travnik), which was on its way out by the time we arrived. We've remained healthy (and all that climbing of hills MUST be doing us good, surely...)


Our accommodation has varied wildly, from a bijou studio in Mostar to part of an echoing old stone palace in Kotor; from views from on high of the old city of Dubrovnik to views of the railway station in Bar.

There are housekeeping challenges sometimes, but they're minor ones. Like the cooker that has two settings, on or off. Or the frying pan with the handle so heavy that it has to be propped up to lie flat on the heat. Or the tomato knife that is the only thing you have to tackle the cabbage you've bought. Meanwhile, the Laundry Tern is now au fait with several sets of washing-machine hieroglyphics (and even dreams of them).

The need to adapt, improvise, and make do is one of the fun things about these trips. (I know I'm sounding very privileged here. Adapting, improvising, and making do is a way of life for millions on this planet, and it's not fun at all.)




Everywhere we've stayed there have been celebrations (a little too many sometimes...) And even if you're not heavily into Christmas, you can't not enjoy the lights and the mulled wine and the cinnamon-coated doughnuts:





Today is Day 36... If all goes to plan, the end of next month will find us at home in Kuching.

A lot of this month's reading has been inspired by our current journey (and by its prequel in England). In travelling order, we've had Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (the Derbyshire connection); Out and Away and Shorter Days, both by Anna Katharina Hahn (Stuttgart-based); A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (completed while he was in Trieste); and On the Edge of Reason by Zagreb-born author Miroslav Krleza. Totally unrelated to our travels were 1979 by Val McDermid, Summer by Edith Wharton, and The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

Unplanned, a marked literary bent has emerged on this trip, and my reading list, which is always overly stuffed, has swollen to humongous proportions. Plenty to do next year, if we're spared (as Dad would say)...






Of course, the Manx bit of me warns me not to count any chickens... Just because the journey has gone well up to now doesn't mean there won't be horrors round the corner... And I could extrapolate that thought to the whole year. It has been a good one for us. So good that I feel kind of guilty...

But there are personal challenges lurking in the future, not to mention all the imponderables that can be averted only by better politics than we've been seeing in the world of late. (And did you know, by the way, that 2024 is the world's biggest-ever election year? We definitely have polls scheduled in Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and the United States, and maybe in South Africa and the United Kingdom...)

We just don't know how things will turn out. That we can't see the future is one of the most extraordinary things about being human, I think. Always, from the very beginning to the very end, we're playing blind.

I often draw inspiration from Maria Popova. In this post, she quotes a lovely poem by John O'Donuhue:

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

As someone who's looking into the New Year with a little trepidation, I find that immensely comforting.

Happy New Year, everyone!