My mum went to visit her friend in hospice.

This sentence should go in a very specific emotional direction.
Soft voice. Concern. Maybe a scarf.

Instead, it went sideways.

She arrived, found the right ward, walked into a room, saw a woman in a bed, and did what any polite, well-raised person does in a slightly awkward situation.

She started chatting.

They talked.
And talked.
And really got into it.

At some point, they were deep in conversation. Life, health, somebody’s neighbour, zucchini overharvest, the usual. Jane from HR is in trouble again. Jack and his back, tragic. Your daughter, my daughter, well, at least they’re trying.

My mum can build a full relationship in under twelve minutes.

She did briefly think, Gosh, she’s changed. But then again, people do change. And in a hospice, everyone sort of becomes… hospice-shaped. Same blankets, same lighting, same quiet voices. You stop asking questions.

Then she got up, said a warm, heartfelt goodbye, and left behind a box of very soft sweets, in line with the unspoken hospice rule that nobody needs dry biscuits when life is already doing that.

Only to realise, in the corridor, that her actual friend
was in the next room.

There is a specific human condition here.

You walk into a situation.
You are not entirely sure what is going on.
But instead of checking, clarifying, or asking one simple question like a rational adult, you commit.

You double down on the wrong reality and behave inside it as if it’s correct.

You don’t verify.
You perform certainty.

I call this the Harold-Mick syndrome.

You know the one. You meet someone, mishear their name, and just continue. You build an entire relationship on it. Years go by. His name is Mick. You call him Harold. You introduce him as Harold. Other people start calling him Harold.

At some point, you are too deep in it to fix anything, so you simply stay the course.

The best part?

My mum was not embarrassed.

She simply recalibrated.

“Oh,” she said. “Here you are.”

And then went to visit the correct friend.

Sans the sweets.
Sorry about that.
Good thing this one was unconscious.

I am slightly hard of hearing, and it’s getting worse, but slowly, and for that, I thank Hekate.

So I often find myself smiling and nodding, saying “yeah, sure” with confidence, hoping I’ve landed in roughly the right conversation.

I like to think I compensate with intelligence. I analyse the setting, the people, the tone. I run a quick internal assessment through garbled noise.

I give myself a solid ninety per cent success rate.

According to me.

And honestly, this might be the most emotionally stable way to move through life.

Because the alternative is to constantly stop everything and say:

“Sorry, could you repeat that?”
“Is this the right room?”
“Are you Mick or Harold?”
“Swimming in the Ganges? Wasn’t me. Oh, singing with no panties? If you say so.”

And none of us has the energy for that.

So we improvise.

We sit.
We talk.
We connect with the wrong people in the right way.

And sometimes, completely by accident,
we still manage to be kind.

My grandmother used to wait for me to wake up. Not occasionally. Every morning she was with us.

I would open my eyes, and she would already be there, watching me, asking the same question before I had even fully arrived: What did you see?

And I had to tell her everything. Not just the plot. She wasn’t interested in that. She wanted the colours, the speed, the taste, the feeling in my body. Whether the ground was stable. Whether the water was calm or treacherous. Whether I was inside the dream or watching it.

She would listen very carefully. And then she would interpret it. Not in a mystical, vague way. In a practical way. Like giving instructions.

If you are drowning, breathe.
If you are stuck, say there is enough space.
If you are flying, don’t panic. Don’t go too high too fast.

I learned to fly when I was about eight.

In the dream, I had to go to her garden plot just outside town. There was always fog. Thick, moving, undecided. I had to wait until it lifted just enough to see the grass. That was the signal.

Then I would run. Ten steps, maybe less. Lean forward into a gliding posture and push off. The trick was not to get excited. The moment you panic, you fall.

I still fly like that.

I used to dream of sand and water.

Sometimes they were friendly. I could run, play, and move freely between them. Other times, the sand would pull me in, slow and patient, and the water would come after, finishing the job. Those were the dangerous ones.

My grandmother had a solution for that, too. Just breathe, she said. Even underwater.

So I did. And it worked.

There were other dreams. Crawling through tight spaces. Turning, squeezing, and committing to a direction, only to reach a dead end. No way forward, no way back. Those were the worst.

You have to stop, she said, and say: there is enough space.

I never quite got this. I would panic and pop out of the dream, sweaty and choking. It never worked for me. Some dreams I preferred to avoid rather than master.

My grandmother died almost forty years ago. I was thirteen.

I still report to her. I still remember my dreams. I still write them down, as if she will read them somewhere and correct me if needed.

This week I dream of skiing. And of managing appointments.

People arrive without warning. Time folds in on itself. Too many things need to happen at once.

I’m not doing particularly well. But I also don’t choke and die. That’s something.

If you’re ever in trouble in a dream, there are rules.

Breathe underwater.
Don’t panic when you fly.
Assume there is enough space, even if you can’t see it.

I haven’t mastered all of them. But I’m still dreaming, remembering, reporting and divining.

And, in my book, this counts as a system.

I turned 18 years sober on Monday, which means I am now legally allowed to drink again, which is unfortunate because I absolutely should not.

I got sober in 2008 after four years of trying to do it my own way, which did not work, mostly because I was involved. There is a particular exhaustion that comes from failing at the same thing repeatedly and still insisting you are in control.

When I stopped drinking, I discovered that I had a life.

I was a mother to a ten-year-old girl who preferred any company to mine.
I was married.
I had just moved two thousand kilometres from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast.
There was a house. There was a pool. There was, technically, a future.

Inside, I felt like I had surfaced from a submarine wreck. Gasping, disoriented, not entirely sure how I was still alive. There was land nearby, something like a tropical island. Beautiful. Suspicious. I am going to die.

I was perpetually dumb, fat, and ugly, with zero hope on the radar. The world was also having a moment. Financial crisis, wars, the usual scary things happening out there.

None of that had anything to do with my inner weather.

My hopelessness was homemade.

I was coming out of the fog, tasting fresh air, and asking a question that felt deeply unreasonable at the time.

What now?

What do I do with the next 24 hours?
What about the dread?
What about my personal brand of melancholy?

You would not believe my capacity for dread and melancholy.

I am not Russian for nothing. These are cultural requirements.

I felt small, insignificant, underappreciated, and personally targeted by life. This is difficult to imagine now, if you picture me sitting by a tropical pool, but there I was.

Fast forward eighteen years.

My child is now twenty-eight, married with three cats, which feels like the correct number.
I am married. Again. Third time lucky?
We moved three thousand kilometres south to Hobart.

It is not tropical. The weather has opinions. The land is clear. The locals are friendly in a way that suggests they are watching you, but kindly.

Important distinction.

My child now prefers me to any other company. This is my delusion, and I am committed to it.

My wife loves me exactly as I am. Not in the same way she loves the house, because she keeps it in a constant state of renovation and landscape upheaval.

I no longer sit on the edge of a pool contemplating dread and melancholy.

I sit in a hot tub, wondering where the last 24 hours went.

So much to do. So little time. None of it is optional.

Somewhere along the way, I acquired an education, built a career, and became a mother to several elderly animals who have since been buried under a maple tree like minor royalty.

I have shared my experience, strength, and hope with other people, which is a sentence that would have killed me with embarrassment in 2008.

These days, I leave macramé plant holders behind at parties instead of a trail of blood and adulterous tears.

This is what we call progress. I am avoiding the word growth because it sounds medical.

Eighteen years sober, and I am still not entirely convinced who I want to be when I grow up.

At the moment, I would like to write a book about human trafficking. A comedy.

Nothing is funnier than near-death experiences while dashing across borders, accidentally outsmarting villains while being either innocently naïve or just genuinely dumb, getting into trouble faster than spilled vodka evaporates off a kitchen table.

I am not saying this is a good idea. I am saying it is funny.

And I am here. Evolving from loser to designer to linguist to a writer, allegedly.

Sober.
Mostly reasonable.
And, against all expectations, still curious.

I was in Grasse, doing what one does in the perfume capital of the world: aggressively sniffing everything that did not actively resist.

Roses, obviously. But also lavender, pine, citrus of every possible personality type, and then, because why not, resin, acrid smoke, blood, rot, and, at one point, what I am fairly certain was opium. Just casually. In a vial. As you do.

Somewhere between “Eau de Eternal Spring” and “Notes of Questionable Life Choices,” I discovered something science has known forever, but I personally needed to experience in my nostrils:

Smell is not a memory trigger.
Smell is the memory.

It grabs you by the collar and says, Come with me, we’re time-travelling now. No luggage. No consent.

One second, I am politely sniffing a rose.
Next, I am in my aunt’s garden, roses and apples, yes, but also coal smoke and cigarettes, because no childhood memory is complete without mild lung damage.

Then teleport. Crimea: salty sea, salty pretzels, salty tears. Everything is salted like a Soviet snack.

Then bang. My first hangover. The bouquet? Wet cotton tongue, metal, regret, and a faint whisper of never again, which, as we know, is the most fictional scent of all.

Then screech. Car accident. Burning rubber, scraped paint, adrenaline, and the very specific smell of well, that escalated quickly.

Then a soft cut. A newborn. Milky, powdery, impossibly pure. A scent so tender it almost makes you forgive humanity. Almost.

Then, without warning, I am illegally sniffing my neighbour’s apartment: dust, old books, garlic, and secrets. Mostly garlic.

Then a dance studio. Cedar parquetry, sweat, ambition, and the collective smell of kids pretending this is camaraderie and fun.

Then home. My father is playing the accordion. Leather bellows, celebration, vodka warming the air, and his megawatt smile, which, if bottled, would outsell everything in Grasse.

Then a tram. I am seven. I have survived gymnastics. The smell of my reward: a melting moment biscuit. Sweet, buttery victory. It lasts three stops. Unlike my flexibility, which lasted approximately zero.

Then my university dormitory. The scent of a new democracy: watermelon, Bulgarian cigarettes, and fear mixed with confusion. Also, the unmistakable arrival of Chinese plastic, a smell so persistent it has signed a lifetime lease in my brain.

At this point, I realise my olfactory system is not a library.
It is a chaotic nightclub where every scent is drunk and grabbing the microphone.

Remember me? shouts burnt rubber.
No, remember me, yells garlic.
I ruined your life, whispers the scent of whiskey seductively from the corner.

And I’m just standing there in a perfectly respectable perfume museum, nodding like a lunatic, while internally reliving my entire biography in high-definition smell-o-vision.

The assistant asks, “Would you like to try something amber?”

Madam, I have just experienced birth, death, the collapse of Soviet infrastructure, emotional gymnastics trauma, carbohydrates, and my father’s accordion in under three minutes.

But yes.
Let’s try something amber.
Or chloroform. I’m flexible.

On our return to Australia, we landed in Paris from Nice just before eight in the morning. Croissant time.

The plan was elegant. Four hours in Paris, then Hong Kong. Four hours there, then Melbourne. A smooth glide across continents, powered by snacks and optimism.

“Here we are,” I said. “Paris. The city of love. Whatever happens, we’ll have a wonderful time.”

This was my first mistake.

The second was deciding to claim a European tax refund.

To do that, I had to leave transit, go through immigration, and stand in a long line to be told that my purchases made in Italy needed to be stamped elsewhere.

At the other counter, they asked for the goods.

The goods were already on the plane.

Which was not.

So now I had papers but no items.
To get the refund, I needed both.
To have both, I needed time travel.

Soon after, I began crossing borders recreationally.

Stamp in. Nice.
Stamp out. Paris.
Stamp in again.

The immigration officer looked at my passport.

“You’ve already done this.”

Pause.

“No, you didn’t stamp in.”

Pause.

“Where is your entry stamp?”

We both looked at the passport like it was hiding something.

I had entered France. I had left France.
Apparently, I had not been in France at any point.

We took a moment.

Then:

Stamp in. Paris.

“Have you been in transit before?”

I said yes, but it felt more like I’d been processed.

Back in transit, nothing was moving, but everything was happening.

Our flight to Hong Kong was delayed. Technical reasons.

We waited.

After a while, time softened.

After a bit longer, it dissolved completely.

Three international flights were now living together in one small enclosure with two gates and two screens.

Hong Kong. Delayed.
Montreal. Delayed.

There was a third flight, but no one knew where it was going.

People kept arriving, looking around, and saying:

“There’s nowhere to sit.”

This was accurate.

The floor was available. Emotionally, not physically.

A few hours in, we were told to line up with passports and boarding passes.

Everyone stood. Everyone queued. Everyone lost their seats.

We were given water and a bun.

Losing your seat for a bun felt educational.

No plane followed.

This felt symbolic, but I’m still not sure of what.

Eventually, the flight was cancelled.

We were released back into France to collect our luggage.

Not everyone could leave transit.

Some passengers didn’t have visas. Their situation became… conceptual.

At passport control, out of twenty machines, two were working.

Two.

The rest were there for moral support.

I was manually searched, which felt fair. I also briefly suspected myself.

No one seemed to be in charge.

Cathay staff directed everyone to email. No one knew which email. Many people did not speak English or French. Communication shifted into gestures and despair.

Eventually, luggage appeared.

We were rebooked, fifteen hours later, via Singapore.

Others stayed behind for days.

And then, Singapore.

Clean. Quiet. Functional.

Machines that work. Floors that are clean. Systems that move you gently, as if you are expected to arrive somewhere.

After Paris, Singapore felt suspiciously excessive.
Like a transit paradise.

She always believed in dream sequences. In the same way, one might believe in the benefits of toothpaste or that a brisk walk is better than pizza. She slept because it was time, because she had no energy left, because the body and brain demanded rest to process vitamins, sunlight, and all the detritus of the day. Sleep turned a dumb manager into an alien slug, filed daily humiliations into tidy chocolate memory blocks, and released her into the theatre of dreams.

Dreams were, she told herself, simply the healthy by-product of this nightly reset. Right? Anyway, she believed in them: vital, necessary, free.

Most nights, she dreamt of ordinary things or of nothing at all. But there was one dream that came back, again and again, her whole life.

In that dream, she was always on an open terrace beneath a vast night sky, mountains rising like dark guardians around her. Sometimes the air was sharp with wind, occasionally heavy with rain, but mostly the skies were clear. Always, she felt safe. Always, it was unmistakable. She walked to the parapet. She gazed upwards, following the moon’s slow drift. She picked up pebbles, ran her hand across the stone, and paced from corner to corner.

Here, her daily dramas dissolved. She was calm. Untouchable. Confident. Still. She thought about the stars, about time, about lives lost and lives not yet lived. This small stone balcony was her universe. She knew every slab, every crack beneath her bare feet. There were forty in all, uneven squares, each as familiar as an old companion.

When she woke from this dream, she felt restored, full of creative energy. The dream was her signal, her tide turning. Whenever her pen dried up or her spirit flagged, she longed to return there.

Her waking life, however, was ordinary. Better than some, but still ordinary. She wrote commercial copy, rhymed “vacuum” with “wrinkle,” feigned interest in team meetings, and laughed politely at her manager’s jokes. At night, she dreamt of another life: fearless, creative, free. A life where she could stand on her balcony and feel whole. But like so many women of the glorious twenty-first century, she brushed the dream away like a stray hair. Meh. Nice to dream, but she had a mortgage. She could not bear to start again.

One day, she travelled to a foreign country for a conference, but, as always, was really in search of renewal. She hoped the journey would shake her loose, lift her melancholy, and inspire her to finally write her own book. A funny one, where she’d laugh at the terror of change and the panic of missing a mortgage repayment. Wouldn’t it be nice, pam-pa-pam-pa-pam-pa…She even thought of slipping those little musical traps through the text, so her readers would get hooked on a tune and be unable to shake it off for the rest of the day. Hilarious.

Anyway, she was in this lovely country for a shake-up. Among the excursions was a visit to an ancient mountain monastery, one of the few still active in the region. The guide spoke with passion about the order’s history, leading the group through permitted halls and gardens.

She lingered by a fresco, distracted, and drifted down a corridor that was not meant for visitors. At the end, sunlight blazed. The mountains stretched before her. The air carried a honeyed scent, achingly familiar. Without thinking, she was pulled towards a doorway opening onto a wide stone terrace. Not quite a veranda. Not quite a balcony. Something between.

She stepped outside, blinking. When her eyes adjusted, her breath caught. She was standing on the balcony in her dreams.

By daylight, it looked different, stranger, but as she moved from corner to corner, recognition dawned. It hit her like a fist, pressed her flat, reality squeezing through her like coffee through cheesecloth.

Here she had tilted her head to the sky. Here she had sifted pebbles. Here her foot had always found the crack in the stone. Forty slabs, terracotta and worn, a faint green whisper in the cracks.

Several doors opened onto the terrace, a detail she had never dreamt of. Beside one, an elderly nun sat in a rocking chair, prayer beads sliding through her fingers. Her eyes, milked with age, still glimmered with wit and a mischievous kindness.

The writer flushed. She was not alone. Someone had seen her restless circling. She also realised she had strayed into a forbidden wing. But curiosity outweighed embarrassment. Half in jest, half in earnest, she asked the nun if the monastery had any ghosts.

The nun studied her, then smiled.
But surely you would know better than I. After all, you’ve been standing on this balcony almost every night—for as long as I can remember.

The words hung there, dense and unreal, like the pressure in the ear when you’re waiting for the pop that never comes.

I was a girl when I first saw you, the nun continued softly. Later, as a novice, I would slip out here and wait. And there you were—always the same. You do not change.

Her breath faltered. The stone beneath her hand was cool, the slabs were forty, the sunlight was real. Yet in the nun’s gaze, she glimpsed herself as ageless—as someone who had always been here, fearless beneath the stars.

She could not tell if she had become the ghost, or if the ghost had always been her.

And then the thought came—what if it was the ghost who dreamt of her? Not fearless, not ageless, but a woman chained to deadlines, jingles, and meetings with dumb, glistening managers about nothing. A copywriter. What a waste.

She brushed the thought aside like a stray hair, the way she used to brush her dreams away. Nah. She’s got it now.

Venice felt… plastic.

Not fake exactly — more like too beautiful.
The kind of beauty that stops feeling real and starts feeling staged.

As if the whole city had been assembled overnight for a film set, and in the morning someone had forgotten to say action.

Because there are no people there.
Only clockwork-orange tourists. Including me.

And the people working with tourists — for tourists, despite tourists, because of tourists — guides, souvenir sellers, waiters, gondoliers — they come alive only when they recognise their own.
They light up, suddenly human, and we catch a glimpse behind the wax mask.

Everyone else gets… processed. Politely.

Even the gondoliers look at you as if you’ve wandered into their internal monologue, not paid €180 for a ride.
Who would pay that kind of money to sit in an old boat with a mildly disappointed man?

Us.
We did.

Of course, we took the gondola.

We barely got into it.
We barely got out of it.

Let’s just say — not everything fits neatly into an antique moving object, especially when the object has opinions.

Our gondolier was talkative.
Not about Venice. About life. His friends. His father’s dinner habits.

Venice drifted in and out of the story like a side character who missed rehearsals.

The highlight was meeting his friend Michael under the Mozart bridge and watching them load building supplies.
Maintenance in Venice is an extreme sport. Naturally.

We asked him to sing.

He refused.

Not casually. Firmly. Like a man who has seen things.

Every time he sings, he said, bad weather comes.
The last time — a storm, €10,000 damage, emotional consequences.

He is no longer singing.

His name was Leonardo.
“Like the Ninja Turtle,” he said, without irony.

Then looked at us as if to confirm that this was the level of reference we deserved.
Fair enough.

But earlier — before Leonardo, before the anti-singing policy — we met a different gondolier.

He was ancient. Not old — ancient.
The kind of man who has outlived several versions of himself and kept the best one.

He had been a gondolier for forty years.
He told me this in Italian, a language I do not speak, and yet I understood it fully. Or imagined the whole lot, as I usually do.

He was walking down the street, singing.
Just singing. Like the job never ended.

We held hands.
Out of friendship, curiosity, and possibly wine.

We swayed a little together.
Not dancing — more like acknowledging gravity.

He told me he would always be a gondolier in his soul.

I asked if he could take us on a ride.

He laughed. Properly laughed.
Waved it away like a suggestion from a child.

“There are plenty of young men for that.”

Then he blessed us.
Something nautical. Something generous. Possibly involving weight, water, and destiny.

Fun fact: every day, at least one tourist falls into a canal in Venice.

He told us all dreams come true.

And then — very seriously — dictated the numbers of a winning lottery ticket.

Which I absolutely did not understand.
But I accepted them spiritually.

Back on Piazza San Marco, another performance unfolded.

A group of committed individuals were feeding pigeons.
Illegally. Passionately. Professionally.

The pigeons waited — ready to land, to pose, to participate.
The feeders waited — scanning for fresh tourists.

Seeds flew.
Tourists were instantly upgraded to “interactive surfaces.”

Coins followed.
Sometimes money. Sometimes ice cream.

One girl threw gelato.
A nun threw her hands up — prayer or curse.
A husband briefly hid behind his wife. Not from pigeons. From something else entirely.

The police waited too.

And then — movement.

Whistles.
A sudden eruption of purpose.
Running. Disappearing. Reappearing.

Lookouts on every corner.
Signals passed invisibly.

One minute — pigeons, romance, Instagram.
Next — silence, empty square, nothing ever happened here.

Curtain.

Honestly, it was the most alive thing we saw in Venice.

At lunch, we were not given knives or forks.

“For your safety.”

I tried to explain that I had been trained in cutlery since the age of five and was no longer a risk to civilisation.

But this was not a negotiable system.

Later, our hotel sent us to a “family restaurant.”

They brought full plates.
They removed full plates.

Then asked — gently, sincerely — how everything was.

We said it wasn’t great. Not even good. Not even mildly positive.

“Wonderful! Please come again!”

No break in tone. No crack in the surface.

This was not a conversation.
This was a recorded message wearing a human face.

Five stars for consistency.
We were clearly on hold the entire time.

And then — Murano Island.
The magical glass blowers. The ancient secrets. The blood-bound traditions. Yes?

Of course. Here is a complimentary boat.

This should have been the moment of clarity.

Instead, it was the moment we boarded.
We want the full Venice experience, please. Let me polish my right eye — it’s not glassy enough. Must be pigeon residue.

I promised myself I would stay alert.
I did not.

By the end of it, the family had invested a modest fortune in glass —
a vase, an object, something fragile and confident — currently travelling somewhere between Italy and New Zealand, making its own life choices.

Whether it arrives is almost irrelevant.

Venice is not a city.

It’s a performance.

And like any good performance, it is slightly absurd,
a little expensive,
and completely unforgettable.

I have recently taken on the role of tour guide for our family, despite overwhelming evidence that I should not.

Like any good expedition leader, I decided to take us to the centre of Parma by the most indirect route possible.

There was, of course, a perfectly straightforward way.
But that would have been far too simple. Also, completely unavailable to me in my natural state.

My sense of direction never developed. Perhaps it compensates for other perfections: I have the warmest smile when I can’t hear what you’re saying, I solve many situations with a musical laugh when I can’t hear what you’re saying, and I never repeat secrets I haven’t heard.

Wait. That’s actually just one perfection. I’m half-deaf.

Anyway.

I announced that we would take a scenic detour through a park where, according to the internet, a pond full of Indian turtles lives.

I was curious to observe Indian turtles in their natural habitat.
Parma.

The entrance to the park, as it later turned out, was directly behind our hotel.

By the time we reached the pond — via several unnecessary neighbourhoods — it was closed for the winter.

The turtles, meanwhile, were somewhere warm.
Possibly on holiday.
In India.

Undeterred, I announced the next cultural attraction: a beautiful palace nearby.

The palace turned out to be the police headquarters.

We carried on to the river.

Rivers, annoyingly, do not organise their bridges around my arrival points.

I chose the wrong one.

Which is how I accidentally led my entire family into a demonstration while pretending to know exactly where I was going.

The bridge was filled with women — mostly young — with extraordinary energy. Pink wigs, banners, whistles, drums. People singing and chanting in Italian, which sounded wonderful yet completely impossible to understand over the language barrier.

Someone lit pink smoke flares.

From a distance, the smoke looks festive, almost like cotton candy.
Up close, it smells like burnt underwear.

Breathing it is not nearly as romantic as it appears in photographs.

I, of course, pretended that this had been the plan all along.

These women were clearly my lifelong friends.
Someone handed me a flag.
I began jumping enthusiastically to the roar of Roar.
No feminist revolution happens without Katy Perry. Even in Parma, they know that.

I was not given a flaming pink torch.

Rude.

My family began to suffocate and voted to abandon the feminist revolution.

In the distance, we could see the market.
Pink pastries everywhere.
Possibly pink because of the smoke.

One advantage of appointing yourself the tour guide: if you speak confidently enough — and wave your hands vaguely — people assume you know what you’re doing.

It also helps that my family currently believes I speak Italian.

I do not.

Still, the bridge was electric.
Children everywhere. Grandmothers. Teenagers. Women marching arm in arm. Pink wigs, flags, whistles, drums. The whole bridge moved like a river of noise and colour.

When travelling, I sometimes lose track of dates.

Only later did it occur to me that Parma had simply been celebrating International Women’s Day.

Which, in retrospect, explained quite a lot.

Where I grew up, March 8 — International Women’s Day — was treated with almost religious seriousness.

From early childhood, boys are trained — carefully and repeatedly — to give flowers and small gifts to every woman in their lives: mothers, grandmothers, sisters, classmates, teachers.

Girls reciprocate on February 23 — once the Day of the Red Army, now some version of Defender of the Motherland. The name changes. The ritual does not.

By adulthood, the whole tradition is engraved in the psyche with Pavlovian precision.

On March 8 flower shops overflow with bouquets. Women dress up. Cakes appear in shop windows. Men buy flowers for mothers, wives, daughters, colleagues, and occasionally their female dogs.

In Parma, the signs were there too.

Women carried little branches of mimosa.
Cafés selling cakes shaped like mimosa blossoms.

Later that afternoon, I wandered into a museum. The ticket woman quietly handed me a free ticket.

We exchanged a universal sign of female solidarity — a raised fist and a womanly nod.

I said No Pasarán.

Which, I believe, translates roughly to
“Never pee standing up.”

Or something like that.

Which felt like the most Italian interpretation of the holiday imaginable:

A riot.
Coffee-soaked cakes.
Gentle flowers.
And a free museum.

Let’s say it together once more.

No Pasarán. Enjoy your cake.

What’s the Difference Between Tai Chi and Pisa?

The Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa is not, as one might assume, primarily about miracles, awe, or failed architecture.

It is about collective exercise.

Thousands of tourists gather daily on the grass and perform a silent international choreography involving the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Nobody speaks. Nobody coordinates. Yet everyone seems to know exactly what to do.

After a few minutes of observation, it becomes clear that this activity has distinct schools of practice.

People stand around the manicured lawn in wide stances with arms extended, faces focused, as if stabilising their breathing and the medieval structure simultaneously.

There are several recognised styles.

The Structural Engineer

Two hands pressed forward, knees bent, expression of deep responsibility.
This person is clearly holding the tower up for the rest of us.

The Wrangler

Leaning backwards, arms pulling at the air, attempting to drag the tower upright.

The Textile Inspector

Pinching the very top delicately, as if the tower were made of fine tulle and required quality control.

The Devotee

Lying on the grass, hugging the invisible lower half of the tower with great tenderness. Around the groin.

This pose raises certain interpretive questions.

The Minimalist

One finger extended toward the tower with the confidence of someone who believes very little effort is required.

The Perfectionist

Standing ten metres away with a phone, directing another human being with the intensity of a Renaissance architect.

No, move left. Left!
No, now the tower is stabbing you.
No, now you’re stabbing the tower.
Stop smiling. Concentrate.

At this point, the photographer is no longer taking a picture.

They are now managing Earth-core alignment.

What is particularly reassuring is that everyone appears to be pushing the tower in exactly the same direction.

If their efforts were even slightly effective, the Leaning Tower of Pisa would have collapsed decades ago.

Occasionally, two strangers accidentally cooperate — one pushing, another pulling — neither aware they have briefly formed a structural committee.

The facial expressions range from serene enlightenment to the intense grimace of someone attempting to hold up several tonnes of antique Italian masonry.

I sent a photo of the scene [sans the main event] to our family chat and asked:

Where are we?

My niece replied immediately.

Tai Chi class?

She was absolutely correct.

My favourite thing in Pisa, however, was not the tower.

It was a robot grass mower quietly circling the field, ignoring the international Tai Chi session entirely.

While thousands of people manipulated invisible forces — gravity, balance, historical responsibility, possibly prana — the mower continued its slow, deliberate laps.

No tower stabilisation.
No architectural intervention.

Just a modest mobility exercise.

Finally, a machine that refused to participate in the drama.

I don’t know what backwaters some of you grew up in, but my childhood marched happily to the civilised tune of a weekly family bath and a communal Soviet banya with my grandmother and half her suburb once a month, plus on special occasions.

The woman raised me well. I know how to behave in a bathing society.

Rule number one: wear things you don’t mind losing when going to a banya. There are no lockers, and it is cruel to tempt good citizens with unripped knickers on a Thursday.

Rule number two: once naked, grab an uncracked enamel basin and hold on to it through the entire session. People are practical. Good basins migrate. Sometimes with heirloom soap or soaking dentures.

Rule number three: know the naked flesh of thy grandmother, aunt, and any other accompanying relative intimately well. Or at least recognise their basin. Women tend to blur in the steam.

Stranger dangers still exist in the women’s banya. Sometimes they take the form of an extra helping of pie, but sometimes it’s worse.

When you become lost as a child, your chaperones begin flapping about and screaming, rummaging through everyone’s basins, upturning soapy smalls, cutting themselves on people’s toenails, unceremoniously inspecting every other girl, and looking into very dark corners in search of you. Like someone’s grandmother’s underside.

Yep. Children also blur in the steam. The “[Insert name]! Where are you?” commotion is part of the authentic Russian banya flavour.

I personally have been grabbed and inspected, only to be dropped disappointedly back into my prized basin by the relatives of other girls at least a thousand times.

It builds character.

And the immune system.

There are a few more rules, of course.

Bring your own thermos of tea and a small flask of something stronger for the nerves during the post-steam relaxation. Although calling it relaxation may be optimistic.

One must simultaneously protect the enamel basin still clutched in hand, make sure one has washed the correct child, and attempt to identify one’s bundle of rags from the growing mountain of identical bundles other respectable citizens call belongings.

But I will not bore you with the full manual.

Instead, I will tell you about my Italian adventure at the most prestigious Florentine spa, Asmana. Or Hosanna, if you wish.

While there, I jumped from hot to cold — or rather from tepid to intrepid, if you ask me.

I moved between warm rain from above and warm rain from below. I sampled one delicious steam after another, tried dry heat, salt cave, sound bath, and floating.

I went spinning in whirlpool rapids, half-drowned, lost my bearings, scraped my knee and immediately approved.

Respect.

This is good and worthy relaxation.

I want my bath to fight back.

Cocktails floated around the pools. Mine was non-alcoholic, but it hardly mattered. Even the alcoholic ones failed to add much spice.

People floated good-naturedly, politely avoiding rougher waters and retiring for naps after a sip or two.

All this made me reminisce.

You see, I make it my business to sample bathhouses everywhere I go. In truth, I am not relaxing at all. I am conducting field research. Every bathhouse is quietly measured against the highest possible standard:

the communal Soviet banya of my childhood.

A steaming rite of passage that didn’t just make you clean — it pickled you, hot-smoked you, and sent you back into the world battle-ready.

It raised endurance in high-pressure environments, removed the pain threshold entirely, and sharpened pattern recognition. I could find my grandmother in a crowd of fifty pink women by her elbow alone.

I can recognise Steam Women in the dark.

Did you just ask, what are Steam Women?

Who was in charge of your upbringing, a wolf? A wild moose?

Steam Women make steam.

Of course.

They have the lungs of a boar, the arms of a bear, and the legs of the stoutest beer barrel.

A triple threat.

They order everyone into the steam room, make them sit and shut it, and then begin chucking ladle after ladle of water onto the red-hot stove.

They grunt from the effort.

Meanwhile, everyone else sits perfectly still, struggling to breathe and suppressing whimpers under waves of steam that feel suspiciously like liquid metal.

But the Steam Woman stands.

She continues ladling. Her felt hat is sturdy. Her eyes are squinted, and the aim is true.

She stops only when some internal thermometer says so.

Not when elderly ladies roll lifeless down the steps.

Not when young women faint into the nearest sweaty bosom.

No.

There is a special gauge inside a Steam Woman.

Surviving her ceremony — conscious and upright — is considered a badge of honour.

There are ceremonies in Italian spas, too, of course.

But don’t make me laugh.

An elegant swishing of hot air with a sarong is hardly a competition for being whipped with a bunch of birch branches from last year’s harvest — dried, soaked, dehydrated as a plant, rehydrated as a weapon — and applied to tender raw skin inside a steam torture chamber.

Sometimes by the Steam Women themselves.

They cheerfully whip you, chanting something along the lines of:

Kidneys strong!
Nerves of steel!
Those aren’t thighs —
That’s tractor wheels!

With each strike.

STEAM and PAIN!
WASH aGAIN!
FIRST comPLETE the FIVE-year PLAN —
THEN we FIND you PROper MAN!

Basically: five stars for every possible human experience — pain, humiliation, unattainable standards, acrid cleanliness, and professional respect.

Yes?

I once tested the Roman thermal baths in Baden-Baden.

They proudly accepted my challenge. The marathon consisted of seventeen-step bathing rituals: mild air, hot air, thermal steam, herbal steam, deep water, shallow water, relaxation and other blah-blah.

The temperatures were mostly meh, except for the ice bath.

Five stars.

I could not feel my legs for at least an hour.

But the true Olympic event happened at the Lather Station.

Two Fräuleins spread my naked self on a slippery stone slab and methodically washed me, lathering every nook and cranny, including the inside of my ears.

My wife oscillated between horrified nausea and hysterical giggles while watching from the far end of the room before fleeing into the deepest pool, nervously swallowing the rubber bracelet that would have granted her the same washing privileges.

On the humiliation scale, this was very close to my familiar baseline of “normal.”

I could truly relax and breathe deeply.

I also tried a few Finnish saunas across the globe. The winner is the ice hotel beyond the Arctic Circle, a day’s ride from Finnish Rovaniemi.

The dry heat was biting enough, the nude snow diving was excellent, and bonus: my wet hair got stuck to the cast-iron reindeer enclosure during one of the snow dives.

Please note that the snow bathing happened directly under the hotel restaurant windows during dinner service.

I only realised that when I asked for help after fruitlessly trying to disengage myself from the fence on all fours for several minutes.

The diners observed my nude acrobatics with true Nordic indifference.

I say, those sauna add-on experiences are a chef’s kiss.

If you ask me, every nation believes it has perfected the correct method of boiling a human being.

The Italians do it with elegance.
The Germans do it with discipline.
The Finns do it naked in the snow and refuse to discuss it.

But if you ever truly need to prepare a human being properly — boiled, softened, and morally improved, there is still only one place to go.

A Soviet communal banya.

On the day we moved from Rome to Florence, there was a nationwide train strike. Of course.

I felt very chuffed to have learned about it the night before, so I sprang into action, sending feelers to taxi and private transfer companies. Some replied straight away. Some replied several days later, in full accordance with the Italian operational philosophy La Dolce Vita, which for anyone not Italian loosely translates as:

Not today, Satan.

We secured a car. Four of us, spirits high, ready to relax into three or four hours of travel through the bucolic Italian countryside.

The driver seemed pleasant enough.

For about forty minutes.

Then he pulled over on the side of the highway and announced that he needed more money if we were to continue to Florence.

Otherwise — he explained something lengthy in Italian.

We didn’t quite get the details, but the overall message was clear:
More money. Or no Florence.

And that’s when something deep inside my Russian nervous system relaxed.

Finally.

Something familiar.

The negotiations — ransom? conversation? — felt oddly nostalgic. I didn’t feel like we were in danger exactly. More like we had briefly slipped through a wrinkle in time.

The driver was small. Very small. Possibly the smallest extortionist I had ever encountered. We were on the side of a busy highway just outside Rome, surrounded by cheerful Italian traffic and spring sunshine.

It was hardly the setting for a kidnapping documentary.

Still, the moment plucked a very particular nerve.

It reminded me of Russia in the 1990s.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, taxis were not so much a means of transport as Russian roulette with wheels.

The possible outcomes included:

1. Arriving at your destination.

2. Being robbed.

3. Making an unexpected appearance at a mafia sauna experience.

4. Being dismembered and sold for spare parts.

5. None of the above. Some other extreme Russian adventure.

People avoided taxis if they could, and certainly avoided taking them alone.

The probabilities were not equal.
They were weighted.

Certain personal characteristics — age, gender, attractiveness, clothes, or simply looking like a village idiot — could dramatically influence the outcome.

For example, my aunt once took a taxi to the theatre wearing a fur coat.

A rookie mistake.

The driver had an elderly woman sitting in the back seat.

Which seemed reassuring.

Unfortunately, the elderly woman turned out to be a professional hypnotist.

My aunt calmly invited the gang into her apartment and helped them pack up her gold jewellery, the fur coat off her shoulders, and the porcelain collection.

When she came to from the trance, she was nauseated with the realisation that she had just assisted in her own robbery.

Which, in hindsight, was quite efficient teamwork.

However, the system was not always cruel.

Once, when I was young and catastrophically drunk, I jumped into a taxi at three in the morning, escaping from some danger I can no longer remember — praise be — and wearing almost no clothes.

I had lost my sense of direction.
My ability to speak.
And the keys to my house.

I was what you might call a warm victim, ready for her X-treme adventure.

The driver took me home and pushed me through the high kitchen window. After a reassuring wet thump and a whimper, he left. Just a man returning a drunken disaster to her natural habitat.

No robbery. No kidnapping. No hypnotist.

So, when our Italian driver pulled over on the highway and demanded more money, I didn’t panic.

Compared to the Russian Wild Nineties, this was barely a warm-up act.

I asked to speak to the manager.

I explained politely that the situation did not look particularly good from the customer's perspective. As far as customer satisfaction goes: five stars for surprise and initiative, but zero for adrenaline.

He agreed.

There was a brief pause.

Then the driver started the car again.

And just like that, we were back on the road, rolling through sunlit hills toward Florence.

Italy may have its moments of chaos.

But I have to say, there is something reassuring about a country where the worst thing that happens in a taxi is someone asking for extra money.

No hypnotists in sight.
No hungry, calculating assessments through a rear-view mirror.
Just a confused roadside negotiation under the Tuscan sun.
No clearly articulated threat. Meh.

Frankly, after surviving the 1990s, it almost felt like a farce.
If you ever travel with me, remember — it takes real commitment to frighten a Russian.

I didn’t write yesterday because I was running around the city like a lunatic. Baroque churches, the Pantheon — last day in Rome, obviously, everything had to be seen. My legs eventually packed it in, praise the lord.

I’m glad we spent a week here. The old city is impressive, dense, endlessly educational. And yet the whole time I couldn’t shake the feeling that Rome isn’t quite a city — it’s more like a park. Or a zoo.

Everything is beautiful, popular, and over-loved. Soaked in centuries of history and a fine layer of tourist dandruff. Stunning, yes. And somehow… not entirely real. As if Rome exists primarily as a display.

Real life seems to have been relocated elsewhere. Taxi drivers, tour operators, and service workers clearly don’t live in the centre. They commute into this congestion like to an office — for a shift. They shout in traffic, curse tourists, drive past the presidential palace for the 213th time, spit at it, roll their eyes, swear, honk, and carry on. And yet, in the middle of all this, they recognise people. Old friends. Colleagues. Someone’s cousin. Someone’s neighbour’s grandmother. Someone’s third-grade teacher.

They shout across the square, flashing perfect Italian teeth, narrating their entire social network to us — the glass-eyed animals in a golf cart. We nod politely. Very nice. Lovely family tree. Could we please leave the dust now?

I imagine they build up tolerance here — six or seven hours of noise, horns, shouting, chaos — and then go home. To kitchens that smell like real food. To quiet. To local music. To actual life. For them, their home is some other Rome. For visitors, Rome is this snow globe.

Inside this globe, we float like plastic snowflakes. We land briefly on St Peter’s Square, then the Colosseum. A shake — the Pantheon. Another shake — a fountain. Another — a marble staircase. We drift past ceremonial riders in mirrored armour on bored, well-fed horses.

Past Armani. Past Ferrari. Past glossy shop windows reminding us that Rome isn’t asleep in ancient dust — that you can still tear down its cobblestones in beautiful Italian cars, hands in handmade leather gloves gripping the steering wheel, feet in fashionable Italian shoes that clearly have no intention of walking anywhere pressing the gas pedal, avanti, avanti, eyes sliding over two thousand years of ruins through pointless polarised sunglasses, golden minutes ticking away on spectacularly expensive watches.

And then I noticed something genuinely odd.

I barely saw any children.

Not babies in strollers. Not kids running across squares. Not teenagers hanging around aimlessly. The only school-aged children we encountered were tourists’ kids or school excursions from other cities — Naples, for example. Borrowed children. Imported for the day. Temporary.

Those kids were great. We sang together in a crypt and exchanged grave vows, the kind that are incredibly easy to make when you’re twelve. When life still feels long and wide and magical, and the future seems generous and contractually obliged to deliver adventures.

Rome, by contrast, feels like it has already had them all.

Maybe that’s why it feels so complete.
So polished.
So finished.

An extraordinary place to visit.

And then leave.

Rome is very convincing.

You wake up early.
You walk.
You marvel.
You tell yourself you’re pacing.

And then:

Trevi.
Bernini.
Family arriving.
First Roman lunch together.
A quick train ride to the suburbs, just to “have a look”.
Termini. Uniqlo.
Getting lost in what Russians call “three pine trees” — meaning: in a space so small and obvious that getting lost there is almost an art form.

And then — because it’s almost midnight and we are somehow still upright — The Three Tenors at St Paul’s Within the Walls.

Three.
Tenors.
That church.
Those voices.

At this point, several things become clear:

A) We are not in a jet-lag coma.
B) We are truly in Rome.
C) The mind has quietly left the building and handed the keys to a volunteer — wide-eyed enthusiasm with no breaks and no watch.

There is no gatekeeper anymore.

So naturally — dinner.

Because why not?
It’s Rome. It’s late. We’re still high on lunch carbs and beauty.
Wild boar ragù enters the room. Decisions are made without supervision.

And I, a grown woman, sincerely believe I will attend a 7 a.m. mass at Santa Maria della Vittoria to see Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa tomorrow morning.

Because clearly the solution is to keep pushing.

Spoiler alert: Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. No pushing through — eventually, the through starts pushing back. Trust!

I made it into the church this morning. Barely. Pushing through mental fog and a very heavy tummy. Wondering if gravity had shifted a gear, trying to spread me evenly across the cobblestones.
I could not sit through the mass.
I didn’t care for Theresa’s ecstasy. Saint or not.

I realised — suddenly and vividly — that I was about to desecrate holy ground with my internal organs.

So I fled.

I ran out of the church, clammy and terrified of being arrested for vandalism, and sprinted back to the hotel, clutching my insides, covering about 600 metres of Via Venti Settembre without spilling the load.

Meanwhile, my brain — unhelpful but consistent — started replaying regrets.

Why, in sixth grade, did I compete with that girl for the teacher’s attention when all I really wanted was to play with her puppy?

Why didn’t I just say that?

What was her name?
Was the puppy called Bantik?
Or Fantik?

I am 52 years old.
These thoughts arrived fully formed while reality hit me repeatedly, like a cartoon hammer, with birds flying in front of my eyes and a Colosseum tour looming in a few hours.

Was it the gelato?
The salmon?
The wild boar ragù?
The week of cheese with cheese?

Impossible to say.

And not important.

Because here is the thing I finally understood:

Rome has been built.
Not in a day, mind you — but it has been built.
It is not going anywhere. With all its 300,000 kilometres of ancient roads.

I, however, am here until Saturday, and only about 7 to 9 meters of intestines.

Which means I don’t need to consume Rome in one sitting.
I don’t need to win at travel.
And I definitely cannot give my internal gatekeeper a day off.

Rome will wait.
My body insists.

And this time, I’m listening.

Somewhere inside me, a sixth grader has raised her hand and finally said what she wanted all along.

Not attention.
Not perseverance.
Not the Colosseum.

She wants to stay in bed, sip tea, and let everyone be fine without her.

Honestly?
She makes a compelling argument.

We had just come back from the Vatican when the memory hit me.

Years ago, Liz and I went to Lapland for Christmas. Straight to Rovaniemi.
We met Santa — or Joulupukki — around the 23rd or 24th, took photos, and soaked in that bright, earnest Christmas Village feeling. Everything smelled like cookies and belief.

At some point, we ended up in Santa’s post office.
Run by elves. Obviously.

We bought postcards and sat down to write. We wrote and wrote until our fingers hurt.
I took a photo of Liz carefully writing Christmas wishes to friends and family in New Zealand and Australia.
I wrote to my family. To my aunt, who was still alive then. To my mum.

We bought the correct stamps.

And then I noticed something.

There were two mailboxes.

One said: This Christmas.
The other said: Next Christmas.

A time machine, basically.
You could choose whether your card from the North Pole arrives this year or the next.

Liz, naturally, had not noticed this detail. At all.
She had been quietly putting our cards into a mailbox.

When I realised there were two, I froze.

I went back to her and asked, very calmly,
“Which one did you post them into?”

She looked at me like I was unwell.
“What do you mean, which one? The mailbox.”

I dragged her back to the mailboxes.

Unfortunately, she had no idea.
None.
Zero.
Total Christmas stupor.

I blacked out.

I started opening mailboxes at Santa’s post office, in front of stunned elves, families, and small children, digging through thousands of postcards to find ours.

The elves intervened.

This was not possible, they said.
All letters go straight to Santa.
They cannot be touched.

If some went into one box and some into the other — well, then that must be the will of the Lord of Snow.
It is Christmas.
One must believe.

Later, I made a post on Instagram or Facebook announcing a Christmas friendship lottery.

Some of you will receive cards this year.
Some next year.
If you receive nothing at all, please know that either we are not friends, or someone like me interfered with Santa’s postal system.

I have a photo now — almost identical to the one before — of Liz writing postcards again.
This time from the Vatican.
Thankfully, the Vatican only has one mailbox.

My aunt, by the way, died a few weeks after Lapland, having never received her card from Santa.

Which is to say:
time machines are unreliable,
people are only here for a breath,
and the thought really counts.

I like to think my card reached my aunt anyway.
Just not by post.

So, day two in Rome.
The day was great. Really great.
We woke up at four. Went for a walk. Had a tour. Had lunch. Then went to a flea market. Sun, people, noise, trash, bedlam, joy — everything I love.

And there we were, standing at this flea market — which we were actually enjoying — when something clicked in my head: my phone was gone.

Not “somewhere here.” Just gone. Not in a single pocket.

And, just to be clear, my whole life lives in my phone.
Money in my phone. Cards in my phone.
Maps, bookings, documents, access — all of it.

Liz’s phone was completely dead.
We were relying on mine.
And mine was gone.

Of course, we left the market. It was beautiful, yes — but once this starts, beauty becomes irrelevant.

So we walked. Just… at random.

No maps. No navigation. No idea where we actually were.

Like people before smartphones, but with the nervous system of someone whose smartphone has just vanished.

I was holding it together. Joking. Chatting with the taxi driver.

Inside, though, I was having a very high-quality panic.
Not hysterical.
Just solid. Thorough.

I’m an idiot.
Someone’s found the phone.
They’re already at the bank.
We’re down a thousand dollars.
And my licence is in there too. Of course it is.

Rome rolls past us. Beautiful. Eternal. Loud. It couldn’t care less that I’m right in the middle of my own personal apocalypse.

It has two thousand years of experience. It has buried millions of people like me.
And that’s only on this side of the birth of our dear lord-boy — the first and the beloved. Well. After Harry Potter.

Back at the hotel, we went quiet. Each of us is in our own corner.

I contacted our Uber driver. She searched the car. No phone.

By that point, Liz’s phone had charged just a little, and I thought:

— Oh, good. Right. Technology.

Now we’ll find you.
The phone will be on the back seat, just like I thought. You won’t wriggle out of this, sweetheart. Because technology!

I opened Find My. My phone was… at our address. Wait, what?!

I pressed the play sound.

And my phone started singing. From somewhere on my body. From the front pocket of my sports jacket. Right on my stomach. The pocket I had completely forgotten existed.

Curtain.
Comedy.
Tragedy.
Farce.

Two hours of life.

Enough time to learn that panic doesn’t mean danger, being lost doesn’t mean you’re stuck, and it’s okay to ask someone else to get close and personal and check your pockets for you.

When I travel, I become a different person.

Or not a different person — a version of myself with a softer nervous system.
Provided I’ve slept, have money, and am doing something vaguely spiritual with my life.

Then I smile.
I wait.
I buy vegetable juice.
I forgive airports their many sins.

Right now, I’m at the Parkroyal Airport Hotel in Melbourne. A few hours later than expected, mind.

Lizzy is unconscious — understandably — after a night shift, a delayed flight, and a sore foot.
So I went to the health centre.

I swam about five metres.
Lazily.

Then I went to the steam room — out of order.
Sauna — out of order.

Unbothered, I returned via the business centre and conference rooms, where a group of accountants or car-rental managers were clearly in the middle of a team-building exercise.

I stocked up on the most delicious tea from the conference caddy.
I winked at the dumbfounded participants in full business suits.
I walked away, swishing my white bathrobe, barefoot.

Who puts a health and fitness centre on the other side of conference rooms?
I don’t make the rules.
I see conference teas — I take them.

This is who I am when I travel.

I sit calmly in airports waiting for delayed flights.
I look indulgently at twenty-dollar salads and ten-dollar coffees.
They seem reasonable.
Pleasant, even.

At home, I would lose an eye over such prices.

And that’s when I remember: this softness is learned.
I wasn’t always like this.

There was a time when airports brought out the absolute worst in me.

Years ago, I was flying back from New Zealand with my daughter, Sasha, after a week of snow sports.
We were exhausted in that special, travel-induced way where time dissolves, and your soul smells faintly of carpet.

The flight was delayed.
Then delayed again.
And again.

Twelve hours.

We moved through the international terminal like refugees of poor planning — one dusty corner after another.
We ate from every cuisine available.
We bought Sasha an Apple laptop, as one does when reality begins to fray.
We played Angry Birds until our thumbs went numb.

By the time boarding was announced, we were no longer people.
We were concepts.

And then — our tickets didn’t scan.
Or the plane was full.
Or they ran out of space.
I genuinely don’t remember.

What I remember is this: I dropped into a blackout on the spot.

I vaguely recall jumping over the barrier.
Trying to scan my ticket on their unfamiliar machine.
Trying to physically fight my way onto the plane, as if sheer willpower might override aviation policy.

And then I remember Sasha’s eyes.

Wide.
Quietly horrified.

She didn’t want to fly anymore.
She wished — very sincerely — to wake up and be an orphan in that moment.

Which, in hindsight, is a strong parenting review.

Yes, I got arrested.
No, I wasn’t charged.

We were in New Zealand, after all.

The lovely New Zealand police officers gave me tea.
They wiped my tears.
They cooed and made soft sounds.
They spoke quietly, as if addressing a frightened animal that had wandered into the wrong enclosure.
Eventually, they took us to a hotel.

Before that, though, I discovered something important.

My ticket mishap wasn’t a unique aberration.
At least twenty other people had also missed the plane.
They did not get a hotel.
They had to stay awake — in the airport — and wait for hours.

Because some lady had lost her shit
and required special attention.

To say the least, I was not popular.

I think about that woman now — and about the one in the bathrobe stealing conference tea.

Same person.
Different outlook on life
(plus sobriety, medication, better financial stability, and hormonal treatment).

These days, when flights are delayed, and steam rooms are out of order,
I shrug.
I wait.
I let someone else decide what happens next.

Growth, it turns out, is very quiet.
And significantly less dramatic for airport security.

Hobart is a very exotic destination if you look at a world map.

For many people — almost the edge of the world.

For us — simply home.

Tomorrow at noon, we leave Hobart, and at midnight, we fly out of Melbourne. Rome, Florence, Venice, France — for some, these are familiar places, but for us, people from Tasmania, they feel like real exotica.

Not on the other side of the planet — but still very far away.

I don’t want to write a travel blog.

I want to write about myself — about how I feel, what I notice, what moves and changes me.

I want to invite my friends here, so you can live this journey with me, see it through my eyes, pause where I pause, and keep moving together.

There is a gentle chaos in the house right now. The suitcase is already full of gifts — and for our own things, we have only a small bag left, about twenty by twenty centimetres.

For some reason, this feels exactly right.

Lately, I haven’t been sleeping well. Probably because my head is already living in two time zones and in two different seasons.

Here — summer, light, Hobart.

There — another rhythm, another language, another life.

I have a small fantasy: to go out every morning for Italian coffee, drink it standing at the bar, say scusi, prego, and pick up a few more words — just by listening, just by living.

The most important phrase for me in any country is always the same: “How do I get to the nearest food market?” That one I will definitely learn.

If you feel like it — stay with me.

This won’t be about kilometres or landmarks.

It will be about the journey, the state of being, and life between seasons.

We’ll try.