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Alison Atkinson-Phillips  I love to travel. I love to go other places, to wander around an unknown city and get lost in unfamiliar sights and smells. Each place I go to, and the people I meet while I’m there, teaches me something new. So here’s my list: seven places that have taught me to wonder.
1. England — the North East CoastI grew up in Sunderland, a town on the North East coast of England known for its glassblowing and ship building industry, both of which are long gone now. My dad loves camping, so we spent all our summer holidays travelling around the UK — usually the North East. In my idealised memories we visited national trust sites, hiked through woodland and spent summer evenings picking wild berries for tea. In reality, we often got rained on and spent days in the tent playing card games. Either way, I have a deep love of that part of the world, and still get a sense of coming home whenever I am there. 2. Israel — Lake Galillee In 1994 I spent a week travelling around Israel with a group of other Christians. It’s a land of amazing richness and complexity — geographically, historically, politically — and, while I would never claim to be an expert, being there did give me an insight into that volatile region. We spent a few days in kibbutz in Galilee. During the night we could hear fighting on the boarder with Lebanon, yet the area was also incredibly peaceful.
3. South Korea — the Demilitarised ZoneGoing as a tourist to a war zone — even one where there’s not actual conflict — is a bizarre experience.  A boy on the bus had told me only foreign nationals could cross the boarder into the Demilitarise Zone. I saw some people sitting looking across the barbed wire, and wondered if they had once lived over there.
The war museum in the Zone included gruesome battle souvenirs and a model re-enactment of one of the major battles of the Korean War, complete with flashing red lights and the noise of gunfire. It was a surreal experience. 4. MalawiI had always wanted to go to Africa. I guess it had a bit to do with growing up in the 1980s with Live Aid. So when my sister told me she was going to live in the small African country of Malawi for two years as a volunteer, teaching at a pharmacy college, I knew I had to visit.  We spent almost a month there, and I even learnt a couple of local words. Uzungu mwaana means “white kid,” which is what everyone shouted as they pointed to our son. White adults were pretty commonplace, but not many westerners take their children to that part of the world.
We were on a tight budget, but even so we lived like royalty. “Self catering” on safari involved us bringing our own food to the BBQ and having someone cook it for us. Lake Malawi was simply breathtaking — both above and below the surface. It has the richest variet of tropical fish anywhere in the world. Since most Malawians have eight or nine children, we were never short of an experienced babysitter. That month was about as carefree as you can get with a toddler in tow. Nonetheless, 2001 was a year of famine in southern Africa, and Malawi, one of the poorest nations, was badly affected. We stopped for a picnic in the countryside one day, and an old woman came to us saying “hungry.” She took our leftovers back for her family in the hut nearby. Is it ethical to have one of the most carefree holidays of your life in that context? I still don’t know. I only know I want to return to find out more. 5. Isle of Fynn — Denmark Fynn is the birthplace of Hans Christian Anderson and it looks like a world of fairytales. I spent just two days there, but was fascinated by the thatched cottages that lined the country roads and the equally quirky old buildings in the main town. It was there I began to appreciate my husband’s eye for architectural detail.
Ekeburg Castle, which I seem to remember houses one of the world’s largest collections of vintage cars, is straight out of the Frog Prince, complete with a giant golden ball in the garden. The castle is surrounded by a moat and small woodland animals sculpted from hedge plants are dotted around the gardens. We couldn’t afford to go inside, but just exploring the ground and the hedge maze took me right back into the magic of childhood. 6. Poznan — Poland Poland was somewhere I didn’t really want to go; it seemed like a ridiculous detour on our European road trip. As we crossed over from Germany our overloaded old Volvo was suddenly the best looking car on the road.
Poznan is one of the oldest cities in Poland and still has some amazing old architecture, including a town clock with goats that come out and butt heads at noon each day. It was also the site of the first uprising against communism in 1956 — and again in 1968, 1970, 1976, 1980 and 1981. My husband bought a fob watch there engraved with, “made in the USSR.” I bought a $2 model of the goats. 7. Australia — Windy HarbourJ ust over a month ago I took a week’s holiday and went with my family to stay in a beach shack down in Windy Harbour. We’d been hoping to take a month and go to southern Europe with some friends, so Windy didn’t seem quite so exciting. Especially in the middle of winter. Windy Harbour is on the southwest coast of WA, near the small town of Northcliffe. It’s basically a holiday town, made up of dozens of beach shacks dating back to the 1950s, when it seems every family in the district had a place there. The place we stayed was one of the original shacks, so we spent the week cooking on the old wood fire we lit each evening for warmth. Standing on the cliff top path and scanning the horizon for whales, I thought about how lucky I am, to walk care free in this space. Lately I've been more aware of the costs of travel in terms of the contribution jet engines make to global warming, so I think i'm going to be spending more time exploring closer to home. But I don’t know if I would appreciate this land as much if I hadn’t come halfway around the world to get here.
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