Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Here’s a list of thirteen countries I have visited or been through. I don’t consider myself to be a jet-setter: it’s simply that as a child we would drive to what was then Yugoslavia and is now Slovenia to visit family, and there were an awful lot of different countries along the way. ;)

1. Liechtenstein. We had one year when Dad picked a crazy route so that we could check off some more countries from our list. I remember absolutely nothing about it other than how cool it was to have a family who would detour to an entire different country just to say we’d been there. Liechtenstein, incidentally, is bordered by Austria, Germany and Switzerland and is teensy–just 62 square miles.

2. Germany. My first visits to Germany were on the way to Slovenia. Mostly I recall that it always seemed to pour buckets around Munich and we’d always get lost and crabby in the Nürnburgring. From time to time we’d visit my “aunt” and “uncle” who lived in Bergneustadt. In later years I studied Germany, so I spent the 1990/1991 school year being actually quite miserable as a student teacher in Dortmund. I’d get a lot more out of it now, I think, except I would still hate the teaching.

3. Switzerland. We went through on the way to Slovenia, but I also fell deeply in love with it on a school trip to Interlaken. I think I was fifteen when I went. We went to the James Bond restaurant, saw the Eiger and all those famous mountains, and I got blistered skin from the sun reflecting off the pure white snow.

4. France. My first trip was in 1983, to Bayeux, and I was thirteen. I still have the entire Bayeux Tapestry somewhere in a treasure box (well, a printed version, silly!) My second trip was not as much fun, full of silly teenage girl love troubles and a first snog with a boyfriend who dumped me the next day for a twelve year old (!) I was oh, maybe 16? On the other hand, I adored La Rochelle and was able to visit it again when I spent a month in beautiful Tours as part of that abovementioned “year abroad.” I had to take an intensive course in French and it’s the only exam I’ve ever taken that I failed…though I didn’t actually have to pass, I just had to take the class.

5. Luxembourg. In Germany, you often see dirt-cheap trips to far-flung places–sort of like $10 to go to Illinois. The catch is that you have to sit through a sales pitch, which in this case was for fur coats–ugh. They don’t tell you what the sales pitch is in advance. I went with a “friend” who then proceeded to get blind drunk to the point where I was mortified and all the others on the bus were giving us filthy looks. Again, ugh. Luxembourg was pretty, though, what little I saw of it.

   There’s a possibility that we went through it on that trip to Slovenia, too.

6. The USA. I first visited Don in July of 1996. We had met online and hit it off well enough to get started with the whole immigration/marriage dance. In October 1997 we got onto Arnie and rode across to Stateline, Nevada, where we borrowed a clerk as witness and got married. Ten years later, here we still are. I’ve been to California (duh!), Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Missouri, South Carolina, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas…so far. I’ve been through airports in Illinois, Colorado and DC, too, but that’s cheating. ;)

7. Canada. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to go to Toronto and loved it. I also loved Niagara Falls. I hope to go back one day.

8. The Republic of Ireland. I had a day trip to Dublin once, as a student. It was a Sunday and we spent the entire day running around trying to gather a group together because there’d been some confusion as to where we were being picked up. I remember the big post office with its statue of Cu’Cuchlainn, funny looks in a locals’ pub as we ordered Guinness, and rain.

9. Belgium and The Netherlands. These were frequently where we’d disembark from our ferry. I remember flatness and pretty rural villages, and the smell of a sea port–but not much else.

10. Austria and Italy. All the big mountain passes were here–the older I got the easier they made the routes and the less scary these were.

    I have also been, on a day trip, to Gorizia. Nova Gorica is in Slovenia, Gorizia, the other half of the town, is in Italy. We went to get pasta and I was amazed at how many different kinds there were.

11. Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales. Notably, on one week off for my birthday, we did a few days in Scotland, a few in Northern Ireland, and then a few in England. (In case you didn’t already know this, I am English.)

12. Slovenia. I miss my Slovenian home. Countless childhood memories are bound up in this place–grand meals with an extended family, laughter even though I can barely get by in the language, lovely lakes and mountains. It has a deep place in my soul.

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