Travelling teacher

  My Amsterdam adventure began in the wee hours of Saturday morning, as most of my weekend adventures do. I decided to be a little more relaxed than normal and wait until the first train, as the bus is so slow, taking advantage of my bagless check-in, so that was quite nice. In saying that, I was still up at 3.30am as I had been too exhausted on Friday to face marking that needed to be done for Monday, so ended up doing an hour in the morning before my flight. Having clearly been a bit too ambitious and doing a rushed last minute packing job as well as attempting a load of washing, I went to pull it out five minutes before I had to leave but the washing machine decided not to spin it, so I put the spin cycle on and left it as a present for my host mum to find when she got up. So pretty much a typical Saturday morning start for me then! Running the last minute of my walk to the train station, I managed to catch my train and proceeded to groom myself and re-organise my bag, while ...

  I’m sitting in the plane on my last flight back to London after an unexpected stopover in Vienna. Lufthansa somehow managed a 50% hit rate on cancellation of my six flights for this trip, and showed great consistency in letting me find out for myself rather than notifying me – needless to say I’m not planning on booking through Lufthansa again! After a very stressful few hours in Vienna airport, I made it to the service desk where my flights were rebooked for the morning via Salzburg, and they were kind enough to book me in overnight in my hotel, with transfers there and back, which was nice. Of all the places for me to get stranded, I was fairly lucky for it to happen in Vienna. I had time for a little wander in the morning and the tulips were out, the birds were singing, the trams were running, and the buildings were boasting all the elegance I would expect from Viennese architecture. It was a nice chance to relax after a fairly stressful previous evening.   ...

  Having experienced the poverty of Egypt and the comparative sophistication of Israel, my first impressions of Jordan were that it was somewhere in between. From what I could pick up, Jordan is kind of like the Switzerland of the Middle East, getting along with everyone and seeming to benefit both economically and socially as a result. The tourism industry having suffered a little and just starting to pick up again, we encountered friendly security guards, quick to make jokes about where our guns were hiding, and bombs hidden in our laptops, and everywhere we went, people would wave at the bus or greet us with “Welcome” as we walked up the street. Our guide commented that Jordanians are well educated in general, and over half the population speak English, even though it isn’t an official language or the first language of any of their neighbouring countries. We arrived in Amman for our first night of food and were treated to a delicious meal where they kept bringing out plat...