Leaving the UK and my upcoming travel plans

Nine months ago, I sat in the Berlin apartment of my CouchSurfing host, Annika, and flicked through the Lonely Planet guide to Australia sitting on the kitchen table. Annika had studied there for a bit and she told me how she dreamed of going back. She’d fallen in love with surfing and was desperate to move to Australia and live by the beach. Her bedroom was decorated with surfing posters and photos of beaches. This week she landed in Brisbane, surfboard under her arm, ready to start her working holiday visa.

I love seeing anyone, especially my friends, follow their dreams.

We all dream of doing so many things and those dreams often start with the words “one day”.

My UK working holiday visa ends today, a milestone that didn’t mean much until I thought about Annika and her move to Australia. In what feels like another life, a teenage Megan said “one day I want to move to the UK”. I said it for so many years I began to think it would never happen. For so long it was something I wanted to do, yet it was all so vague and turning it into reality often felt out of my hands. I’ve just spent the last 13 months living that dream, but I haven’t always comprehended what an achievement that was – not because moving here was difficult, but because I turned “one day” into “now”. Was it everything I thought it would be? My teenage dream had me strutting about London in a stylish suit and impressive heels. The uniform of a successful journalist I thought at the time. But the person who had that dream isn’t the person who had their passport stamped at the Eurostar terminal on the way out of Belgium last year. Never did I picture myself living in a small country village, working in a youth hostel and spending my free time climbing mountains. So no, it wasn’t anything I thought it would be.

Now I’m hours from being kicked out of the country like the convicts all those years ago. Although unlike them, I am not Tasmania bound. I’ve had many questions about my plans for the rest of the year so here’s the run down.

Today I fly to Ireland for my affectionately named “must-leave-UK-when-visa-expires” trip. I’ll be catching up with some friends, but most importantly, getting the stamp in my passport to show I was a well-behaved little working holiday maker and left the UK when I was supposed to because I need the lovely people at immigration to let me back in on Friday. I’ve heard some horror stories of Aussies returning to the UK after their working visa has expired and denied entry because it’s suspected they’ve come back to work illegally. I have a few documents showing my plans for the rest of the year so I’m hoping that satisfies any questions.

So what are those plans?

The rest of August will be filled with doing some things I have spent the last 13 months wanting to do and just not found the time for including climbing England’s highest mountain, Scafell Pike. It isn’t far from where I live, but has remained un-conquered by me due to weather, timing and laziness. It wouldn’t be August without a trip to Edinburgh Fringe Festival so I’ll be spending a week there and packing in a lot of comedy, tea drinking and digging about in second-hand bookshops. I’m going to visit Agatha Christie’s grave near Oxford and hopefully to fit a trip to the Scottish highlands. But the main point of returning to the UK is to spend time with my friends here because it will be a while before I see them again.

At the end of August I fly to Belgrade, the starting point for my Balkan’s sojourn. I’ll have 12 weeks and will be exploring Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Kosovo and Turkey. Also, in a very recent development, yesterday I bought a ticket for the Travel Bloggers Unite conference in October, which will be held in Israel. While I haven’t decided if I will definitely go, it would be a shame to let the ticket go to waste now wouldn’t it? I’d love to travel there by train from Turkey, through Syria and Jordon, but that will depend on many, many things, not least, the political climate come October.

I have no set plans for the Balkans and at the moment the only thing booked is the flight to Belgrade. I’ll be moving slowly and travelling by bus and train. I don’t know much about those countries, but that’s part of the appeal of going there. While of course they all get tourists (especially Turkey), the other countries are still very much off-the-beaten-track for mass tourism, so I’m looking forward to experiencing them before they become the next “must-see” destinations, which is inevitable. I plan to spend about a week at Lake Ohrid on the Albanian/Macedonian border and can’t wait to see the giant Bill Clinton statue in Kosovo and take a hot air balloon ride in Turkey.

In mid-November my solo adventure comes to an end and I’ll be going to Paris to meet a friend from Tasmania. Rachael and I will spend a few days in Paris before heading to Morocco for about three weeks. Morocco has been on my travel wish list for a while so I’m very excited to have that firmly on the agenda. We’ll return to Paris to see the Christmas markets before Rach flies back to Australia and I fly back to the UK.

The UK? Again? Only quickly. Instead of carting all my belongings through Eastern Europe, I’m leaving some things with friends in Scotland and I’ll pick them up on my way to….CANADA. The working visa application has been submitted so I should know in a few weeks if they are happy to have me back.

As for Australia, I’ll be home for a short visit in May for my sister’s wedding. By then I will have been gone three years and it will probably be time to switch out my clothes for some of the ones stored in bags at my parent’s house.

Have you been to any of the countries I’m visiting? Any suggestions for what I should do or see?