10 years ago, destination Australia
How I began to travel around the World
October 24, 2004 , on a flight from Dubai to Sydney
I’ve been traveling for many hours. I think twenty, maybe thirty. I lost sense of time. I crossed Northern Italy by train. Then boarded a plane that took me from Milan to Dubai. I took a taxi. I wet my feet at 3AM in the waters of the Persian Gulf, while a group of boys were playing football on the beach. I returned to the airport and waited for 5 hours for the next flight. If this is the beginning, whatever happens from here on out will be an adventure.
I’m flying over the Indian Ocean. Destination Sydney. After 25 years of saying that “one day I will go to Australia”, I did it. I quit my job, I was a software developer. I wanted to go, I was tired of a life in front of a PC. I wanted to discover the land of kangaroos. I’ve said it so many times, “I want to go to Australia“, no one believed it. Instead, I packed the backpack and I bought a Lonely Planet. I’m flying. Awesome.
Great. If it were not for the family of Maori who sits in the row in front of me. The man is as big as a closet with 6 doors and his two dear little children have turned this flight in a playground. They love to play with my monitor, where I’m watching the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, in English. Every 10 minutes they stand up on the seat, smiling at me and then begin to press randomly on my monitor, stopping the movie. It does not really matter, I’ve already seen the movie in Italian and I’ve read the book during class at the University of Physics 2.
All things considered to be my first intercontinental flight is going well. I’m not complaining. It is not the business class, but in just seven hours I’ll be in Sydney! Wow!
Suddenly, the delirium.
An old man of Arab nationality stands up and begin to scream out loud incomprehensible words. Walking in the hallway and screaming! He approaches the hostess and he starts to push. He is furious. There also comes a steward and the old man pushes everyone away and starts to run screaming in Arabic, unintelligible words . It’s a moment of tension. We look at all between us. The old man is on the corridor where I’m sitting and I see him coming. He is pissed off and some fear begins to take shape in my head. I cross the look of the Maori in front of me.
He gets up, he is a giant . He looks the elderly man, which does not stop. He runs vs. the Arabic. Immobilizes the old man with one arm and throws him to the ground. The stewards pounce upon. Some tape arrives. They bind him and take him to the last row of seats. The silence. The hostess explained that everything is back to normality. I do not understand much, but it seems that the situation is under control. The plane wobbled in turmoil, but we are still heading Sydney.
After some time I talk with the man sitting by my side. It seems that the old man wanted immediately to get off the plane, open the door and go away. It is not clear if he had a parachute… ;-) Meanwhile, Frodo and Smigul have thrown the ring into the volcano Fate. The Lord of the Rings ended. The plane landed safely in Sydney. The police jumped on the airplane and took the old man.
Here is “ where and when “ begins the story of gioadventures.
This is the story of how I started my 10 years of travels, adventures and photos around the world. “gioadventures “ is the nickname I used in my first online experiences and which still characterizes some of the social media I use.
Now I am a professional photographer, focused on Travel Photography.
From here on, I will write a serie of posts dedicated to 10 years of gioadentures. Feel free to share them on Twitter using the hashtag #gioadventures10
