June 2023 (Stuttgart, Strasbourg, Colmar, Rome, Florence and Paris)
June started off with a funeral and by weddings. The funeral was for the father of one of my long time friends. The man who died was 87 and in poor health but I was fascinated to hear the story of him packing his suitcase at 17 and coming to Melbourne from Italy to live with his older brother. I relayed this to my Mum and she reminded me that she, too, had done this at 17. Mum and her older sister came from Malta to Melbourne to pave the way for the rest of her family – her parents and four other siblings. She and her sister flew (never having been on a plane before) and the rest of the family followed a few months later by ship. The plane trip took about 45 hours and there were various stops - Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Karachi, Singapore, Sydney and, finally, Melbourne. The trip on the ship took 4 weeks and my grandmother was apparently seasick the entire voyage. My Dad is also a migrant but from Ireland. He moved to Dublin as a teenager and then London where he saw an ad for the...