Who am I?
Born in the 60s, I’m from the Generation X. Travel has been the driving force in my life. My parents traveled. I’ve worked in transport and traveled a lot on my own.
2020: a pivotal year in my life. After 34 years with Air France, I’m starting a new chapter. The page is blank and it’s time to take stock. The health crisis, with its confinements and restrictions on social life, invites me to introspect.
I soon realized that travel had been the main driving force in my life.
It starts with traveling parents. When she was 18, my mother went to Tahiti for a year in 1951. She then became a flight attendant based in Algeria. My father traveled the world to follow public works projects. By the age of 12, I had already moved 10 times and lived abroad in Belgium and Algeria.
With my family background, it was natural that I should travel! And it’s obvious that it has to be part of my new life project.
I’ve traveled for leisure, but also for work. During my studies, I worked as a steward in sleeping cars and accompanied groups of tourists for Nouvelles Frontières, a travel agent. I spent a year in the United States as an exchange student. Then I was hired by the airline UTA French Airlines before moving on to Air France.
So I’ve had the chance to go to many places around the world. I’ve been to countries like Yemen and Syria that are now closed . I’ve traveled a lot during my vacations, but also with my job, for example on duty trips to less touristy countries like Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
I’ve seen the evolution of travel, from the 70s to the present day, from the disappearance of night trains to the arrival of low-cost airlines. Thanks to my work, I have also lived abroad in Sweden and the Netherlands.
So, in my early sixties, I gained a great deal of experience of travel in many different forms . I’ve been lucky enough to meet many people from very different cultures and to discover some incredible places on our planet.
I tell my story here, and it spans more than 5 decades!
1966
1982
2020
But how to incorporate travel into a new project? I wasn’t interested in dilettante travel. I needed a purpose and a reason to keep doing it.
I also happen to like writing. Communicating has been my job. I’m fascinated by the power of exchange that the Internet gives us. Having time on my hands, I browsed the web to find out what was being said about travel. And it’s a veritable mine of information, with a host of travel blogs, some of which are fascinating to read. When bloggers don’t fall into the trap of seeking an audience at any price, they often offer relevant and original content.
What struck me was that the vast majority of bloggers are millennials.
And now! I thought “Bingo! There’s still a niche for me to fill as a member of Generation X: I’m going to start a travel blog. This blog will be different because my experience of travel is not that of millennials. So I intend to cultivate my singularity, which I’ll let you discover by browsing my blog!
I also have a sister, Marie-Laure, who has made travel her profession as a photojournalist. She also creates imaginary journeys in the form of montages based on her photos. I invite you to visit her superb Mailo-photos site.
Marie-Laure, my sister
Marie-Laure is at once a photographer-reporter who travels the world and a creative photographer who expresses herself through the imagination.
She creates her photo montages solely from photos she has taken since 1985 while traveling on every continent.
Her guiding principle is to transcend the real, to create imaginary spaces, to make the improbable coexist as if it could exist .She also points out the contradictions of our world, its evolution, and its paradoxes…
Each creation becomes a story; by looking at a photo, you are encouraged to nourish your dreams, to escape, to let your imagination take hold of it and draw you into your own story. let your imagination take hold of it and draw you into your own story…
I invite you to visit her website mailo-photos.com You won’t be disappointed!
All in the family!