(Photo by Aturkus via Flickr Creative Commons)

“Where are you from?”

It has to be the most common question asked and answered by travelers, certainly it’s an easy one — but  it always gives me trouble. Because wherever I happen to be, people tend to doubt my entirely honest response.

It happened again, just two weeks ago in Melbourne. I was having a chat with a lovely woman I’d met along the way, and it had already been established that I live in New York City.

“And where did you grow up?” she asked.  “New York City,” I said, adding “Manhattan”.  She looked puzzled, tried again. “But where were you born?”

“I was born in New York,” I said. “In fact, at NYU Hospital.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning slightly.  “You must be very unusual, then.”

I’m not sure where this idea came from, that everyone who lives in New York came here from somewhere else.

In fact,  I’m not sure I can think of a place besides New York where people harbor such doubts about its likelihood as a growing-up spot, can you? And yet, I seem to remember growing up with plenty of children around me.

In 1974, I was one of 110,642 babies born in the city, a birth rate that more or less matched, and continues to match, the United States as a whole.  There are still plenty of kids here -  7% of New Yorkers are under 5 years old, again, the same as the US as a whole. It is true that there are more New Yorkers that were born in other countries than in many other parts of the United States — 37% of New Yorkers are foreign born, compared with 13% of all US residents — but a 63% majority of New Yorkers were born in the United States. And  half — that’s over four million people! — were, like me, born in New York. That’s actually a higher percentage than you’ll find in other cities, like Boston and San Francisco. If anything, New Yorkers are less likely to move, compared to the entire US population.

My guess is that the popular imagination of what it’s like to grow up in the city has been so highly dramatized that it basically seems unbelievable.

People either picture a childhood that consists of being driven around by chauffeurs to school and then ferried to the Hamptons house, or one that stars a street urchin’s scrabbling for survival.

While I did have friends who lived versions of both of these rather extreme lifestyles, I didn’t. I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t different growing up in the largest city in the United States, and one that fancies itself the center of the entire universe, besides — of course it was, and New York shaped me, just as the place you grew up shaped you. But there are many children here — and for a while, I was one of them.

True story.

 If you felt like disappearing from your life, where would you go?

I’d head for Darwin, Australia.

A long way from anywhere, Darwin is a city that knows all about reinventing itself, having been reconstructed twice in its lifetime – once after the Japanese bombed it during WWII and again after Cyclone Tracey in 1974.

But if you’re planning on going heading to Darwin, there are a few things you need to know.

First, the weather. Timing is everything with Darwin. Don’t think four seasons, think two – the wet and the dry. Most people visit during the dry season (April – October). If you decide to visit in the wet season (November – March) be prepared for rain (lots of it) and a place where most attractions are shut down. 

Second, getting there is not all that simple or cheap. Just getting into your car and driving is not really the answer as it’s a very long, dry and dusty journey. Personally, if I was heading to Darwin, I would arrive in style by train. After all, what’s a better way of disappear than by waving goodbye from the steps of The Ghan.

Once there, check into the SkyCity Darwin Hotel at Mindi Beach. Only minutes from the Central Business District, you could hide away for days on end, venturing out occasionally to the casino, the beach, and the city as you felt inclined.

Darwin is a true ethnic melting pot and no better example of this exists than the Mindi Beach Sunset Market just opposite the hotel. Held every Thursday and Sunday evening during the dry season, it’s quite a sight to explore as locals, armed with chairs, tables, drink, and kids, arrive and settle under the coconut palms.

Follow your nose and wander through a maze of food stalls emitting fabulous aromas. And if you time it right, you’ll discover what the locals already know -  for pure joy, nothing can beat watching the sunset in Darwin.

The open-sided Tour Tub bus  provides a fun and entertaining way of getting around. Sit and  watch the tourists, watch the locals, and check out the sites as it passes by all the major attractions, including SkyCity Casino (and hotel).

Other stops worth making include the Museum & Art Gallery of the Northern Territory  for its aboriginal art collection, and Aquascene  at Doctor’s Gully, especially at high tide when hundreds of fish show up looking for a free feed. 

And of course, when you get tired of hiding out in Darwin, there’s the rest of Australia’s North Territory to explore.

So where would you go if you wanted to disappear ?

(image source:  Tourism Australia HRS; Copyright NTTC)

Rakaia, located about 50 kilometres south of Christchurch on State Highway 1, is not what you would call a destination town.

Blink and you could just about miss it, except for one thing -  a giant roadside salmon that stands as a reminder that while the town might not have many residents, it’s river is highly populated with salmon. 

Considered among fishermen to the be the ‘salmon capital of New Zealand’,  Rakaia comes alive during the salmon fishing season between October and April. People from around the country and the world come to fish for salmon.

But this year, there’s a group of people are coming to Rakaia not to catch the salmon but to apologize to them instead and ask them to come home.

To some, this might sound like an April Fool’s joke but to the Winnemem Wintu tribe from Northern California, this is no laughing matter. They want the salmon to come home.  And they believe that the only way this will happen is if they apologize to the Rakaia River salmon who are derived from the Chinook salmon eggs from the McCloud River in Northern California.

Having travelled more than 11,000 miles, the tribe plans on staging a four day spiritual ceremony starting on March 28th, which will culminate in the rare ’nur chomas winyupus’ (middle water salmon dance) on the banks of the Rakaia River.

Of course, there is no guarantee that this will result in the salmon returning to the McCloud River. So the tribe also plans on asking  New Zealand authorities if they can take some  salmon eggs – once of California stock – back to with them.

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It’s eight years ago, and I’m living just outside of Derry, New Hampshire. I drive into nearby Manchester, turn down a street I haven’t seen before, and it’s lined with interesting cafes, galleries, restaurants. I’m delighted to find it, and so close to home, too. I park my car, get out…

And then I’d wake up.

I don’t mean to knock New Hampshire (although I didn’t like living there that much), but I had that dream over and over again when I lived in the Granite State.  In fairness, it’s a variation of a dream I’ve had all throughout my life, most of which I’ve spent in New York City –  either I’m discovering a new street, or a new room in my house, filled with previously unknown fascinations. Chances are, you’ve had this dream too, it’s apparently one of the twelve common dream types that people have all around the world.

I’ve had that odd and pleasurable sense of that dream come to life in a few cities. Venice, for instance, which is well-known for its maze of a street map, although a map doesn’t tell you that some of these “streets” are actually narrow passageways through the center of buildings, which look exactly like dead-ends. I set aside decades of New Yorker instincts against entering the dark and desolate, and learned to head confidently towards stone walls – a sudden turn at the very last minute would reveal a delicate bridge over chalky green waters, presided over by elegantly shabby buildings, a café with a few chairs in front of it, inviting an order of a trimezzi sandwich and a spritz.

Given its history, much of East Berlin’s vitality is kept tucked away, hidden in courtyards and interiors. You can walk down a street which seems unremarkable, say, Rosenthaler Strasse, but you turn into a courtyard and find a museum (dedicated to an industrialist who saved blind Jews during World War II), a boutique and a bar that’s adorned with metal sculptures in the shape of giant bugs and monsters well-suited to a dream of a darker type. Berlin Agenten offers insider tours.

I just got back from Melbourne last night. Its downtown is arranged in a straightforward grid, but tucked inside many of those right-angles are narrow laneways – I’m told these were once the service entrances for the buildings, although they’ve now evolved into restaurant, shop and gallery spaces in their own right. The laneways are also venues for public art works, including a couple of lanes that are set aside for graffiti artists – a little spur off of Centre Place (pictured left), and  Union Lane. There are also shopping arcades, or covered streets, that were always meant for retail, not to mention a subterranean areas. One of my favorites is the Art Deco-style Campbell Arcade, which is  a tunnel that leads to the Flinders Street train station. There’s an art installation, a couple of funky clothing boutiques and a ‘zine store called The Sticky Institute. It’s hard even for Melbournians to keep track of it all; when I took the (highly recommended) Hidden Secrets Laneways and Arcades tour, I was the only out-of-towner in the group.

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Every city and town has at least one weird or oddball place – a museum of gross artefacts,  weird sculptures, or landmarks dedicated to a bizarre historic event.

However, with these weird and wonderful sites often missing from traditional guidebooks, trying to find the bizarre, the eccentric, and the oddball isn’t always easy.

But it looks like that’s about to change with the recent launch of  Altas Obscura, a  Wikipedia-style user generated website,. Suddenly, finding the “the world’s wonders, curiosities and esoterica” is a whole lot easier.

Using social media networks such as facebook and twitter, Atlas Obscura has rapidly attracted the interest of readers and travellers throughout the world who are contributing to this ever expanding compendium of “the world’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.”

With information catalogued by continent and catagory,  this easy to navigate website is guaranteed to keep even the most curious and jaded traveler occupied for hours  – a perfect antidote to a long airport layover or delay.

Utilizing it’s ever growing social network, this last weekend (March 20th) Atlas Obscura held the first Obscura Day. Volunteers around the world set out to create  “expeditions, back-room tours, and hidden treasures in your own hometown”. The  result – 80 events in 20 countries attended by more than 4,000 people.

Encouraged by this, Atlas Obscure promises more Obscura Day’s to come.