Elisabeth Easther talks to the General Manager - NZ Coachlines at InterCity Groups.
When I was a wee boy I spent some time living in the United Kingdom. Dad ran Contiki Travel in Europe which meant we visited all the Contiki vacation destinations. For family holidays we did everything from skiing in Austria to lying on a beach in the Greek islands. On one of our holidays, our family — mum dad and three kids — had a French chateau all to ourselves for four nights; the Chateau de Cruix in the Beaujolais wine region near Lyon. We took our mattresses and put them in the corner of the grand ballroom and ate our cornflakes looking over the grapevines. It was a charmed childhood.
When I was a schoolboy I spent three months in Germany. My German host family lived in Duisburg, not far from Cologne. I was 16 at the time, and on my first day I was probably nervous and overwhelmed after flying for 24 hours. When I landed at Frankfurt airport, I forgot every single piece of vocabulary I'd ever learnt and for the first 24 hours the only words I could say were "yes" and "no". My host family must've thought "what on earth have we got here?" But they were very kind and very quickly I started to pick up what people were saying and by the end of my stay I was pretty near fluent.
I've always felt I could have been Italian in another life. I love all of Italy. Back in 2007, I walked the Cinque Terra, the five villages along the Italian Riviera coastline joined together by hiking trails. I went with Alice who was my fiancee and is now my wife. We based ourselves in a little village called Levanto where you can take a train to any of the five villages and walk a section of the trail.
We stayed at a picturesque stone cottage called Lobster Cottage that had tomato vines growing outside our bedroom door. We'd walk the tracks during the day then in the evenings we'd eat pasta and drink Italian Chianti. One night we went to dinner at a restaurant converted from an old boatshed run by a husband (the waiter) and wife (the chef). I asked the waiter for the wine list and he said, "Wine list? No. I am the wine list!"