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MikePole
Travelling to understand time and place

Autobiography & Travel

This category brings together autobiographical writing and travel as a form of fieldwork. I have spent much of my life moving through landscapes—sometimes briefly, sometimes for many months at a time—and many of the ideas explored elsewhere on this site have their origins in these encounters.

The posts here range from the usual traveler’s-yarn, to more reflective pieces about place and work. Some are about particular locations, such as New Zealand, Ukraine, or Spain; while others are concerned with the act of travelling itself, and with what prolonged exposure to unfamiliar environments reveals over time.

These essays don’t offer practical travel advice, but focus on attention: noticing landscapes, people, vegetation, and everyday practices. It’s me, trying to get my head around Time and Place – trying to figure out something about the World. Travel, in this sense, becomes a way of learning—sometimes informally, sometimes uncomfortably, but always cumulatively.

Together, these posts form an autobiographical thread running through my broader site, providing a personal context for the scientific, historical, and cultural topics explored elsewhere.

  • Autobiography & Travel

    Eating out in Ukraine – is there a shortage of food?

    by Mike Pole January 19, 2026
    by Mike Pole January 19, 2026

    Lana Del Rey’s ‘Summertime Sadness’ is filling the air of the restaurant in Odesa…. “Done my hair up real big, beauty queen …

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    Pippi Longstockings, and a Destroyed School in Kharkiv, Ukraine

    by Mike Pole December 23, 2025
    by Mike Pole December 23, 2025

    In a pile of rubble in the destroyed Gymnasium No. 47 in Kharkiv (Харьковская гимназия № 47), Ukraine, I picked up a …

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    Ukraine: War and Wonders – Ukraine’s Womanly Face of War

    by Mike Pole November 17, 2025
    by Mike Pole November 17, 2025

    Svetlana Alexievich’s book ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’ is one of the most impactful I’ve ever read. The book is a series …

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    The Invincible Children of Kharkiv – Musicians in the ‘City without Windows’

    by Mike Pole August 17, 2025
    by Mike Pole August 17, 2025

    Kharkiv, in the far north-east of Ukraine, has been described as ‘a city without windows’ (Mayor Ihor Terekhov in a Twitter post …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Ten Years Trapped in Mongolia – Time to get Mo Munshi home to Australia

    by Mike Pole March 4, 2025
    by Mike Pole March 4, 2025

    In 2007, I started work in Mongolia as a geologist with the company, Gobi Coal and Energy Limited. The Chairman was Mohammed …

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    Ukraine: War and Wonders – Cats and Dogs.

    by Mike Pole February 24, 2025
    by Mike Pole February 24, 2025

    Today is the three-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On that day, pandemonium struck. People fled with a …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Ukraine: War and Wonders – The Dnipro – Ukraine’s ‘National River’

    by Mike Pole February 20, 2025
    by Mike Pole February 20, 2025

    Rivers, big rivers. They can be political borders – think of the Rhine – when it marked the ‘civilised’ Roman Empire to …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    I Meet a Famous Ghost — New Zealand’s Vulcan Hotel

    by Mike Pole August 26, 2024
    by Mike Pole August 26, 2024

    The Ghost of a young prostitute Locals know that Room 1 of the old Vulcan Hotel, in the tiny village (permanent population …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    Nominated: Content Catnip award for Most Interesting Blog on WordPress!

    by Mike Pole November 26, 2019
    by Mike Pole November 26, 2019

    Last week I checked my email, to find that I had been nominated for the Content Catnip award for Most Interesting Blog …

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  • Autobiography & Travel

    A Chilling Thought about Travel – is it mostly Hoarding?

    by Mike Pole November 6, 2019
    by Mike Pole November 6, 2019

    Seven months of travelling nearly done, and I’m siting in a plane, about to watch a documentary on Martin Phillipps of ‘The …

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MikePole
  • Home
  • About me
  • Contact me
  • Categories
    • Curio Bay – New Zealand’s Jurassic Fossil Forest
    • New Zealand Geology
    • Supernatural
  • Places
    • Australia
    • Armenia
    • Bosnia
    • Brazil
    • Canary Island
    • China
    • Indonesia
    • Turkey
    • Estonia
    • France
    • Georgia
    • Germany
    • Lebanon
    • Mexico
    • Mongolia
    • Kazakhstan
    • Russia
    • Uganda
    • New Zealand
    • India
    • South Africa
 

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