dusanabotswana.com

Hello friends! After much writing for last week’s eco-challenge, I thought it would be a perfect break to hear someone else do more of the talking for once over here. It also just happens to work out as a perfect end to my eco-challenge: I recently interviewed Emily from Ruby Slipper Journeys, an avid bicycle and sustainable city enthusiast.

She lives a quite enviable life in my book by just residing in Barcelona, but it doesn’t stop there- she’s always travelling, and used to live in Mexico also! She’s always one to speak up, share tidbits and pictures of local culture, and of course, has adorable outfits as well. So yes, I’ve got a slight girl crush (as with all my interviewees), but that’s beyond the point, on to the interview!

Q:  Can you share a few tidbits about yourself?

I’m from Canada, but currently I live in Barcelona.  I split my time between working on a children’s novel, teaching English, and documenting life for the blog!

Q: What made you decide to begin your travelling and living abroad adventures?

In my third year of university I studied abroad in Glasgow….and after that I couldn’t really imagine just going back and living in Vancouver again.  I returned to Glasgow, which was a disaster, had to go back to Vancouver, but then eventually made it out again and have been more or less living abroad since then!

Q: When did you start blogging and why did you start?

I discovered personal style blogs in early 2010 and started Ruby Slipper Journeys within a few months of that.  I just found blogs really refreshing… I’d always liked fashion and wanted to participate in some way, but magazine and celebrity culture doesn’t leave much room for real humans to take centre stage.  Blogs are the opposite: real people with real budgets and lives outside of fashion, and I loved that.

Q: Since one of my favorite things about your blog is seeing all the cool places you go, could you share a few highlights of spending your “twenties as a nomad in Scotland, Catalonia, Mexico, South Africa, England and native Canada” with us?

The thing is, I hardly ever “travel” in a normal way—take two weeks and go to a resort in Mexico, or go backpacking, or anything like that.  My travels have mostly been moving somewhere and living there.  So in a sense I have a lot of normal memories—going for coffee, going to work, and so on—mixed in with mad-cap dashes through Schiphol airport (like an hour ago), bemusing encounters with Mexican bureaucracy, thirteen hour drives through the African countryside replete with flat tires and hyenas, Catalan festivals with fire-breathing dragons, and lots of really fun experiences … it’s a grand mash-up of the adventurous and the mundane, I guess.  These days, anything extra-special generally gets a blog post!  The travelling lifestyle has its disadvantages too, but it’s home at the moment I guess!

Q: Will you share a few tips with us on how you always mange to look adorable even while travelling and living with a limited wardrobe?

Thank you!  I really try to make a point of only bringing things I really love (with the exception of some black cardigans and so on).  There’s nothing more depressing than looking in your suitcase and just feeling… bored.  Sometimes you do have to be practical though, and it makes me sad that some of my favourite things (jackets, my Mexican poncho, various shoes) are too impractical to come travelling with me.  Still, you can’t let stuff dictate your life.

Q: What item or items in your wardrobe could you not do without?

Flat shoes… I walk and cycle everywhere!  Simple nice dresses that can be layered up and accessorized differently.  One jacket and one coat that go with almost everything.  And colour colour colour… I can’t stand blending into the scenery and I’m pasty enough as it is…

Q: Do you feel that your style changes a lot with the seasons or is it based on other things? Anything specific items you’re looking forward to wearing as it finally cools off in Barcelona?

I’d love my style to change significantly with the seasons, but due to closet restrictions its generally just a case of layering up.  My favourite season for dressing is definitely summer as it’s so much easier, but I’m really looking forward to my winter scarves that I brought with me to Barcelona!  And since I just got a second job, I miiiiiight let myself buy a few new things! ; )

Q:  What are some of your favorite things to do when you aren’t busy blogging? Any big changes now that you’ve finished your masters (huge congrats again!)?

Aw, thanks!  Well, at the moment I’m working on editing a children’s novel I wrote before doing my masters, and I’d like nothing better than to one day be published!  I’m also trying to work on a few other writing projects, but I’m teaching English to pay the bills, so it’s a bit of a juggling act.  Oh, one day I might try and work in my field, too!

Q: What made you decide to study the transportation system in Barcelona? Can you briefly share a few of your findings/conclusions with us? (You know I’m a bit obsessed with this topic myself, so pardon my totally non-reader-focused question here.)

Ha!  I studied the bicycle-share program in Barcelona specifically, and I know you’re a keen cyclist, Dusana!  I was mostly examining the way the city had changed so drastically to include bicycles in the last few years, as a result of this program.  My findings were that, surprise surprise, there’s a lot more work to be done, but basically, ten years ago, Barcelona was not at all a cycling-friendly city, and now the number of bicycles have greatly increased and there’s a respectable and growing network of cycle lanes.  I think this could have big implications for a lot of American cities, and my main point, I guess, is that in order to facilitate cycling, you have to make it an easy and logical choice, and (in my opinion) that should be coupled with making life difficult for cars, as otherwise people will just stick to there old comfortable (and polluting and public-life destroying) modes of transport.  But I probably wouldn’t mention that last bit in a job interview, hehe.

Q: And just for fun, what are a few of your favorite songs at the moment?

I’m actually not that bothered about music, but in the last few days I’ve been revisiting some favourite albums from Beirut, Metric and Sergio Mendes.

Thanks for having me Dusana.  These were some fun questions!

Hope you enjoyed reading this interview as much as I did, and if you haven’t already, be sure check out Emily’s blog, I promise you won’t be disappointed!