meet jenni russell

I’m Jenni, a writer and photographer with an insatiable passion for travel, history and movies. I’m the founder of Jenni Sees The Sights, where I share years of travel research, insights and knowledge.

Having lived in the UK, Singapore, Australia and Germany, travel is in my DNA. Now I travel the world full-time. It’s my goal to learn about the history behind each place and soak up as much of the world as possible.  

I write about historical places around the world, with rich cultures and fascinating stories that are worth experiencing. This website is filled with years of travel research knowledge and historical insight, designed so you can travel with ease, and learn something new along the way.

 

growing up as a third culture kid

A third-culture kid is someone who grew up in a different culture than their parent’s origin. My family also loves to travel, so I’ve been lucky to have many holidays and experiences from a young age. Home really is wherever the Wi-Fi connects. After finishing high school in Singapore, I had nine months off until the start of university in Australia. A sort of forced gap year that was filled with one of the greatest jobs on the planet – working with school camps in Malaysia and Thailand.

I travelled to the Malaysian island of Tioman each week with a new group of kids. My weeks were spent sailing, snorkelling and kayaking, helping the kids with their activities, and eating the most delicious home cooked food by the wife of the family who owned the property. I slept on a small beach hut 30 metres away from the ocean, waking up to the sound of waves every morning. Bliss. I then spent the two months after that with school trips in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Whitewater rafting, trekking in the mountains, eating copious amounts of Pad Thai, an incident one night involving a group of bikers, a strip club and 50 cent rum shots, and regular trips to the incredible elephant sanctuary.

arriving down under

Then it was time to head to university.

I only applied to one university in Australia. It was the only one I wanted to attend, so I hedged my bets and went all in on the University of Melbourne. Ironically, I had never been to Melbourne, and only knew one person there, an old friend who used to live in Singapore. There’s no logical reason as to why I decided to move to a completely new and foreign city. My intuition told me it was the right place to go, so that’s what I did.

Moving to Australia was a wild ride. Sometimes people’s accents were so thick that I didn’t know what they meant as they called me mate and told me to ‘get around it’. In my first few months, I learned what goon (bagged wine) is, learned the names of the biggest Aussie Rules football teams and mastered the perfect vegemite to avocado and egg on toast ratio. In my three years at university, I met some of my very best friends, and was involved in as many theatre productions as possible before graduation. I’m a massive film and theatre nerd, and will happily talk for hours about pop culture. The way to my heart is through theatre and plane tickets. 

After a few years working in advertising and social media, I was getting antsy. I had an excellent job that looked great on paper but it felt like something was missing. You might be thinking that this is a classic ‘I quit my job to run away from life and travel’ story, and you’re half-right. I did pack up my life, quit my job and set off to Europe with a backpack. But it never once felt like I was running away. Returning to travel felt like coming home to exactly what I’m supposed to do. 

love at first sight

My family had planned a big belated European holiday to celebrate my 21st and my mum’s 50th. We had booked a cruise through the Mediterranean, visiting places like Ephesus, and Rome. That was the fancy part of my travels, and soon I was swapping suitcases for a backpack and setting off through Eastern Europe, while my family headed back home.

Starting in Belgrade, I travelled through Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic before falling head over heels in love with Berlin. A man stood in the middle of the road dressed as a strawberry playing the didgeridoo, over the techno music seeping from the walls of nearby clubs. The triple denim-wearing locals were free to dress and do as they pleased. It was unlike anywhere I’d ever been and felt like somewhere I could call home. On my first night in the German capital, I was already picturing what life could look like there.

The tour must go on, as they say. I continued travelling through the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Spain and the U.K before it was time to start looking for a job. The stars aligned as I ended up with an offer, and relocation package for Berlin. 

life in berlin

Six months after my first visit, I arrived back in Berlin with a new job and grand plans of European living.  With the dismal weather, life was off to a slow start because no-one ever left the house. Pro tip: Never move to Berlin in the winter – it’s grim. But everything turned a corner in Spring, and the city sprung to life. I didn’t speak any German before moving to Berlin, and there is so much bureaucracy to manage that I now know how to spell the word bureaucracy. But don’t let that stop you, the city is magical in the summer. Open air clubs, and dancing that goes on long into the morning after.

My career was going well, I was working with amazing clients and managing advertising campaigns for international television and movies. I’d made a great group of friends, and I’d finally found a nice, reasonably priced apartment in a central neighbourhood of Berlin – no easy feat. Then I fell sick. I had always suffered with chronic pain, but there was no diagnosis so I just tried to live life as best as I could. My health continued to decline, and reached a point where I couldn’t work, socialise or live this wonderful Berlin life I’d worked hard to create. Life was at a standstill as I tried to navigate the health system and more bureaucracy. I now joke that I can speak restaurant German, and medical German.

living with chronic illness

I’d been diagnosed with endometriosis, but it didn’t explain all of the symptoms I was having. Despite interventions, I just kept getting sicker. I was in constant pain, and barely left the house. I’d see doctors more than I saw friends, and always had to cancel plans. It felt like a far cry from the life in Berlin I’d pictured. I woke up from a surgery in October 2020 to find my leg was paralysed. Doctors had no explanations and told me to prepare for life in a wheelchair. They refused to intervene, and sent me home with a referral to a psychologist. Without answers, this was something I couldn’t accept. I scoured the internet for answers, and my research led to a surgeon in Switzerland who recommended urgent treatment to avoid permanent loss of leg function.

I flew to Switzerland on my own, in the middle of a pandemic, to get a highly specialised and dangerous surgery I needed by a doctor I’d met once on Zoom. The surgery was a success, and I finally had answers. After a brutal year of recovery, with the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life, I was able to slowly return to work, and make plans without fear of having to cancel. There was still a lot of pain, and times when I would have to rest, but I no longer lived in agony every moment of the day. Every moment of pain was made easier by the fact that the pain now always went away. I gave a TEDx talk called ‘How to say yes, when everyone tells you no’, about my experience with chronic illness if you’re interested in hearing more.

the next chapter

Getting better felt like the end of a very difficult chapter. I had a great life in Berlin with wonderful friends, a solid career, and a great home, but I knew that it was time for something else. As soon as I was physically able, I packed up my life into 12 boxes and set off. 

Now I travel full-time, diving deep into the history of world wonders, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, cultural stories and enjoying every moment of life on the road. A few major bucket list items I ticked off in my first year of travel include sleeping in Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert, visiting the Temple of Philae in Egypt and sitting in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel with only fifteen other people, looking up at its incredible ceiling with no time limit. 

I will never take a day of good health for granted, and it’s a huge motivator for creating this blog. With knowledge from a lifetime of travel, and an endless curiosity to learn about the world, Jenni Sees The Sight includes thousands of hours of research. I’m committed to making travel easy, accessible and fun, while experiencing parts of the world that have previously been difficult to learn about or visit.