1923Steve Hanisch is our super subject, and he runs the Back Packer travel website.

He explains in his audio commentary that he was born in the GDR – the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany as it was commonly known, which was a socialist state before the Berlin Wall came down.

“So when I told my grandmother I wanted to leave for a round-the-world trip she said: ‘Oh no, you can’t, it’s so expensive, it’s so dangerous. Two months later she called me and said that ‘we grew up in the GDR and we were never able to travel.

"We could only travel to Russia and to the eastern parts of Europe’. Then she said: ‘Don’t wait. Just do it, go for it, and do it now.’ A few months later I quit my job and I’m now travelling the world.”

Taken at a travel blogging awards event organised by HostelBookers in Soho, London, UK.