Visit somewhere with another alphabet

Visiting somewhere with another alphabet means traveling to a country whose signs, menus and station names are written in a script you didn't grow up reading: Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Thai, Japanese, Korean Hangul and more, most of them across Asia. It's one of the quickest ways to feel far from home, and learning to sound out even a few letters makes the trip easier and more fun.

Where to do it

Athens, Greece

The gentlest start. The Greek alphabet has 24 letters, and many are familiar from math and science: π, Σ, Δ, Ω. Street and metro signs in Greece are usually given in Latin letters too, so you can practice without getting lost.

Sofia, Bulgaria

Bulgaria writes in Cyrillic, with 30 letters, and when it joined the EU in 2007 Cyrillic became one of the Union's official scripts. Learn the alphabet on the flight and you'll be reading café signs by lunch. Watch for the traditional head gestures: a nod can mean no and a shake can mean yes.

Tbilisi, Georgia

Georgian script, with its 33 rounded letters, is used for almost nothing but Georgian, and UNESCO lists the living culture of its writing systems. It looks like nothing else you've seen. Outside central Tbilisi, signs in Georgia are often in Georgian only, so learn a few key words.

Seoul, South Korea

Hangul was created under King Sejong and published in 1446, designed to be easy to learn, and it is: many travelers can sound out words after a few hours of practice. Then the signs of South Korea turn out to be full of English loanwords written in Korean letters.

Bangkok, Thailand

Thai script has 44 consonants, vowels written above, below and around them, and no spaces between words. It's a genuine challenge, so learn the numbers and a few place names. Transliterations into Latin letters in Thailand vary a lot, so the same street can be spelled three ways.

Tokyo, Japan

Japan mixes three scripts: kanji characters, and two syllable alphabets, hiragana and katakana. Learn katakana first: it spells words borrowed from other languages, so menus suddenly read "kōhī" (coffee) and "sandoitchi" (sandwich). Stations have English signs, so you can get by without any.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ethiopia writes Amharic in the Ge'ez script, where each character is a consonant joined with a vowel. The country also keeps its own calendar, seven or eight years behind the Gregorian count, which makes dates as unfamiliar as the letters.

Marrakech, Morocco

Arabic is written right to left, with letters that change shape depending on where they fall in a word. Signs in Morocco often add French in Latin letters, and you'll also see Tifinagh, the script of Amazigh (Berber), which became an official language in 2011.

How to make it happen

• Start with the easy scripts. Greek, Cyrillic and Hangul can be learned in an afternoon or two with flashcards. Thai, Arabic and Japanese take longer; learn the numbers and the words for exit, toilet and the places you're going.
• Use a camera translator. Translation apps that read text through the camera turn menus and signs into your language, and most work offline if you download the language first.
• Save addresses in the local script. A hotel address in Thai or Georgian is far easier to show a taxi driver than to pronounce.
• Keep offline maps. Map apps show names in both scripts, which is a fast way to learn the letters.
• Get out of the airport. A layover doesn't feel like a new script, and a photo in the city, with camera location on, is the one that tells the story.

A month on the road through several of these countries makes a good month away.