I know exactly where I am. Do you know where tiny Slovenia is on a map? The country was a part of Yugoslavia, the most northern region of that ex-country, sandwiched between Austria to the north and Italy to the west. The southern border of Slovenia is now Croatia, and there is a small border with Hungary to the north east. I left Zagreb with one of my hostel room mates who was travelling in the same direction as me this day. We had a real border crossing soon into the two hour train trip, a stamp out of Croatia and a stamp into Slovenia. I am now back in the EU, an economic zone, back in the Euro zone, a monetary zone and back in the Schengen zone, a security zone. And as well as ... read more

Bosnia is not the first place one thinks of when planning their holidays, but Sarajevo and Mostar are rather striking and beautiful cities. I arrived in Belgrade, Serbia on the morning of Tuesday last week, after spending a unrestful night on the train from Budapest. I shared my sleeping compartment with three other men, who all spoke German. We had a 2 am wake up call to cross the border, first to leave Hungary and a passport stamp and then a few minutes later as the train moved forward a few miles and another passport stamp as we entered Serbia. Belgrade was not quite what I expected as we passed a small shanty town next to the train tracks: tin roofs, piles of old tires holding the roofs together and people washing clothes in a communal ... read more

I left Bratislava last Friday after a terrific windstorm blew through the night before. I woke up early and rushed to the train station to take what I thought should be a quick ride into Vienna, there I would have breakfast. I got to the train station to see I had just missed a train but they go every hour. Then I looked more closely, and the train was 20 minutes late. I looked more closely at the departures board to see that every train was late. Hundreds of people were in the station lying about, obviously some had been there hours because some trains were hours late. I walked onto my late train, and it sat there for another 30 minutes. I had made tea in my thermos and I had some biscuits, so I ... read more

I will spend a total of 5 days in Krakow, and it's easy to fill up five days of things to do. Krakow is a beautiful city worth walking and wandering for hours and days, as well as time spent going into various buildings, churches and other tourist sights. I took a very hot and crowded train from Warsaw sharing a compartment with five Poles. An older gentleman was keen on talking, and did so in Polish with a younger man, but also with me in good English about a variety of subjects - health care, travels, Russia, the war and the destruction of Poland. This latter topic cannot be escaped in Poland, it's everywhere. Poland suffered more in the war than any other country, losing fully one third of its population and many cities completely ... read more

I have been walking a lot and riding the buses and trains on the best public transportation system in the world, well at least compared with everywhere I've been. There are fast inter-city trains, regional stopper trains, S bahn, U bahn and where these don't go, the buses and trams fill in the gaps. You can zip across the city in a few minutes on the S bahn, literally Schnell Bahn or fast train. And it seems that everyone takes public transport here in Berlin. My first day in Berlin was quite an adventure. I arrived mid-afternoon on Saturday at a station in the south, but I wasn't sure where until I examined the transit map in some detail. I figured out where I was and took the local transport to the hostel I intended on ... read more