Dorian

I was asked to go to Senegal for my work, which was to find out about how weather forecasts are used by agriculturalists and local forecasters. So I boarded a plane to Lisbon, with a connection to Dakar. The flight out was fine apart from North West England’s finest flatulent Scouse Stag party on board (replacing Manchester’s trumpiest between said city and the airport on the train) and the loud middle class family with screeching brats. The plane arrived close to midnight and then the fun began. Dakar airport is full of hustlers, including the staff. Outside was confusing, dark and hassle. My transfer driver to the hotel disappeared and I was getting hassled for changing money by people who appeared to be connected to the hotel and they insisted I had to change before getting ... read more

The train, a little railcar, bumped steadily along the worn tracks in deepest Podlasie in a stultifying heat. The sky was a threatening grey, with the air heavy and we were heading deliberately to the edge of Poland - the frontier land of the east. We had no exact idea of our final destination that day, just that it was an invitation to a place far away from the noise and bustle of the city and was tucked away in the middle of nowhere. I had checked the forecasts for the day – severe storms with high winds and the potential for tornadoes were not just forecast, but on their way, and my main hope was that we would not get caught in a boiling atmospheric maelstrom whilst waiting for our lift from our friends. It ... read more

…That’s what we won! At a raffle, in a village hall in Swabia, southern Germany. Not only that, we were tempted by the infamous Eisbeer, saw houses that needed no heating and found another plastic Alsatian dog: yes, dear readers, just like the one floating on a Polish lake see , or the one that was guarding some bikes in a Rhineland village: see . So how did we end up with that? Well, with a working trip to Poland in the offing, I decided to add some interesting diversions to the trip with a fact finding tour of some of Germany’s developments in renewable energy, for which it is famed. I also enticed our friend David to join us with the prospect of a North Sea Ferries all-you-can-eat dinner and breakfast, as well as a ... read more

Białystok - Ełk - Giżycko - Wilkasy & return Next morning we were greeted with overcast skies as the train sped through the Mazovian plains of central Poland. Instead of the usual long views the fields were awash with great pools of water; it was clear that some serious rain had been falling and only later did we learn of the disaster hitting southern Poland as a result of the floods. We rolled into Warsaw and met our friend Radek for a chat and a coffee near Warszawa Centralna station. Then we got our train which had swum up from the flooded south and was only a bit late, and trundled over the Vistula and east north east to Białystok. As we arrived, Białystok felt unusually muggy - more like the Caribbean than the sandy plains ... read more

Back in Poland again…this time for work! We are over for a week, having spent the weekend doing lessons in Legal English at Białystok University (Kasia being the expert on this, I have experience in teaching English, editing, and doing seminars). We gave the students some interesting material - a real case of deception/fraud and got them to do a court session in English - they seemed to really take to it. We flew from Liverpool, to Warsaw and managed to catch a train to Białystok within an hour of landing, a bit of luck in snowy Poland - our train was running from Wrocław (the other end of Poland) and it arrived on time! Now here is an interesting fact - our British designed locomotive* sped our train through the blowing snow, -10°C, and no ... read more