Ask a Pole, and disappointingly they’ll tell you it’s pronounced “cheshin”, not “cheese-in”.. and there isn’t any special cheese to be found :/ It’s a small border town divided by a shallow river, half in the Czech Republic, and half in Poland. These new EU id cards are a blessing for the border guards who work the bridges over the river. A quick look at photos and they can just wave everyone past - everyone that is, except us unfortunates from “other” places. Then they have to decide who’s turn it is, who’s got the key [View Full Entry]

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How to quickly choose a place to visit with a couple of spare weeks and all of central Europe to pick from? Lying in Asia’s apartment with a couple of beers and a map laid out in front of us we faced just this dilemma. Fortuntely, the boys at the brewery made our decision a whole lot easier by naming their town after the beer (or perhaps vice versa). We were after somewhere between southern Poland and Suisse with mountains, a lake, and some good food and drink… Zywiec already fulfilled 3 ½ out of 4 of the criteria, we’d have [View Full Entry]

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I last wrote from Edinburgh, not really sure what I was in for over the next month. Asia was coming to visit, and we had time to spend at the Edinburgh Festival, tickets to another festival in Bristol, and a flight from there to Croatia shortly after. The plan was to spend some more time touring Eastern Europe before starting back at work in Zurich in September. All began well, and we had a few really fun days in Edinburgh with only a little pre-departure organising to do. We easily fitted that around the myriad of shows and street performances on [View Full Entry]

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Ah... a month of freedom! My last month in the office has v-e-r-y slowly come to a close and I am now once again gainfully unemployed, enhancing my wellbeing and enjoying the northern summer. Work in Suisse starts at the beginning of September, until then Asia and I are putting our relationship to the test and will be travelling for a month in the UK and a few select spots in south-east Europe. We have a flght to Rijeka in Croatia, and a visa to pick up in Prague two weeks later.. where we'll end up in between times is anyone's [View Full Entry]

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Amazing new experiences marking brief respites from intense lifelessness is how I would describe the last few months. The situation I've found myself in has to be one of the worst of my life. But at the same time it's put money in the bank and provided opportunities I could never have imagined. Long commute, miserable weather, unfulfilling job - best forget about it. I've been looking for somewhere new to work, but until recently have had difficulty getting my head and heart to agree on some promising sounding opportunities. I have, however, had some entirely agreeable breaks in between job [View Full Entry]

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About a month ago I was looking for new jobs for myself, as well as work for Asia in Scotland. I came accross an ad for a PhD studying a large landslide in Switzerland. The position was at at one of Europe's top universities. The more I read, the more I realised how similar the project could be to where my MSc research had been heading way back in 2003. I figured there's nothing to lose by applying, so sent away a letter. .. Then after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing I found myself in Zurich Flughafen with a bag [View Full Entry]

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It's warm and the surrounding countryside is vivid green under the clear blue sky. A thin strip of lush forest stands just outside the boundary of the camp, barbed wire divides us from it. The trees have brought scattered ash back to life. It's hard to see the red-brown wire in front of the forest today, my eyes are drawn to the vibrancy of the surrounding countryside. I'm sure the people who stood here before me, just out of the carriage in their 1940's dusty clothes and dirty shoes saw the wire much more clearly as they adjusted their wire rimmed [View Full Entry]

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There’s something inherently unpredictable when catching up with uni mates. No matter how respectable individual lives may now seem, it often doesn’t take much for things to slide back into an underworld of cheap thrills and expensive nights. Pete, Hamish, Jon and I converged on the Isle of Skye, and I think we fairly successfully proved that the whole can be significantly less than the sum of it’s parts - particularly when The Whole is confined to a barren island in the Atlantic Ocean with little but a few fishermen and one of the best whiskey distilleries in the world. [View Full Entry]

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Hey guys, I guess you thought I’d abandoned you, or at least this blog. .. Truth is I haven’t really been in the writing mood. I stayed in Glasgow for two months living in a heartless hostel in the centre of the city - while Scottish weather hasn’t been as bad as the Scots make out, the short days and hard grey streets have been depressing. I tried looking for a flat for a while, but after wasting hours riding the tiny subway all over the city I ended up feeling about as welcome as a door-to-door salesman at the Warehouse. [View Full Entry]

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I haven't missed a single transport connection on this whole trip. For me, who's missed his fair share of planes, ferries, and even wedding busses - sometimes by days, this is an amazing achievement. That's why I wasn't too worried about catching an early Sunday morning flight out of Poland, the day before I start work in Glasgow, and the morning AFTER a three person birthday. I shouldn’t be so cocky. The plane was leaving at 10am.. I'm not entirely sure what happened after the party, except that everything obviously didn't go to plan. I woke up at 9am. "that's not [View Full Entry]

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