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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In the last week and a half I've been through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I've said "Arrr" to a drink with a real-life Sweedish pirate in Riga, "ahh..." to some incredibly hot 'dancers' in Tallin, "uhh??" to ticket sales and collection people pretty much everywhere, and most importantly "aha!" finally finding Shane sleeping in a backpackers in the far north of mainland Europe. Right now we're on a 21h journey back to Wroclaw for a final two days of freedom before I have to fly to Scotland and begin to again make a worthwhile contribution to society. It's been an [View Full Entry]

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Sometimes I feel really lucky, not because of where I am or what I’m doing, but because everything just seems to fall into place. It makes me nervous, like that sudden rising feeling in an plane as it hits turbulence.. every time it rises up a little higher I get a bit more nervous anticipating the imminent drop that puts your stomach in your throat. Zakopane is the Queenstown of Poland. I didn’t decide to go until an hour or so before the bus left. It’s reputed to be quite expensive and touristy, and this year there’s no snow - There’s [View Full Entry]

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This trip is full of firsts. This time, the first time I’ve happily given up the option of a nice soft bed in favour of a night on the airport floor. My flight back to Krakow left Glasgow before the first train out of the city started, the lady at the station actually recommended that I spend the night at the airport! Who am I to argue.. given the crazy UK prices I was kind of stoked to have an excuse to have a free night. Krakow is the tourist capital of southern Poland. Travelling to the UK gave me the [View Full Entry]

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Edinburgh, time was short.. the weather was a little miserable (to be fair), but the company was great, and the city is really beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful I've visited.. or maybe I'm being a little biased due to the awesome slope soaring sites :) Anyway, I only had a few days here. On the first morning everyone was dressing up like Santa and running round in the freezing cold with a couple thousand other Scots for charity. Arriving the night before, I missed the santa-suit boat, but was more than happy to go down to the town centre to lend [View Full Entry]

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So here I am.. broke, alone, permanently disfigured ala Russia, and totally stoked! After just over 1/3 of a year I'm finally standing on Scottish tarmac - not for long mindue, I've a return ticket to Poland at the end of next week. One of the things I did manage to do during the timewarp that was Prague was polish my CV and find some Scottish engineering firms who might like to look at it. While London is intriguing, I've found big cities aren't really my thing. And the offer of chilly Scott [View Full Entry]

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I don't have too much to say about visiting Auschwitz.. Though it definately deserves it's own place in my story. I wasn't moved to tears, put it that way, the inquistive English photo-tourist in my group made sure of that. I took a tour, not "typical me", but it's winter, the days are short, and this place is about the people and their stories, not the architecture or beautiful view. There's plenty to read around the camp if you want to walk by yourself, but my attention span isn't that long these days and I'd much rather have someone narrate to [View Full Entry]

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Sometimes you can spend ages psyching yourself up to do something. Then just as you're about to bite the bullet, Fate shows up, says "Scratch that, i've got a better idea" and you find yourself on a completely different path. I had big plans, a grand Slavic loop that would take me through southern Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and back to Prague in time for New Year - I'd decided to ignore the minimal daylight and even more minimal temperatures and make the most of my freedom. First stop Wroclaw (pronounced Rock-slav), 70% destroyed during WWII and "one of Poland's most [View Full Entry]

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I've been sitting on my contentedly lazy ass in Prague for the last two weeks. Time has become a very strange concept, daylight only lasts from around 8:00-4:30 leaving 15h of darkness. I wake at 9am, enjoy the light till 4pm, sleep till 8pm, enjoy the nighttill 4am, then sleep till 9am.. It's two days in one! As Lonely planet backpackers have come and gone ("so you uh just on a tour of Europe?") a common question added to the list of standard icebreakers has become "so is there enough to see here for that long?" I think the answer's no. [View Full Entry]

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