Pre-emptive Saffa It was ten o’clock in the evening, I was at home, I’d had a beer or two. I was just watching an old TV show with a friend when the phone rang, and I picked up to a very up-front South African man. After a few brief pleasantries he got straight to the business of my security briefing and proceeded to inform me of the myriad ways in which I was likely to get blackmailed, arrested, kidnapped, or shot on my upcoming “adventure” (including a warning to not get into any elevator with a woman… because she will strip [View Full Entry]

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Where Am I Now? All good things must come to an end, or so I’ve heard. Personally I think this is bunk as good things just meld into less good things when you’re too lazy to do anything about it. It’s all about making the best of where you are and what you’re doing, and, when it comes down to it, knowing when to say “hey, stop it, I’m changing things up”. To be fair, I have had a pretty good run of things, not very many people have the chance to travel the world for seventeen months, and all I [View Full Entry]

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Prologue The international airport outside of Abu Dhabi is, in itself, the perfect metaphor for that city. When I first arrived and my travel weary self emerged into that sparkling edifice - a shimmering technicolour place that somehow resembles both a flowering lotus and a Turkish bath - I remember thinking that I would need to dedicate some serious time to explore the building upon my departure. After all, this was the United Arab Emirates; a country renowned for it’s dizzying excesses of architectural one-upmanship. However, as I now sit in the self same airport one week l [View Full Entry]

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A Pleasant Way to Wake Up at 5am I woke up feeling the only way you can after an overnight bus ride - with a crick in my back and a faint confusion over exactly how few hours I managed to sleep. Then I looked out of the window. A faint yellow light was just taking hold and everything still had that quiet and peaceful look that can only happen between the rise of the sun and the rise of all the people. The colour yellow appeared to be everywhere; no green or red, nor blue, just yellow everywhere. Immediately outside [View Full Entry]

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Sweeping Across Eastern Europe I really do hate rushing through places, but unfortunately that is what I had to do after leaving Budapest. My last day in Hungary was pretty much a blur: I took a train out to a small town in the countryside that is supposed to remain true to the traditional Hungarian way of life, and, to my delight it did actually seem very authentic apart from the plethora of naff stores lining the streets (akin to most tourist towns across the globe). After a couple of hours wandering up and down the cobbled lanes in the sunshine, [View Full Entry]

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Bedless in Bratislava A lot of things in life require very careful planning; without it you can often end up stuck out in the cold, so to speak. Some people take this issue very seriously, these are the people who won’t leave home without a retinue of translators, guides, organizers, and pack-mules, all prepared to follow a pre-defined itinerary between pre-booked hotels and pre-planned activities. Some people, including me, aren’t able to think this far ahead. What follows is a story of how my lack of foresight caught up with me in Eastern Europe. It all started whe [View Full Entry]

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Schnitzels and Museums I got off the train in the early hours of the morning, well, early for me. After leaving Valence it had been one long and boring train after another as I passed across France, Germany and finally down into Switzerland, the only highlight of which was the half hour I spent wandering the quiet streets in front of the Strasbourg train station. Strasbourg is probably a beautiful city, it certainly has an interesting history, but it really didn’t strike me as memorable from my viewpoint - a cold and nearly deserted street full of empty kebab shops and [View Full Entry]

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The Fastest Way to Cross the Countryside I sat in my seat, filled with excitement of the extremely overwhelming kind, as they pulled in and out. I had heard of these majestic machines, these gigantic contraptions that move as quietly as a mouse (or, to remove all hyperbole, as quietly as tiptoeing elephants) and drift as though they are flying over the land at speeds significantly faster than I have ever drifted. There in the train station they seemed no more than regular trains, albeit sleekly designed for there is no other way to be seen in Paris, and yet I [View Full Entry]

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My First Three Experiences of France Perhaps it is fitting that my first three experiences of Paris all begin with the same letter, or perhaps it just sounds more romantic if I say it that way. After all, Paris is the city of romance. There have been all too many books, movies, anecdotes and sappy poems telling of the lure, the charm or even the lust that this city creates in people (particularly those young and restless types), or perhaps more scarily, that this city actually has in it’s own right. I can assure you, without any hesitation whatsoever, that this [View Full Entry]

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The World’s Most Dependable Alarm Clock Isn’t it great to sleep in on the weekend? To relax and loll around sleepily while you make up for all the early starts between Monday and Friday is something that we all like to do every now and then, and when you are indulging yourself in a few extra winks the absolute last thing that you want to happen is for that pesky alarm clock to go off. For me the weekend alarm used to be the neighbour’s kids running, screaming into the swimming pool immediately outside my window. I was constantly in awe [View Full Entry]

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