Well welcome to Shanghai. But first of course I had to get here, which involved the "torture" of 10 hours or so in Qantas business class, which of course I could only wish on myself on frequent flyer points (actually the only way to get up there, as economy was not available). Anyway I did my best to try three of the four wines available, along with a Para port and a sweet white wine. Not to mention a few hours in relatively total recline, and the strangely apposite movie, as it was a Chinese -- Australian coproduction, "33 postcards" - about a young female Chinese orphan who is in a choir but manages to visit out of the blue in Sydney her long-time sponsor, who despite a fancy postcard life of living in a beach ... read more

Warning – some visual or other content in this post may cause concern to some– the A* word in title does warn you…. This is written on 7 July in the mid-afternoon sitting at my comfortable 4 star hotel desk, and I don’t really care about dashing around this no doubt wonderful city right at the minute. Mostly cos there are still 6 ½ hrs of daylight anyway and I am not scheduling any important museums etc, that I know of anyway, cos I haven’t really done any reading etc. Does this sound like travel fatigue? Yes, 37 days on the road and a city change almost every 2nd night usually means you can almost barely remember where you have been. There is also physical tiredness of a certain lack of sleep – late nite blogging ... read more

I forgot that I had taken some snaps on the small camera of the trip down the Donau/Danube on that Twin City Liner cat or whatever it is called. Somewhat like my pictures of the Rhine last year if you remember in terms of the odd riverside rocky castle etc. And even though I got to Bratislava tp spend two nights there, with the view to getting around to see a bit, this did not really prove the case in the end. Woke up and it was raining and as I could look down on the roof 3 floors below I could tell how wet it was. So decided at almost 4pm (rain can ruin the best of holidays) that best thing to do was stay dry and go to the Slovakian National Gallery next door. ... read more

Earnest readers may well recall that the whole purpose of a (revisit) to Vienna (I was here in a cold and wet October 2010) was to catch a concert by my guitar hero Richard Thompson last night, 30 June, at the WUK in Vienna (which as I am sure you can guess is the “Werkstätten- und Kulturhaus”). No wuckers indeed. This required leaving Zagreb at 7.25am on the only direct train to Vienna. Interesting that it comes up from Split, but there is an hour layover in Zagreb before it leaves again – given the performance of Balkan railways in general, hardly surprising I would suggest! Anyway it was timetabled into Vienna at 13.59 and was maybe a minute early. From there to my hotel the Furst Metternich, which is just off Maria Hilfer strasse, which ... read more

28 June – Sarajevo to Banja Luka – wretched 7 hour (rather than 5) train trip to Banja Luka. The train came thru to Sarajoveo having started in Ploce – I got a cab down there on assumption it might be on time (ha!). At one point we were just stopped for an hour without moving – CityRail eat your heart out! I had emailed the Hotel Vila Vrbas in Banja Luka about availability and price. They had emailed back that room available for 84 marks and “Blackmail includes breakfast” – were they confusing price and blackmail there?? But they did at least take Mastercard. Decided to just take a chance on finding something as Banja Luka is not exactly a hotel hub. By the time I got there (late at 8pm – see above) they ... read more