Country 10: Switzerland
As I close in on 100 countries… I’m retracing my route… Fresh from a mid-summer glacier ski on the Jungfrau mountain, the fifteen-year-old me surveys the world… glimpsing a future packed with travel and adventure…
Country 9: Luxembourg
As I close in on 100 countries… I’m retracing my route… A slither of land wedged between the tourist magnets that are France, Germany and Belgium…
Skopje: where crime sometimes pays
The last time I was in Skopje, I had come to persuade the Macedonian interior minister to sign up to a trans-Balkan action plan for tackling organised crime to be launched at a ministerial conference in London. This time, many years on, the only crimes in evidence were a most curious and incongruous collection of […]
Kosovo: a friend indeed
I cannot claim it to be universal law, but I often find the friendliness and hospitality of a country’s inhabitants to be inversely proportionate to their recent troubles. So it was when I snuck behind Burma’s iron curtain in 2005 where, despite (or because of) the brutal military rule, the locals were overjoyed to see […]
Kotor
Arriving into Kotor by night, dizzy from sharp turns around the shores of the narrow, fjord-like bay that winds inland from the Adriatic, I was puzzled to see a yellow halo hanging overhead. At daybreak, the mystery was soon solved: the ‘halo’ became gravity-defying fortifications slung down the steep mountainside behind town from a small […]
Country 8: Holland
As I close in on 100 countries… I’m retracing my route… A naturally flat and featureless landscape need not mean boring. Not when human ingenuity has garnished it with tulips and windmills…
Country 7: Belgium
As I close in on 100 countries visited in a lifetime of roaming… I’m retracing my route… What could I say about Belgium back then?… I left pretty much as I had arrived, with a jumble of impressions…
Country 6: Greece
As I close in on 100 countries visited in a lifetime of roaming… I’m retracing my route… A family holiday in Crete gave free reign to a young mind that had been devouring Greek mythology…
DUBROVNIK: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE
Dubrovnik is sometimes described as a “living museum”, where its people live alongside one of Europe’s most stunning medieval walled cities. Naturally, locals commuting to work, doing the school run or their weekly shop may seldom pause to admire the finer points of the old town’s baroque architecture or even its picturesque location, squashed between […]
Country 5: Spain
As I close in on 100 countries visited in a lifetime of roaming… I’m retracing my route… My first visit to Spain was pretty stereotypical…
Nomad Scribe 