We are a ship of Poles. 22 to be precise plus one Ukrainian, 2 Germans and one Australian. We slip slowly down the river, in the Belgian winter fog, out of Antwerp bound for Cape Town via Porto, Vigo and Wallis Bay. Our ship, the six year old, 200 metre, 30,000 tonne, Blue Master 2.... Continue Reading →
They say that Einstein said that the sign of an idiot was doing the same thing twice (actually I think the word was repeatedly) and expecting a different outcome. This is the thesis of the Idiot Traveller. I am a world expert, while travelling, in repeating mistakes. I am also happy to go on accrediting... Continue Reading →
As it is, looking at Rhodian history, it seems that it was a bit like a conga line of uninvited dinner guests. They arrived sans wine or food, hung around for a while, behaving unpleasantly
The joy of travelling slowly & stopping often is...nothing. Doing nothing, being nowhere..
Like military intelligence, the living dead, found missing and Microsoft Works, the concept of an undiscovered Mediterranean Island is about as near to reality as Australia being the Clever Country.
To travel through the Balkans is to experience both its beauty and its heartbreak; the people are welcoming but beneath the surface are hundreds of years of brutality and genocide. All played out against a landscape as beautiful as any on earth.
Somewhere in Corsica you will find the bodies. The poor fools that travelled up the Cap Corse without cash. Ostensibly we are in France a modern, 21st century nation. But not in Corsica. No you are in anti-France where the French are just more foreigners, credit cards are a yet to be discovered means of paying for things or, alternatively, a trick to be played on innocent Corsicans by tourists and the Italians (Genovese) were simply invaders that happened to hang around for a century or four.
After 93 days, this is the last stage of my short European trip. I will hop on the ferry from Dubrovnik to Bari and then by train on up to Rome for my first visit to the Eternal City. First, however, I must survive the trip to Bari, deck class. Travel terms are a bit... Continue Reading →
As you head south the trains head south too. Slower, rattlier, fuller. The reclining seats, the speed, the power sockets all disappear. The restaurant car feels like a bit of an old 1950s film with the red velvet seats and the full meals for less than $10. The south of Hungary and the north of Croatia are emptier and older. We pass the rail yards at slug speed. They are populated, in the rain, with old fat freight cars looking like something out of star wars.
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