A long long time ago, when the Internet was still not widely available- and a bit before I received my first beloved PC, with a box of a monitor and one of those tantalizingly slow modem connections- I was surfing the web on my father’s work computer looking for Interesting Things. Since, as already mentioned,…
Category: travel photography
The Five Sunrises
Whenever I sleep away from home, irrespective of how great the accommodation is or how tired I am, the first night is a bit of a struggle. The bed will invariably be positioned oddly, the smells are strange, even more so the sounds- or, should I happen to be in a remote place, the lack…
Je N’Aime Pas Les Champs-Élysées
So this one is the confessional piece- as the title says it, because even bad things have a certain je ne sais quoi in French: I don’t like the Champs-Élysées. Or, even worse, I am totally immune to its charms. As far as I am concerned, it might as well not be there- something must surely…
Morning in Montmartre
One of those things which is just as hard in the morning as you’d envisaged it would be in the evening is waking up at 7 AM after you’ve consumed copious amounts of French rosé. Also, let me here mention the fact that I belong to the Jeremy Clarkson school of thought which considers rosé…
Evenings on the Seine
It took me ages to start this piece, as I was harbouring a vain hope that there is still something that has not been said about the banks of the Seine in Paris, something that has not yet been laid down in a novel, a poem, an essay, a travel blog, a column of fashion…
The Art of French Gardening
I’ll spare you the suspense: this entry will contain absolutely nothing about real French gardening, which has always seemed to me a rather typically French and also ultimately futile attempt at rationalizing the environment. The ordered geometry of nicely trimmed hedges and strategically placed decorative fountains is alright, but somehow fails to lift the soul…
Retro Slovenia and Some Thoughts About Why I Take Pictures
I was recently faced with several people who, upon hearing that I like to take pictures, looked at me with a friendly smile teetering between pity and condescension: you see, they never take pictures, like, never. It has never crossed their mind to buy a camera, and they don’t even use their phone to snap…
Barlove: Fábrica Coffee Roasters
Finding good coffee in a foreign town is never easy. You may look at your map, see a lot of little cups marking the spot here and there and go: how hard can it be? Well, very hard. There are three basic possibilities: the coffee capital, such as Berlin or London, where there are so…
Bookstore Ramblings- Lisbon’s Ler Devagar
I am sure you have been missing the litany of my defeats, so here comes another one, just to keep things exciting: I don’t speak Portuguese. Now this, obviously, is true of many people, but perhaps mine is made worse by a context that, for once, pertains to something I can do: I speak other…
Day Trip to Paradise: Sintra and Cabo da Roca
Lisbon is a city of only half a million people in the heart of an urban conglomerate of almost three, so there are plenty of exciting day trips to be made. Possibly the best one is to Sintra and Cabo da Roca, though, as the Lisbon to Sintra line is one of the most crowded…
Pocket Diary Budapest 