There is a special kind of stillness that you can only ever experience around the Mediterranean, the stillness of summer days around midday, when the light is white and shimmering and thick with heat, and although you know there is movement around, a slight breeze, a cat furtively sliding by on silky paws, someone carefully…
Tag: travel
The Importance of Being Somewhere Else-A Preamble to the Turkish Travel Diary
Travelling southwards on Turkey’s Aegean coast I remembered two articles I’ve recently read, both concerned with topics related to how we travel these days. The first one was an analysis of how our travel pictures, especially of the ’insta-variety’, all look the same- right now I can’t find the particular article for the life of…
Procrastinator’s Log, Stardate 0818
So I have decided after much thought (actually, none whatsoever) that the only way in which my spending innumerable hours on the Internet each day of my life would seem to make some sort of sense (it does not have any, in all frankness) is if I made note of certain bits of information which…
A Most (Un)Orthodox Daytrip to Vác
I’ve occasionally flirted with the idea of setting out on a voyage and ending up somewhere totally different, which of course has its mild dangers if you arrive with your meant for Greece bathing suit in the heart of the Taklamakan desert, so I decided to approach things on a smaller scale and see how…
Fainting Chairs and Russian Spies: The Villas of Mátyásföld
The best thing about going on a city walk with a historian is that they will enthusiastically convey anecdotes about the places you’re visiting, throwing in a couple of juicy details for good measure, and then, with a much more matter of fact tone, they will also inform you that your exciting trivia is just…
To Be Or Not To Be A (Wash)Bear: A Visit to the Budakeszi Wildlife Park
One of my favourite books as a child was a beautiful shiny orange hardcover by the Hungarian name of Mosó Masa Mosodája– its alliterative beauty will obviously be lost in a direct English translation, which would be Masha the Raccoon’s Laundrette, but one might alternatively undertake some linguistic acrobatics along the lines of Washy Wooshy’s…
The Stuff Dreams are Made of is Sometimes Carbon Steel: A Visit to Turin’s Car Museum
In a country where everyone owned a Dacia, my dad decided to buy an Oltcit. In a country where everyone learned to drive on said Dacia, I maneuvered a clunky black Audi, and yes it looked like a goddamn hearse (and felt like one, and it was only through the mercy of God, and none…
A Chessboard with Perfect Coffee: Turin Guide Part Two
What to see. The best starting point to an exploration of Turin is to just simply set off and wander along its expansive network of colonnades- while many Italian cities treat visitors to fancy porticos, Turin has a whopping 18 kilometres of them, of which 12 are interconnected, thus being perfect shelters from the scorching…
Northwestern Promises- Turin Guide Part One
People usually question my sanity (perhaps I should have put a full stop here, but never mind) when I tell them that Turin is my favourite Italian city. But surely you could have gone for a sexier choice, something like Rome with every bit of it designed by none else than Michelangelo (and buses on…
The Sea is on the Other Side: Genova for the Clueless
The first reason for our presence in Genova on a pleasant spring day was as straightforward as it was silly: it is close to Turin. Actually, most major towns in Northern Italy are close to at least a couple of other potentially interesting locations, often at distances of around 150 kilometres, which in Trenitalia language…
Pocket Diary Budapest 