I don’t remember much about my time in Romania. To be fair it was over a decade ago, it was only Bucharest I visited, and I spent only two days and a night there, sandwiched between sleeper trains from and to Sofia. Moreover, as Niall and I travelled our way further southeast through Europe we…
It doesn’t take much for my mind to wander to faraway lands and past travel experiences, and one such moment was prompted by having some friends to stay a couple of weekends ago. As a present, they kindly gave us a box of beer from the Black Isle Brewery, one of the Highlands’ many producers…
The first time I met him, it was barely minutes after arriving in the Slovenian coastal resort of Koper. It was September 2001. We were fresh off the bus, from Ljubljana if I recall correctly. While Niall watched the bags I was despatched into town to suss out our intended accommodation options. I must have…
“It’s like apples,” he said. “You only need one or two bad ones to turn the rest bad. And that’s how it is with Muslims – maybe only 10% are fundamentalists, but they can turn the others.” It was a difficult conversation, for diplomatic rather than linguistic reasons. He spoke excellent English, but the situation…
As the world reacts to Hosni Mubarak’s resignation as Egypt’s president and the intended move to a democratic constitution, I can’t help thinking how amazing it would be to be in the thick of it in Cairo: a city more or less united in its desire to see a dictator go, with people having had the…