Tag Archives: Roman Empire

mosque heaven: Edirne

From Samothraki I took the ferry before dawn back to Alexandroupoli, arriving in brilliant, freezing sunshine. After 20 minutes, the bus to Orestiada turned inland into thick fog, passing through small towns among roads lined with white single-storey Thracian cottages … Continue reading

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hard times in Greece, and how to survive them

The Guardian had a story about a guy in Patras who has been so hard hit by Greece’s current troubles that he could no longer support his ten children and had turned four of them in for care. Sad, yes, … Continue reading

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trans-Slovakian

when I left Levoča this morning I took the bus to a quite ordinary town called Poprad – quite ordinary, that is, apart from its view of the High Tatras: These are the highest mountains in the whole Carpathian range, … Continue reading

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Budapest

My arrival in Budapest wasn’t too salubrious: a drunken woman and a man with a weatherbeaten face and a moustache like out of a chronicle of some Balkan war shouting and throwing a table at each other, and an old … Continue reading

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oh no, those Habsburgs again…

I thought that yesterday had been my day of visiting Habsburg palaces, but it seems that in Vienna their influence runs deeper than that… Today I went to the Vienna art history museum, a very grand structure… …that, as it … Continue reading

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louvre

well this is what everybody comes to see: If that was Venus de Milo (and the Winged victory of Samothrace, if wildly impressive, was pretty much the same), I didn’t even try the Mona Lisa. Instead, I got easily more … Continue reading

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