My final major publication for the year, exploring the role of Leipzig in the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago this month. Clicking on the image will take you to the City AM website, where you can read the entire piece. Continue reading
I turn from Oxford Street onto a narrowing side road back to the heart of the city. Shoppers pass me in the opposite direction, mostly empty handed, fists clenched inside coat pockets against the frozen December air. Travelling across the long northern European winter’s night gives me only the slightest… Continue reading
Cologne is not much without its cathedral, save maybe a history of scent, with eau de cologne coming from the city. This is odd given that the gothic edifice was only completed, and its soaring towers topped out, several years after the rail lines that wind beside it over the… Continue reading
When I left the clean, modern hub of Berlin’s hauptbahnhof, its main railway station, in search of a cheap night’s accommodation a couple of years ago, a small sign to one side of an ordinary length of pavement noted the demarcation between old borders. I was crossing from what was… Continue reading
‘I toured Europe a couple of years ago: Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow; Auschwitz’ a friend told me. ‘I’ve been to Auschwitz twice.’ ‘You’ll cry your eyes out’ said another. ‘Exhibits of hair, just piles of human hair; shoes, bags. You should go.’ There’s an increasing trend towards ghoulish tourism: sites of… Continue reading
