Upper-class Georgian and Victorian folk – including the British royal family – are known to have expended a lot of energy taking in the healing air of the coast. Doctors don’t frequently prescribe travel as an alternative treatment for ailments any longer, but they could soon well be. As a… Continue reading
The trouble with Mugabe’s apparent continuing election shenanigans in Zimbabwe – formerly the breadbasket of Africa – is that it tars the entire African continent with the same brush of unfree election cycles, which is simply no longer the case. Mali’s highly-praised presidential election just a few days before Zimbabwe’s… Continue reading
I have to confess that the idea of a bucket list only entered my consciousness a few months ago. For anyone even less up-to-the-minute than I am (it was the title and central theme of a film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in early 2008 apparently), a bucket list… 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
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, the month when Muslims participate in 28 days of daylight fasting. Use of the lunar calendar means the Islamic calendar shifts slowly over time against the Gregorian/Western calendar. Over the next couple of years Ramadan will coincide with the northern… Continue reading
It is almost a hobby for journalists to record geographic size in respect to the informal unit of measurement ‘the Wales’. For example, rainforest destruction is often measured in Wales’. Wales covers an area of 8023 square miles (20779 km squared). England works out as 6.2 times larger than Wales… Continue reading
This week Croatia becomes the 28thmember state of the European Union; only the second former Yugoslav state to join the union (after Slovenia). Croatian becomes the 24th official language of the union. Knowing almost nothing about the country – other than they seem to have a pretty decent national football… 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
Quicker than you could say ‘the Spice Islands are at war’ it was over. 38 minutes after the naval bombardment began the shortest war in history ended. That’s three times less time than it takes to reach the capital Stone Town by ferry from the African mainland today. The British… Continue reading
Some people just don’t get out much. Out of their home nation that is. Sometimes there’s a good reason for this: North Korea and Zimbabwe are going to be difficult to leave alive, Andorra has no airport or railway stations, and the police might be taking care of the passports… Continue reading
