I don’t know if it was some sort of sign, but we had trouble finding somewhere to eat near Auschwitz. Tomas approached one place – a kind of food court affair with plenty of seating, and where he’d taken groups before – and was told they were closed. I don’t think she’d told the patrons…
Auschwitz. The very word is enough to send a shiver down my spine. It equates to unspeakable horror, monstrous crimes. Nazi Germany was the focus of my studies at university, so I can claim to know a little more than many people about the Holocaust. But the history degree was many years ago. Before we…
The last night of our Amsterdam to Budapest cruise was awful. My throat felt like I’d swallowed a bucketful of rusty razor blades. Breathing hurt, swallowing was excruciating and sleeping was impossible. We had our bags packed and standing outside the door, ready to be on our way for the Eastern European leg of our…
You can see Rottnest Island from most of Perth’s beaches from Fremantle to Hillarys. It’s a low ridge just on the horizon. The photo above shows the view looking the other way. When I was a kid those towers in the Perth CBD weren’t quite so prominent, but I expect you could have seen them…
Every nineteenth (or earlier) century city has lanes. There had to be room for the night carts, delivery vehicles and so forth. They were often dirty, dingy, places where homeless people dossed down for the night, served as outdoor toilets and were generally unsavoury places to be – especially when night fell. Melbourne was, I…
It’s fascinating wandering around a city you knew very well twenty years ago. Life goes on and that snapshot in your head is a time capsule. Parts are still accurate, other aspects have changed. Beth and I strolled around the CBD in Perth, sometimes deliberately looking for items I remembered (eg the shish kebab –…
Yes, I know I’m not finished with Europe yet. I’ll get back to it soon. But I’m just back from a week in Perth, catching up with old, old friends and a brief visit with relos, and I want to share a few posts about that, first. For a start it was much better fun,…
You might be wondering why I’m including two major cities in one post. The fact is, I didn’t get to see much of either of them. I developed a sore throat that interrupted my sleep during the voyage to Vienna. With an eye on the bus trip through Eastern Europe, starting in three days’ time,…
The thing about travelling from Amsterdam to Budapest instead of the other way round is that you arrive at spots at different times of the day – as well as in different weather. Whereas last journey we’d arrived at Melk right on sundown, this time we were there early in the morning, and went up…
What I love best about river journeys is just cruisin’. Watching the river glide past, reflections, trees, birds, other boats, tiny settlements, distant hills, clouds. That photo up there was taken as we followed a curve in the river. The water was like molten silver, and the sun was hidden behind a thin veil of…