Today I took a day off from my business trip to Helsinki to embark on an a cheeky visit to St Petersburg – the so-called “Venice” of Russia. A few reasons for this self-indulgence. 1) St Petersburg is, by all accounts, a beautiful and historic city, unblemished by two world wars, with an impressive array…
Category: Travelling
A visit to Auschwitz
Originally posted on Unwrapping The World:
My thoughts on the trip Hannah and I made to Auschwitz and Birkenau in 2009. We arrived by bus from Krakow. It was a bright sunny day – one felt it would have been more appropriate to arrive in the cold and snow. We walked into the the museum,…
A little bit of Art in the Heart?
What is art? And what does it do for you? and to you? As we walked through the arty end of Glasgow, along something of a back street, we passed the window of an art studio. We peered inside. We saw a surprisingly large white room containing large bright coloured red cubes arranged across the…
No more killing fields
Passing through Schipol airport four days after MH17 was blown out of the skies over Ukraine, was always going to be poignant. I am sat on the KLM Cityhopper from Amsterdam to Oslo. I have no thoughts or fears of being attacked. But then, nor did the 298 living and breathing people who left from…
Le Tour de Yorkshire
By ‘eck Bonjour – a Day at Le Tour. When France came to Yorkshire. We had been appreciating our own little tour of a small corner of France, venturing out “à pied” and “en auto” to nearby towns and villages. As we returned today from a little run up a picturesque valley, we found ourselves…
Immersing myself in rural France
Three days into our holiday in France, and following my previous blog, one of my sisters suggested that I get off the internet and immerse myself in the rural French way of life. This got me thinking – what is the French way of life? It is one of those things which we can all…
Silence and Shutters en Francaise
The second day of our holiday – and the frenetic experiences of yesterday’s flight seem a million miles away. The very purpose of an airport is to pack a large number of people into a small number of metal tins, before launching them to a foreign field. It can never be a pleasant experience. Our…
Corsets for Carcassonne?
We flew to Carcassonne this morning. Working in the Nordics means that I fly on average two to three times a week. On that basis it was something of a busman’s holiday. Or rather a frequent-flyer’s holiday. But this was quite a different experience. Firstly I was flying from East Midlands Airport – 10 minutes…
Three (annoying) Blokes on a Plane
The thing about travelling alone on a plane, is that whilst we can chose our own seat, we cannot chose who takes the seat next to us. Last week I ventured on three planes between Copenhagen, Oslo and Helsinki. I carefully selected aisle seats in each case, and as near as possible to the front…
Employ me … and my family?
The Danes put their families first – literally. At least the five who we interviewed this week did. First up was Matias who proudly handed us each a carefully constructed A4 sheet all about himself. His life (so far) – on a page. “Age 37” he stated, then “Live with Helene, together we have Jonas…
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