Easter's Damp Squib Easter in Poland, as in all deeply Christian countries, is an incredibly important time of coming together and...

Adoptive City I have never written a post about my adoptive home city of Kraków on this blog, and indeed I have generally overlooked it...

Overlooked City Slovakia is a country justifiably famed for its beautiful mountain scenery, stunning national parks, lakes and forests,...

Is it Safe? The idea of going to Tunisia is one that I had been mulling over for a while - in fact probably more than a decade. The...

Sando where? Small town Poland is, by and large, a fairly unremarkable affair. Unlike neighbouring Czech Republic, say, Poland's...

Faded Charm Flying in, the first thing you see is the TV mast: a huge, flashing monument which is lit up like Blackpool tower with garish...

Welcome to the Cognac Capital In the shadow of the fabled Mount Ararat, Yerevan stands at a crossroads between Asian and European...

Tumultuous History 'Gdansk' is, by Polish standards, an easy city to pronounce for foreigners. In many other ways though, it is perhaps...

Coming out of the Shadows Long in the shadows of hipper, more well-known destinations in Poland such as Kraków, Wrocław and Warsaw,...

The Hipster's Choice For many years now, Prague has completely dominated tourism in the Czech Republic, so much so that most other towns...

A Lion-hearted city There are some cities in Eastern Europe which defy logic. Lviv to Ukrainians, Lwów to Poles, Lvov to Russians,...

Elegantly wasted Centre of Europe, grand old dame of the Habsburg Empire, inventor of ‘goulash communism’ and now emerging in the 21st...

Will There Be Blood? Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, the most populous of the three Caucasian capitals with around two million inhabitants,...

Baroque Beauty Hungary, similar to nearby Czech Republic, is a country which is known chiefly for its capital, which dwarfs all other...

Out of the box tourism Krakow: a city of dreaming spires, ancient castles, dragons, myths, cobbled streets, cosy bars and coffee shops;...

Feeling the therms “This is the place where Budapest comes to chill out,” Laszlo, a banker in Pest, tells me. “many people come here to...

What? Why? Where? Wroclaw's island area is the soul to the Market Square's heart in Wrocław. Home to a growing number of cafes, bars and...

Bus logistics We took a bus from Agra to Jaipur, this one 'deluxe' and about twice the price of the regular one - but still very...

Foreword This trip took place in August and September 2007. It was at the tail end of the rainy season and there were still occasional...

Łódź (pronounced 'Woodge') is a city for which the words 'gritty', 'down-to-earth' and 'unpretentious' barely do justice. It's Poland's...