I was looking forward to seeing Athens again. I was here for 1 day only when I was 17 years old, a stop on a whirlwind educational trip to the Mediterranean that I took with my school in Grade 11. Diane and I got up early and drove from Delphi,…
Travel
Europe Phase 2 Update
We’ve reached the point in our journey where we are about as distant as we’re going to get from London, our starting place for Phase 2. The blue lines on the map below show our route for Phase 2 so far. Phase 1 is in Red. This may look like…
The Day I Got My Hearing Back
I lost the hearing in my left ear when I arrived in Greece. It has happened before, but now was a lousy time for it. We were driving from the Greek coast into the central highlands to visit Meteora, an amazing natural formation of sandstone pillars upon which are perched…
The Greek Debt Crisis – What really happened?
We’ve been hearing so much on the news recently about the Greek and European debt crises, the decline of the Euro, and of protests across Europe, especially on the streets of Athens. The European Union and its common currency appeared for a while to be a great success, a major…
Impressions of Greece
We drove south from Bulgaria into Greece on our own personal bailout mission for the Greek economy. Exiting the lush mountains of Bulgaria, we immediately noticed a difference. Although greener than we had expected (at least in the North), Greece had smaller mountains, larger valleys, and less vegetation. Here are…
Bad Travel Photography
Many people enjoy taking travel photos. Cumulatively I’ve taken between 5,000 and 10,000 of them on my journeys, and I’ve seen a lot of other people doing the same. Based on this experience, here are some examples of bad travel photography. The 1-Hander (also known as the Too Cool for…
Impressions of Central/Eastern Europe’s Former Communist Countries
I’ve now traveled through 8 of the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe – Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Although I’ve written about most of them individually, I’ve recognized some things they share that I think are interesting: Capitalism has been enthusiastically adopted…
Impressions of Bulgaria
Bulgaria is the last of the formerly communist countries that we plan to visit this trip. We continue to head south to warmer and hopefully drier weather. We enjoyed our relatively short visit to Bulgaria. Here are some things about Bulgaria that I think are interesting: Bulgaria is a former…
This is the House that Nick Built
Nicolae Ceauşescu was the leader of Romania from 1965 to 1989 when he and his wife were executed by firing squad immediately after a two hour televised show trial on Christmas Day. The grand House of the Republic (Casa Republicii) he was building wasn’t finished at the time, and despite…
The Real Dracula
Who was the real Dracula? Is it this guy trying to bite Diane? The man known as Dracula was born in 1431 in Sighisoara (pronounced ‘siggy-schwa-ra’), a town that we visited in Transylvania. Dracula (Vlad III) was named after his father Vlad II, a commander of the mountain passes between…