I got off the Trans-Siberian at 7 am after four nights of irregular sleep, placing my dusty shoes on the pavement of the Ulaanbataar railway station. When tired and hungry, you are an easy target for the shadowy existences walking around here. Luckily it is Sunday morning and the locals tend to sleep a lot.
I shared cabin with a Russian couple on a night train from Helsinki to Moscow earlier this week. They told me that a plane had crashed near Perm with 80 dead and some damage done to the Trans-Siberian railway. Since I was about to embark on the Trans-Siberian a few days later and pass the city of Perm, I was curious on how this would effect my journey.
As I walked across the cold cobblestones, I realized that the Red Square had been on my bucket list for decades. The onions of St Basil’s Cathedral and the walls of the Kremlin are well-known sights to most people and often featured in movies.
I just got back from a trip to Riga, the capital of Latvia. Apart from delicious Laima chocolate and lots of cobblestones, the city is home to a lethal brew with the somewhat mysterious name Black Balsam (or Melnais Balzams in Latvian).
The revered Bagpipe Bastards have just finished the Scotland branch of our worldwide tour. We came, we saw and we had a a fistful of haggis. The road was long and we covered about 1500 miles in a week with visits to uncountable cities, towns and villages.
The Isle of Skye is one of the most remote areas of Scotland, with the Hebrides archipelago around the corner. Despite narrow roads on hillsides with sharp turns and sheeps on the road, it’s very nice to explore the island by car. The countryside is charming and some places even have coffee.
I know that I should stay away from pancakes after my sturdy Moroccan breakfasts a few weeks ago, but I happen to be in Amsterdam and it would be close to illegal to miss the infamous Pancake Bakery at Prinsengracht, just a few blocks from the Anne Frank house along the canal.
Essaouira feels very different than most other Moroccan towns. The usual smells are mixed up with a fresh ocean breeze and the layout is less chaotic with streets in a straight line. The ruckus of Marrakesh is but a memory.
I’m in the busy town of Marrakech, Morocco. Around here they drink ridiculous amounts of green tea with tons of sugar, but the country is also renowned for their strong, black coffee. A decade has passed since my last coffee in a north African country, so I figured it was about time.
I just got back to civilization (sort of) after a dry bus ride through the Atlas mountain range. As the bus winded up the narrow roads along the mountain side, I caught myself thinking of the scene in Babel where the woman got shot through the window. She was a tourist passing through these areas by bus and the scene was shot in this area of Morocco.