My latest foray to Greece and its islands was fab as usual. The September sun was shining, the sea was warm and the public discourse dominated by the tax modernisation requested by the EU, the ECB and the IMF (the ‘troïka’). The subject was the abolition of 199 taxes towards third parties imposed by the […]
Travel Writing Essentials: Openers
I saw a competition for travel writing openers recently and I shook my head. I wish I could wave a wand and remove Opening Sentence Stress from budding travelogue writers. You see, I don’t think the opening sentence important. The opening paragraph is. Let me emphasise that this doesn’t apply to articles or short stories. […]
Wi-fi in Germany: no laughing matter
I’m writing this at home after a long, three-week trip to Germany. Hardly blogged from there as I usually do. The reason? German hotel wi-fi or W-LAN as it is called there. Germans have a very ambivalent attitude to wi-fi, like they do to credit cards. I still remember the shock when only ten years […]