This is the weekend when, 100 years ago, the major powers in Europe started declaring war on each other. The First World War affected every country differently. In Britain, we hear a lot about Flanders, the Somme, poets such as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen or Rupert Brooke and, of course, the restrictive alcohol licensing laws […]
My 2013: Review of a year in Travel
2013 was all short-haul for a change. It was Poland for the British Guild of Travel Writers’ AGM in February with stays in Krakow and Zakopane and its ‘alkoholes’ where much Polish vodka was drunk. Soon after, I had to dash off to Glasgow.. In March it was three weeks in Hungary where I was […]
Vienna’s Best Christmas Markets
When it comes to Christmas markets, there’s only German Mitteleuropa that avoids both the saccharine over-the-topness or the shopping pointlessness of their cheap imitations. And the undisputed queen of Adventmärkte is good old stolid Vienna. It’s only in December that the city truly comes to life, for this is when its palaces and baroque churches, […]