Tag: Travel

The time flies like an arrow. Quite unexpectedly, it’s an upshot moment again!

War in Ukraine

This last year it’s become clear the war is the new normal now. With regular shellings of Ukrainian cities and repressions on the rise inside Russia. We call it the “negative natural selection,” when the meanest, the dumbest are in power, oppressing and punishing any dissent.

To an outsider’s eye it doesn’t make a shred of sense, that what the Russians are doing to Ukraine — or to their own folk for that matter. There’s, however, a strong, sinister feeling there’s a mighty good chance the situation will simply collapse into total chaos at some point.

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A while ago I was happy 2020 came to an end. Two years on, in the hindsight I must admit I shouldn’t have been complaining at all.

That said, all things eventually come to an end, even those appearing eternal. So it’s time for a traditional upshot post.

There are quite a few pictures under the cut, as a compensation for my lack of activity in this blog throughout the past year.

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Scandinavia is known for many things. From the beautiful coastal sceneries of Dueodde Beach on Denmark’s Bornholm island and Norway’s Svalbard outpost, to the enchanting treks through the isolated Hornstrandir peninsula, this region has become a mainstay in the bucket lists of explorers and globetrotters the world over.

The region has also become known for its unique-sounding place names, making destinations in Scandinavia all the more appealing to foreigners. Not only is Finland home to Äteritsiputeritsipuolilautatsijänkä, the third-longest place name in Europe, but a geography facts post on Gala Bingo also highlights how there are villages in Sweden and Norway just called Å — the shortest place names in the world.

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We’re just back from the UAE. In Dubai all boards and announcements are bilingual, in Arabic and English. And it’s worth noting English there is quite decent compared to other non-English countries.

Yet there is a blunder now and then.

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More and more these days, one of the things I value most in travelling is the chance to unplug. This doesn’t mean I go into full nomad mode, forsake my smartphone, or anything of the kind. But with so much of day-to-day life now taking place through devices and screens, it’s nice to find a destination where you can simply explore and enjoy the real world.

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We’ve recently been to Paris and strolled along the banks of Seine, where all kinds of old stuff was being sold: postcards, posters, paintings, books.

Occasionally you stumble upon a really interesting artifact.

So we’ve spotted a brilliant version of Mona Lisa, which we named “Mona Lisa Plus” amongst ourselves. It looked so appropriate in the company of hundreds of canonical copies of Da Vinci’s work.

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We decided to dedicate the last day of our Sophian journey to Plovdiv, going there in the morning and returning in the afternoon.

This idea was suggested by Slavyan during the Free Sofia Tour. Plovdiv is easily reachable by bus departing from the Sofia Bus Station. The direct trip takes two hours and costs 14 leva (€7).

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There’s this country on our globe that is kind of special for Russian-speaking people, because they use the same alphabet but pretty different words. Which usually results in something either incomprehensible or hilarious.

That country is called Bulgaria, and I recently happened to visit its capital Sofia, and also to spend a day in the nearby Plovdiv.

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I’ve been lucky to have had a good deal of wintersport this season, as well as to come back in one piece.

Our destination was chosen to be the Austrian Sölden, also located in Tyrol like Ischgl where I’d been a year ago.

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One day we’d been wandering through the Citadelpark (which acquired its name because it’s situated on the site where in the XIX century Citadel of Ghent was) and came across two museums located next to each other in the damp and dusky grove (the weather was anything but good and the sky was growing dark, so I won’t show you the pictures of the park).

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