Email Ethics

So, if you remember from last year, people regularly spam me with press releases that they think I should publish over here. They’re usually totally inappropriate and utterly dull, a description that many may think qualifies them perfectly for a slice of cyberspace here on my blog, but that I, delusional as I am in matters of quality and relevance, usually reject. I’d like to call it a discerning eye but I suspect that’s because a mosquito bit me on the eye(lid) last night and hence I now have eyes on the brain (she says, just inviting some neuroscientist smart aleck out there to point out that the optic nerve IS an extension of the brain and thus eyes can’t be on something that they are. To you, I advise you to keep quiet. Say – or worse – publish something like that and everyone will see you for the geek you really are. Oops.)

Moving swiftly on…Ethical travel. It’s the sort of thing that sounds great but that usually means a hotel tries not to wash your towels and attempts instead to sell you a hand-woven bracelet from (supposedly) a village down the street. Judging a single person’s ethics is a sticky, tricky area but bundle a whole load of people together inside the borders of a country with billions of dollars at stake and it gets trickier still.

Well, the guys over at EthicalTraveler.org have put a bit more work into it than most and have come up with a list of the most ethical destinations for 2012 (I know, what are the chances? They’re called EthicalTraveler and they write about ethical travel…)

I walked you through my cynicism this time last year with Can You Score a Country on Ethics? The Top Ten Ethical Destinations for Travellers and I even threw in that sneaky extra L. This, year, though, I’m just going to get on with it.

And get a cold compress for my eye.

Ethical Travel: The Top Ten Destinations for 2012

In alphabetical order

• Argentina *
• The Bahamas
• Chile *
• Costa Rica *
• Dominica *
• Latvia *
• Mauritius
• Palau *
• Serbia
• Uruguay *

Look at this list and what do I discover? I’ve only been to two of them. The message? Clearly I must travel more…(Although fingers crossed, I may be travelling to Costa Rica very soon…)

How about you? How many have you been to? Do you think you can really rate a country on ethics?

You're so ethical I could kiss you

Ethical Travel: Can You Score It? first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

So. Over to Janice Waugh from Solo Traveler.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

How does one balance the importance of living in the present with the need to prepare for the future?

Some people don’t contemplate this issue. They simply do what comes naturally – sometimes suffering the consequences of favoring one over the other.

But, if you are one who does consider how to balance the two, where does the answer lie. And, what is the question?  If you love travel, the question is: should I stay or should I go.

We chose to go.

Late in 2000 my husband and I decided to go.

We could finally see our way clear to living our dream of long-term travel. Having sold our business and with two sons out the door, one entering his last year of high school and the youngest going into grade six, it all seemed possible.

To others, it may have made more sense to wait, at least a year, but we planned and went. We bet on the present over the future and, as you’ll see, we won.

 How does one balance the importance of living in the present with the need to prepare for the future?

This was taken in Arles, France. We just had our youngest with us at the time.

Two of my sons at La Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

Our trip of a Lifetime

My husband had traveled a year through South America when I was just entering high school. (He had seven years on me.) I had taken many short trips since I was 15 – a few weeks here, a month there. Together, as we blended our families, started and built a business – we lived a very busy life – we also planned to travel. In 1995, we managed six weeks with kids in France, Scotland and Ireland. But that wasn’t enough. We had bigger plans in mind.

Then in 2000 it seemed right. Our number three son could do his last year at Neuchatel Junior College, a Canadian school in Switzerland, and I would homeschool our youngest. We could rent our house for income (we made $25,000 in ten months) and rent a VW Pop-up camper for transportation and accommodation. Yes, it could all work. We fit the pieces together and left at the end of August 2001.

Over the next 10 months we covered a lot of ground. My mother joined us for a few weeks. The older sons each came over for a time. It was a free-flowing trip of a lifetime. When we needed to feel settled, we stayed. When we’d had enough of a location, we simply moved on.

Life Without Regrets

We came home in June of 2002 which is a perfect time to return. The summer is slower than most times of the year and gave us two months to prepare for the real new year, September.

However, while the kids and I settled back into our home life, my husband became less settled. Was it the culture shock of re-entry? We couldn’t tell at first but his life, our life, got very complicated. And it became even more so over the next few years.

In 2006, my husband was finally diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a very rare neurological disease that first shows itself in personality changes and later with debilitating physical changes.  He passed away later that year on December 9^th.

While our choice to take an extended trip at that particular time of life may have seemed odd to some, it made sense to us. At least, we made it make sense. We put our present and our future on a scale and chose to live in the present for that year. And, at the time, we had no idea that it was our last chance to do so.

Should you stay or should you go?

Go.

Janice Waugh is the author of the Solo Traveler’s Handbook, publisher of Solo Traveler, the blog for those who travel alone and moderator of the Solo Travel Society on Facebook. The blog offers solo travel stories, tips, safety advice and destination ideas as well as a couple of free ebooks, including Glad You’re Not Here – A Solo Traveler’s Manifesto.

She also spells travelling and traveller a funny way but we won’t hold that against her!

Have you ever wondered whether to stay or whether to go?

Should I Stay or Should I Go? first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Ell-jubble-jana.

Leu-yoop-leeyana.

Lovely-jubbly. Longing. Lingering. Ljubljana.

Ljubljana

Along with Timbuktu, this place stole my heart because of its name, its mystery, and its canny knack for camouflage in the face of the world wide press. Something the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelilna Jolie never managed even in the midst of the Namib Desert.

Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is a city that belongs to the EU. It uses euros (unlike, say, Prague, Budapest, Stockholm and London) and it sits within a stone’s throw of household names like Italy, Austria and Switzerland. It was never behind the iron curtain; it’s a fully paid-up member of NATO and it’s a shorter drive from Venice to Ljubljana than it is from Paris to Bordeaux.

Yet Ljubljana, and its country Slovenia, might as well be Atlantis as far as many are concerned. A point picked up first by Paulo Coelho, rather than my humble self, in his staggeringly powerful book Veronika Decides to Die.

This uplifting novel, despite its unpromising title, contains this passage early on:

No-one, anywhere in the world, would begin an article asking where Mount Everest was, even if they had never been there. Yet in the middle of Europe, a journalist on an important magazine felt no shame at asking such a question, because he knew that most of his readers would not know where Slovenia was, still less its capital, Ljubljana…

The final act of her life would be to write a letter to the magazine, explaining that Slovenia was one of the five republics into which the former Yugoslavia had been divided

The letter would be her suicide note. She would give no explanation of the real reasons for her death.

It was a passage – and a book – that left a lasting impression.

After all these years of wonder, my arrival in Slovenia was about as unremarkable as they come.

From Trieste to Ljubljana

The original plan involved heading north from Bulgaria, through Serbia and then on to Croatia before sidestepping west into Slovenia. Bulgarian rail strikes, however, introduced a swift redirect via Venice to Trieste in northern Italy, where I picked up the trail again.

Trieste Railway Station

From Trieste to Ljubljana

From the outside, the Trieste Railway Station resembles a stately home, dressed in columns, arches and a top tier balcony, guarded by leafy trees and lanterns. Inside seems even grander, with ornamental statues and a profusion of pink panels and even more columns.

Although it’s peace time, the Italian and Slovenian rail companies are having something of a squabble right now. Direct trains between Trieste and Slovenia have been cancelled, prompting many customers to note that “TrenItalia and the European Union have achieved what the Cold War failed to do for more than 40 years: block transport across the border.”

Luckily, the alternatives aren’t too tricky, particularly when armed with knowledge gleaned from the Lonely Planet forums. I hand over the princely sum of about two euros for a twenty minute bus journey to the small border town called Sezana.

It’s one of the most anti-climactic border crossings I’ve ever known. In that there wasn’t one.

Sezana, A Border Town

The bus pulled up on an unremarkable stretch of tarmac and the driver gestured that I, rather than the others, should get out.
I did – and waited on the side of the road, not entirely sure whether we’d reached Sezana, and hence Slovenia, or whether I was still in Italy somewhere and needed to be walking to somewhere else.

My mangled Italian decodes a direction or two and I plod towards Sezana’s station.

If I didn’t know better, I could be in England. So could the roads, the low grey sky, the muted winter sound of birds chirping in the fields.

It’s exciting how familiar it is. Except, it’s not.

The differences are subtle but they’re certainly there, particularly when I reach the station.

I don’t know whether it’s the wild punk graffiti that laces over the carriage of each train. Or the pleasure of a lilting, rapping rhythm of a language that I can’t begin to decipher. Or the fact that at first glance this station looks so much like home and yet tastes so much of adventure.

I’m probably too old to think things like this, but perhaps it’s because it’s my first time in Slovenia.

I’m on a train towards a place called Ljubljana. And I’m a child in search of Atlantis.

To be continued…

This article forms part of the #IronRoute series, a journey from Istanbul to Berlin by train, sponsored by InterRail. Find out more about the whole project here and read the last post about Trieste and the Iron Curtain here.

Longing for Ljubljana – Travel From Trieste first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Behind me, I know that sapphire lights stud their way across the stone. Right now, though, I’m watching darkness.

Behind me, flames from an occasional car streak across the empty velvet sky, backlit by the brilliance of a long forgotten empire.

Ahead I see nothing. Black, dark, empty, silent. Just the sound of water touching the stone that leads from the Piazza d’Unita d’Italia to the edge of the Adriatic.

I am standing in Trieste, in Italy, and I am thinking about the Iron Curtain, the driving force for my current #ironroute trip.

In 1946, Winston Churchill made this landmark speech:

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere…”

He was talking about the political divisions that had appeared in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. At the time, much of Europe lay in ruins, and the rest of the world hardly looked much better. Sixty million people had lost their lives, and two thirds of those lost had been civilians. The defeated “Axis” powers of Germany, Italy and Japan lost 3 million civilians; the “victorious” Allies lost over 35. Ninety percent of Cologne’s buildings were gone. Eighty percent of those in Manila. Widows and orphans grieved in Berlin. In London, Sydney, Namibia, Hiroshima, Nepal, Texas and Arkansas.

The world had changed. The powers of Western Europe, who had set the rules for more than 500 years, were hungry, homeless and looking for help.

And the two giants who held the cards were two late entries into the war: the United States and the Soviet Union.

Given the length and complexity of the Cold war that followed, it’s worth taking a moment to remember that during the struggle against the Nazis, the Russians and Americans had been on the same side. And that by the end, they both wanted the same thing: a peaceful, stable central Europe. One that wouldn’t bring the world to its knees every generation or so.

Trieste Station

It was winter when I arrived in Trieste. The wind carried with it the whisper of sleet and the soft scent of snow. The ground sparkled with the reflections of Christmas lights in the afternoon rain and the central square was surprisingly quiet.

A central square with a name like Piazza d’Unita d’Italia already invites questions. A mention in a landmark Churchill speech becomes an informal visit to help the police with their enquiries. By the time I was translating the Italian word for sauerkraut (crauti) while sitting in the century-old beloved Buffet da Pepi, historical questions had become a caffeine-fuelled double cross-examination in a hyped and highly-televised celebrity trial of the century.

Just who or what was Trieste? What was the former Iron Curtain? And why didn’t I already know about this fascinating, fantastic place?

First things first. Trieste lives in the northeast corner of Italy, a short train ride away from the not-so-well-kept-secret city of Venice. One hundred years ago, it belonged to the Habsburg Empire. The Habsburgs (in case, like me, you never covered any of this in school) were essentially Kings and Queens based in Vienna who ran and oversaw an empire that at various points stretched from Holland to the subsequent USSR and lasted for more than 600 years.

Less than 100 years after their demise, hardly anyone knows who they are. For a modern day parallel, imagine your grandchildren drawing a total blank at the mention of a Britain or the notion of a Queen of England.

Yet in the eyes of the world as it entered the 20^th century, Trieste formed the Habsburgs’ 4^th largest city, right behind the glittering icons of Vienna, Budapest and Prague.

The assassination of the heir to the Habsburg throne and his wife (think the gunning down of Wills and Kate) lit the fuse to World War One and the well-catalogued destruction, misery and suffering that followed.

As World War One ended, so did the Habsburgs. A victorious Italy moved into Trieste, Slovene names were switched to Italian and the decades that followed involved ongoing border disputes, forced Italianization, Nazi occupation, the decimation of the Jewish population and the formation of the only concentration camp on Italian soil.

Landing on the losing side once again, at the end of the Second World War, Trieste “belonged” to the Allied Forces. Its territories were split once more and within a few years it settled into the borders it uses today, snug against what used to be western Yugoslavia, and what is now 21^st century Slovenia.

And, according to Churchill’s speech in 1946, at the edge of the Iron Curtain.

My visit to Slovenia, the next stop after Trieste, painted a rather different picture. Talk about the iron curtain with Slovenians ranks right up there in chit-chat terms with discussing slavery with the Yanks or “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. Folk, if you’re old enough to remember, picture Bruce Willis with an “I hate Niggers*” sign walking through New York’s Harlem, and proceed through conversation in Ljubljana with caution.

Yugoslavia (now Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia) adds in a striking piece to the Cold War jigsaw. Led by General Tito, Yugoslavia emerged from the Second World War as a communist country, although it quickly fell out with Stalin’s extremist stance in Moscow and established itself as an independent socialist state.

Unlike Stalin, Tito kept travel borders open; his trade routes were more relaxed, his ideas less radical. The land that he governed forms a crucial part of understanding the Cold war, but I’m not ready to go there. Not just yet. Not now.

Now I’m watching the waves of the Adriatic as they approach the shore of Trieste. I’m smelling fresh and salty air and thinking of dinner. I’m looking for Viennese-style coffee shops and lard-soaked pizza; historical sauerkraut and slices of pork; a Garden of Remembrance and the inspiration for James Joyce. I’m looking for Italian and Slovene, Habsburgs and happiness, Cold War and warm peace.

I am, I suppose, looking for Trieste.

Come back soon to read more about modern-day Trieste and more about the Iron Curtain, the Cold war and #IronRoute.

This article forms part of a series for #ironroute, a journey by train from Istanbul to Berlin. This took place thanks to the sponsorship, freedom and encouragement of InterRail.
*And just so there’s absolutely no confusion…This comes from a scene in the movie/film Die Hard With a Vengeance. Since inflammatory and defamatory language comes with a linguistic and cultural context, the line in this article is trying to relate a situation in one place and time with a comparable one in another, only so that people can understand the high tensions and emotions involved, not because I believe or support any kind of discrimination or prejudice. That’s actually the opposite of what this series is trying to achieve…

Trieste: Sadness at the Start of the Iron Curtain first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

The Berlin Wall: The End of the #IronRoute

Eighteen days ago I set out on a journey of more than a thousand miles. It took me through nine different countries, six different currencies, two continents and it strayed both in and out of the European Union. It criss-crossed along the iron curtain and took me face to face with some of the most important events in recent European history – if history can include my own lifetime.

It showed me chocolate cake and gluwein, war crimes and reconciliation, rail strikes and lost property and it introduced me to the point of iPhone travel apps.

I caught up with old friends, met new ones and had the privilege to interview some of the most fascinating people I’ve met yet.

I’m exhausted, to be honest, as I type this out and I felt the same way when I reached the East Side Gallery in Berlin earlier today.

At 1.3 kilometres long, this former marker of a divided Europe now serves as the largest open air gallery in the world. And open air it is.

I arrived not long before Christmas to a moving wall of hail and sleet. Tears burned the curves of my cheeks, while my torn and drenched map screamed with the wind. I had to walk backwards, to protect my face and, more importantly, my camera lens. With numbness creeping through the soles of my shoes, this is what I saw:

Looking back at #ironroute

I’ve wondered how to word this, but I’m just going to come out and say it.

This trip really has changed my outlook on the world. When I began planning, it seemed a shame to finish in Berlin, rather than to travel east to the edge of Asia. Now, after reading, visiting, interviewing and thinking so much about each of the countries I’ve visited and how they’ve changed over the last 100 years, there couldn’t be any place to finish other than Berlin.

I hope to share more of that with you in a (hopefully) more coherent manner over the next few weeks, but for now, thank you so much for following along, thank you to InterRail for the freedom and funding that made this trip possible, thank you to every single one of the many people who helped me along the way – and I’ll be back in touch again soon.

Only one question for today: what, in particular, about this trip would you like to hear about?

Hitting the Wall – Reaching Berlin first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Zagreb

The sign on the platform read Budapest. I climbed onto the train, no easy feat at that moment as I clutched my heavy bag of camera gear, my suitcase and the provisions I had just bought for the six hour journey ahead. Stale pizza, artificial looking bread and a big bottle of water. I’d hurt my shoulder in the crowd and didn’t want to travel far for food, so a station meal it had to be.

I left my smaller bag and food on the train, hoping no one would steal it and returned to collect my suitcase. The steps were steep, the door narrow, the bag awkward and the shoulder screaming.
I heard a voice behind me in a language I did not know, but I could not turn until I reached the top and set the suitcase down.

“Do you need any help?” he switched to English as we both realised the moment had passed.
I smiled, grateful anyway.

“Do you have any money for me? For ticket?” he said. My auto-response awakened and I prepared to look down and mumble my apologies and walk past. But then I thought, why not? I’m leaving the country anyway, these coins are no good to me.

I handed them over. He continued talking. I began to feel anxious, perhaps a little regret.

“Where are you going?”

“Budapest.”

“This is not the right train.”

Alarm bells rang. Was this the start of a scam? A detour to a fictional train? Would I have to spend more money? Go down a sidestreet? Get mugged…

The ticket guard arrived, striding past without hesitation.

I asked in English, the man in Croatian. “Is this the train for Budapest?”

We got no answer at first. Then I asked again. I suspect I sounded desperate.

“No, no Budapest.”

My eyes fled to the window where orange pixels still spelled out Budapest in uniform rounded letters.

Confusion.

The man said something to the ticket guard. Then another thing. Then another.

Finally, the guard grunted and gestured along the aisle of the train and I stumbled behind him, bags slipping and sliding and squeezing through the gap. The other man followed.

We reached a blocked door.

“Get off now,” snapped the guard. I hopped down the steps first, placing my water and paper bags on the station floor before returning for the suitcase.

By then the guard had opened the door to the connecting train, sighed at me and hauled my suitcase across the gap into the next carriage. I ducked back down to the platform to gather my things then scurried along after him.

“Budapest,” said the guard.

“Budapest,” said the man.

I thanked them both and took my seat.

“This is first class,” said the woman in front of me.

“Thank you,” I replied.

“Second class is further along,”

We said nothing.

“Although the guard is very nice. He will probably let you sit there anyway.”

“I hope so,” I said. “Since I have a first class ticket.”

She said nothing.

The train slowly rocked away. Carrying with it the notion that I’d walked into a fable.

#Ironroute is an independent journey with transport sponsored by InterRail. Read more about the idea for the project here, follow along on twitter using the #ironroute hashtag and subscribe here for email updates.

A Tale of One City – On The Iron Route first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Istanbul Sunrise - Seen From the Moevenpick Istanbul

Istanbul

A man casts a glance over his shoulder before arching back and casting his line into the water. The street chatter and rush hour traffic drown out the subtle splash but from the look on his face, you’d think he stood alone in the countryside, miles from anyone, miles from anywhere.

Calm

He’s one of many who line the Galata Bridge in Istanbul, searching for sea life in the inlet of the mighty Bosphorus, the waterway known as the Golden Horn.

Despite the size of the city ( 13 million at least at the last count,) the air feels fresh and clean, with soft wisps of salt dancing through the breeze. It’s early morning and it’s also winter, meaning that the sun, like the rest of us, is still warming up to the idea of the day ahead.

I stride across the bridge, my hands curling inside my pockets to grasp any vestige of heat, while my breath joins the mist that veils the view ahead.

And what a view it is.

Minarets in lavender blue, matching domes in resting chrome. A foreground of scarlet wagons selling roast sweetcorn and pretzels and damp yet golden flagstones lit by the rising sun.

Both Europe & Asia

I love the city of Istanbul, perched as it is across the Bosphorus that divides Europe from Asia, with diplomatic parallels to match. When designing my #ironroute tour, a rail journey to look at the “east-west” divides in Europe and the former iron curtain, Istanbul seemed like a natural fit.

Its terminal used to mark the end of the Orient Express, a near-mythical journey that swept up Agatha Christie, Jackie Kennedy, Ernest Hemingway and more from the chic streets of Paris to the chandeliers of the Pera Palace Hotel. And while Turkey’s role in the Cold War was rather low key, Istanbul is certainly a city that knows a thing or two about divisions, from geography to ideology.

Vast Empires

When the vast empire of Rome drew a curtain between its own territories, “western Rome” took Rome as its capital, while “eastern Rome” took Istanbul (or Constantinople as it became at the time.)

While the western Roman Empire crumbled in less than 100 years, the eastern one continued for more than a thousand. This Christian stronghold switched to Islam with the invasion of the Ottomans, who themselves established an empire that spanned more than seven centuries.

It’s hard to miss the greatest symbols of these two former empires as they face one another in the grassy area of Sultanahmet. The Hagia Sofia and the “Blue Mosque” remain two of the most awe-inspiring and magnificent buildings in the world – and at the very least they deserve is a blog post of their own (watch this space.)

Inside the Blue Mosque

Crossing to Asia

This morning, though, while I admire Sultanahmet’s silhouettes on the horizon, that’s not where I’m headed. I’m filing along behind the commuters to reach the Spice Market – a collection of stained glass, leather, perfume, and yes, spice – and the designated meeting point for my guide from Context Travel.

Context employs academics in love with their cities. I took my first tour with them last year in my own city, London, to find to my surprise Roman remains and Victorian markets beneath the glistening brittle glass of the City.

This time, I’m crossing the Bosphorus to reach Asia on a public ferry that costs about two lira (about one euro.) We’ve missed the rush hour and have both the seats and space to stretch out a little, while gulls loom ominously past the railings.

Sultanahmet Slides Away

The foam froths below and Sultanahmet slides away. I try to talk to my guide about the project I’m working on and she misunderstands me straight away.

“So you’re retracing the rail route from Istanbul to Berlin because of its 50th anniversary.”

Well, yes – and no. I will be travelling by rail, I will be travelling to Berlin but my little journalist’s heart flutters a little at this potentially missed detail. “What anniversary?”

Conversation becomes difficult. “The workers who went… In the 1960s… I thought that’s what…You know…”

More awkwardness – and I’m not quite sure whether the reticence comes from the misunderstood purpose of my visit or the event itself five decade ago.

I let a few more metres of Bosphorus glide past before trying again. Turkey, it seems, sided with Germany in World War One, the conflict that set the world stage for all the other global conflicts that followed that century.

“Turkey won all of its battles,” she says. “All of them. But it lost overall because it picked the wrong side. And that’s when the Bosphorus became international waters.”

The Bosphorus

The gulls circle past, squawking and angry.

In less than twenty minutes, we will have passed from Europe to Asia. We will have reached the other side of Istanbul. But we will have travelled through international waters.

Never underestimate the complexity of politics when a valuable resource is at stake.

And the Bosphorus is valuable. Extremely valuable. This narrow channel connects the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south and from there on towards the Aegean and then the Med. In shorter terms, it provides the only international shipping access for several watchful countries. No wonder both the Christian Romans and the Islamic Ottomans fought over its vital strategic position. And, perhaps no wonder that Turkey is now a secular state.

“They are planning to build their own channel now, though,” my guide continues. “It will be bigger than the Panama Canal, bigger than the Suez. The plans are in the pipeline…It will…happen.”

My mind spins a little as I listen to the plans to carve a route through inland Turkey. It sounds like a plot from a James Bond thriller rather than 21st century politics.

I still haven’t uncovered the real story behind the Turkish workers who travelled to Berlin 50 years ago, other than to read between the lines of economic and educational exclusion and conflicts over repatriation. It’s something for me to investigate on perhaps another day.

For now, though, the foam turns the international water turquoise as we come in dock, translucent jellyfish suspended in fathomless blue.

Through our words, we’ve travelled through centuries. And yet in twenty minutes, we’ve only just reached Asia.

#Ironroute is an independent journey with transport sponsored by InterRail. Read more about the idea for the project here, follow along on twitter using the #ironroute hashtag and subscribe here for email updates.

For other multimedia #ironroute snippets, check out this section on the blog.

Disclosure: Context Travel provided complimentary Istanbul tours although, as always, editorial control remains mine. All mine.

Read More About Istanbul

Photos of Istanbul
A Shooting in Istanbul

About Istanbul: Crossing Between Europe & Asia first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell. I was at school at the time and I wasn’t entirely sure what all the fuss was about. Fast forward through the years and despite – or perhaps because of – having studied it briefly, watched the odd Bond film and read plenty of spy thrillers (both fact and fiction,) I’m still not all that sure.

Then There’s Ljubljana

Then there’s Ljubljana. Never mind about worrying about how to pronounce it, I’d never even heard of it until I read Paulo Coelho’s Veronika Decides to Die. (Incidentally, the trigger for the heroine’s suicide attempt is a journalist who can’t place Ljubljana.)

At school, we dreaded the countries of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, not because of their ideology, but because those words were difficult to spell. Bulgaria was a womble (a fuzzy children’s toy.) Romania meant orphans and Dracula. And Hungary only featured in woefully bad Christmas cracker jokes.

I was still at school when Yugoslavia tore itself apart, the words Sarajevo and Belgrade standing in for war reporters, air strikes and the horrors of ethnic cleansing.

When I first visited Croatia in 2003, I found a land still lined with scars, where bullet holes and blasted buildings lingered between fresh fruit markets and sunshine-lit cafes. Yet I also found unaffected beauty in the rocks of Croatia’s coastline, chalked up great times with friends in Zagreb, and timeless warmth in the the amber streets of medieval Dubrovnik.

My trip to Hiroshima redefined my ideas of tying history to a place, while my travels though Austria earlier this year made me realise once more the confused and empty bubble that marks out central and eastern Europe in the map inside my brain.

I knew more about the history and modern day life of islands far, far away like Australia, Japan and Cuba, than I did this chunk of mainland that lives so close to home.

A Rail Journey – An Iron Route

So this year, when InterRail invited me to travel through eastern Europe on a global Interrail Pass, I knew the time had come to find out more. And besides, the weight of a fictional girl’s suicide attempt in Ljubljana was becoming too much to bear.

#IronRoute is a rail trip from Istanbul to Berlin that aims to explore the theme of “east” and “west” as it used to apply to Europe, while also getting a taste of those places as they are today. It’ll skirt along the hem of the Iron Curtain (hey, indulge me here) as shown in the map below.

Iron for Iron Curtain, Iron for Travel by Train.

I know from talking to some of you over the last few weeks that I’m not the only one a little sketchy on my geography of Eastern Europe.

Fear not. Sit back, relax, and let me make a fool of myself on your behalf.

Education this way comes, hopefully with a huge dollop of entertainment and maybe even some intelligent observations. I don’t expect you to hold your breath, but I would like to invite you to follow along online…Here’s how…

Follow #IronRoute in Real Time

#IronRoute on Twitter

Follow the hashtag #ironroute to read about the trip on twitter.

#IronRoute in Real Time on Inside the Travel Lab

I’ll be posting smaller snippets and shorter articles over here.

#IronRoute on Instagram & Flickr

Have an iPhone? Follow @insidetravellab on Instagram. Don’t have an iPhone? Never mind, there’s always Flickr.

#IronRoute on Facebook

Every day, I’ll post photos and other snippets on Inside the Travel Lab’s Facebook Page.

#IronRoute the “Old Fashioned Way”

That’s right, I’ll still be covering #IronRoute here on this blog. You can either visit Inside the Travel Lab to read about it directly or else have updates delivered straight to your screen by signing up for email or RSS updates or by subscribing on a kindle.

Right, that’s enough from me. Time to hit the tracks. Wish me luck!

Where in the world is Ljubljana? What the #IronRoute is all about. first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

Today, I am doing something unusual. At least unusual for me.

In a few short weeks (well, two to be precise, and they’re the same length as every other week in town) I’ll be embarking upon an unusual journey through eastern Europe. My idea was to start in Berlin, where the powers of east and western Europe fought so long and so hard in the name of ideology, supremacy and appearances over one brick wall with a thousand and one ramifications.

From there, I planned to travel east until I reached that near mythical, near arbitrary divide between Europe and Asia that is the Bosphorus River in Istanbul.

A Journey Through Eastern Europe By Train

Well, like many a great idea (and ideology,) things just weren’t meant to be. At least not as I imagined them. A twist of fate and fortune, otherwise known as the eurozone crisis, has meant a few behind-the-scenes modifications to the original plan.

I’ll now, sadly, be missing Greece and instead be working backwards: from the eastern edge of Europe in Istanbul back towards the modern city of Berlin.

I’ll be travelling on a complimentary InterRail Pass provided by the conveniently named InterRail Company and writing for their site as I go. I’ll also, of course, be writing for Inside the Travel Lab and I’ll also, of course, have complete editorial control. (As ever, as usual, mwa ha ha ha haaa!)

So what’s so unusual?

Well, the biggest and most unusual part about this for me is that I’m writing about it here before I’ve been there. That’s not what I usually do.

Ideas Please

I’d love to hear from you if you’ve been to or know anything about the following cities in the following countries. I’m looking for something unusual, something cultural, something exciting and something special. I’d love to know what you think…

An Eastern Odyssey – The Route

Istanbul > Sofia > Skopje > Belgrade > Zagreb > Ljubljana > Budapest > Vienna > Bratislava > Prague > Berlin

View Rail Odyssey Through Eastern Europe in a larger map

Let me know what you think, I’d love to hear from you

An Eastern Odyssey… first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...

“You have blood on your hands,” she said as she jabbed me in the ribs. “And you’re celebrating mass murder.”

As a travel writer with a British passport, the first statement is something of an occupational hazard.

Never mind that for most of the events in question I wasn’t even alive. That even if I had been alive, I probably wouldn’t have been eligible to vote. And even now that I am alive and able to vote, my vote seems to make no difference as to what the British government decides to do.

No, this was about something else. This was about Poppy Day.

Remembrance

Poppy Day, as it’s known to most people, or Armistice or Remembrance Day in more official terms, takes its origins from the end of the First World War. After four years of battle, during which more than 15 million people from more than 100 countries died, fighting finally stopped at the 11^th hour on the 11^th day on the 11^th month in 1918. History has not been kind to the details of the deal.

On the fields where 60 000 men could be slaughtered in a single day, scarlet poppies grew among the mud, the ammunition, the barbed wire and the corpses.

Those poppies became the symbol of remembrance.

That’s the historical background, but Poppy Day itself has broadened its scope since then.

That’s the historical background, but Poppy Day itself has broadened its scope since then.

It remembers all those who have died in conflict, regardless of religion or politics.

It is easy to glorify war. It is easy to vilify it.

It is not easy at 18 years old, or indeed at any age, to face – and then meet – a violent death, while trying to help others. Does this description apply to every soldier the world has ever known? Of course not. Does it apply to many? I believe so.

But even if it applied to the life of one person only, to one person who died to protect the freedoms that I now enjoy, I would want to remember them and to mourn their loss.

Poppy Day is not about glorifying war. It is not about victory.  It is about loss.

Or at least it is to me.

 In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

McCrae

Red is for Remembrance: About Poppy Day first appeared on Inside the Travel Lab. Head over there for more juicy fresh travel goodness. Or, you know, something you might like to read...